Abstract
What follows is not intended to convey a definitive statement, but rather to give an impression of the development of certain ideas, undergoing change. The lines of argument and tentative conclusions proposed here seem to me to follow naturally by extension from the work of Freud and certain others after him, as well as from my own clinical and introspective experience and understanding. Proceeding from the more general to the more particular, I propose to comment upon our conceptions of defensive operations in general, especially the relationship between denial and repression. In doing this, I will favor a fundamentally unitary concept of the development of defense. Subsequently, I will touch upon certain aspects of the development and vicissitudes of denial in particular, focusing especially on the importance I would attribute to this mode of defense for the separation—individuation phase of development and on the roles herein of drive-cathected vision, of “mirroring,” of introjection and projection, and of early identification processes. The degree to which pregenital aggression will have been successfully integrated (or not) at the close of this phase will be proposed as the most crucial factor in determining whether denial mechanisms will ultimately have either a chiefly healthy—creative or a mainly pathological—destructive role in personality organization.
How quaint the ways of paradox, At common sense she gaily mocks!
Trio: Frederick, Ruth, and the Pirate King The Pirates of Penzance
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Chayes, M.F. (1989). Concerning Certain Vicissitudes of Denial in Personality Development. In: Edelstein, E.L., Nathanson, D.L., Stone, A.M. (eds) Denial. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-0737-2_6
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