Universal self-delusion
Created | Updated Oct 24, 2005
The exhortation, ‘Know thyself!’ goes back a long way. Diogenes Laertius attributes it to Thales (c. 624-545 BC), one of the seven wise men of Greece. Antisthenes, in his Succession of the Philosophers, says it was first spoken by Phemonoë. Others attribute it to Chilon or Solon (638-559 BC). Certainly it was the first of the three maxims inscribed on the wall of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. Since then, many other philosophers and poets have, through the ages, emphasized the importance of self-knowledge. As usual, Pope put it rather well:
‘Know then thyself, presume not God to scan.
The proper study of mankind is Man.’
Exhortations are all very well but they are not always easy to comply with. One reason for the difficulty in taking the advice of Thales (or whoever) is the existence of defence mechanisms. These are the many mental ploys by which we are enabled to live reasonable comfortably with our own inadequacies, dishonesties, stupidities and other shortcomings. They are also used as techniques for coping with the stress and anxiety caused by the conflict between our spontaneous desires and socially approved behaviour and beliefs. Some are consciously applied; most just swing into action without our realizing it. Novelists who have failed to look into the fascinating world of the defence mechanisms have lost a major trick.
An awareness of defence mechanisms, whether as formal entities or not, may or may not allow us to better ourselves. But they will certainly help us to win friends and influence people by recognizing—and, when appropriate, respecting—their defence mechanisms. Many successful people who have never heard of defence mechanisms are clearly aware of these psychological processes and act accordingly. Failure to recognize them can lead people to destroy relationships by attacking the defence mechanisms of their associates.
Nowadays, American psychologists sometimes call these ‘coping strategies’ and it is hard to decide which is the better title. Each reflects one aspect of the matter. What is beyond doubt is that they are important and should be as widely understood as possible, by writers as well as by everyone else. The justification for including an account of them in this book is that, even a cursory glance at them will show us that extraordinary states of mind are far commoner than most of us appreciate. These mechanisms vary from person to person but some of them are present in all of us. To some extent they determine our characters and tend to become a fixed feature of our personality.
Although we all employ defence mechanisms and enjoy, thereby, the ability to live more comfortably with ourselves, it would never do to imply that they should all be cultivated or encouraged. One must be discriminating. Some are valuable; most are undesirable, although useful to recognize in others. One of the best things the Scottish poet Robbie Burns said was, in a way, a restatement of the exhortation of Thales (or whoever):
‘Oh wad some pow’r the giftie gie us
to see oursels as ithers see us!’
Unfortunately, the functioning of the self-protective defence mechanisms make this almost impossible, and this is a pity. But all is not lost. The ability to recognize defence mechanisms can, at least in theory, help us to do this. It is not easy, but one thing is certain: it will be a lot harder if we don’t even begin to know what the defence mechanisms are. So here is a gleam of insight into a very important matter. With a bit of luck it may throw a little light into some of the darker recesses of your mind and mine, and perhaps even enable us to dispense with some of these less desirable reactions. Perhaps it may, to that extent, make us, if not better people, at least nicer to know. This is a complex subject, really calling for a book in its own right, and only the general outlines can be sketched in here. Readers who object to being attacked in this way need read no further in this short chapter.
The states of mind of people heavily protected by a repertoire of defence mechanisms manifest a variety of absurdities. These affect their behaviour in such a way as often to provoke a pejorative reaction in others. Such people may, for instance, believe themselves to be honourable, pure in their motives, kind, considerate, generous and broad-minded, when everyone who knows them is aware that they are deceitful, selfish, grasping and prejudiced. They may see themselves as highly logical and rational when, in fact, most of their friends are gob-smacked by the irrationality of their beliefs and opinions. They may genuinely believe themselves to be inferior in some respect, while actually outperforming all the competition. They may be unaware of faults in themselves for which they are constantly, and often unjustly, criticizing others. Most of us will recognize some of these patterns in people we know, but by the operation of our own defence mechanisms will probably be unaware of any of them in ourselves.
The list of mechanisms is long and the terminology sometimes variable, but usually includes such categories as repression (unconscious exclusion from consciousness of threatening desires and feelings); suppression (conscious and deliberate attempts to forget something painful); denial (refusal to recognise the existence of emotionally threatening external factors); identification (strong tendency to mirror the opinions, habits and general behaviour of the group); fantasy (constant indulgence in wish-fulfilment day-dreaming); displacement (redirection of emotional energy, especially hostility, from one person, situation or object to another deemed to be a safer target); compensation (making exceptional efforts to achieve success in an area of real or imagined inferiority); sublimation (rechannelling of sexual energy into an important non-sexual and socially acceptable activity); rationalization (explaining away motives for unacceptable personal actions as being logically justified or the result of external circumstances); intellectualization (repressing the emotional content of a situation and restating it as a coldly abstract analysis); projection (transferring one’s own unacceptable qualities and desires to others); displacement (transferring, to a second person, of unacceptable feelings about a first); and reaction (exaggerating tendencies and impulses which oppose those perceived within oneself).
Displacement is a particularly dangerous defence mechanism. It can take various forms, depending on the impulse concerned. If this is a feeling of aggression or hostility, displacement is called scape-goating. A critical, unreasonable and job-threatening boss makes an employee very angry but, since it would be disastrous to take this out on him or even to allow this to show, the worker goes to a sports club and takes out his anger on a squash ball. More seriously, he might go home and take it out on his wife or children, or even on the cat.
Worse still, is the kind of systematized or organized displacement that results in anger being vented on minority groups. To a liberal person, Southern American, poor-white, economic hatreds that are displaced into lynching of black people, or the anger of unsuccessful small business people that is displaced into antisemitism, seem to manifest a truly extraordinary state of mind. But this is the way people are. Such aggressive emotion must be displaced or it will turn inwards and cause depression or psychosomatic illness. It is a moot point whether it is likely to be easier to eradicate this kind of defence mechanism or to eradicate the causes of the aggression. Education, which can attack both, would seem to be the only plausible solution.
Although defence mechanisms, in others, often seem illogical, immature, ridiculous and damaging, their importance to the individual should be remembered and recognised. Much marital and other interpersonal strife arises from unwise attempts to point out and demolish each other’s protective defence mechanisms. In this, one must go very gently. At the same time the quest for maturity and equality in a relationship demands that there should be insight on both sides. One strategy may be to identify, with preternatural honestly, a harmful defence mechanism in oneself; bring this out into the open, express and explain it to the other person; and wait hopefully for the penny to drop.
The now well-informed gentle reader is invited to identify the defence mechanisms currently being employed by the author.
