Defenses are ways by which the psyche aims at avoiding threatening affects, above all anxiety. The notion of defense was introduced by Freud with reference to hysteria (Freud 1894, p. 47). The defense mechanism involved in hysteria is repression, which causes the expulsion of a painful affect or idea from the conscious ego. During the following 30 years, Freud would use the term repression with reference to defensive processes in general. This special status of repression was due to its role in the constitution of the unconscious as such. In 1925 however Freud reintroduced the concept of defense as an inclusive category encompassing not only repression but also other mechanisms which he had been identifying in the meanwhile (Freud 1926, p. 163). The analysis of ego defenses was to become subsequently a major theme in psychoanalysis, thanks also to the pivotal study on the topic by Anna Freud.
A subsequent line of development, which paralleled the extension of psychoanalytic theory and...
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Giaccardi, G. (2014). Defenses. In: Leeming, D.A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6086-2_156
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