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For some time, psychoanalysts have noted (with some regret) that they now see fewer classical neuroses, but more character disorders which force them to introduce, often quite reluctantly, parameters into their technique.1 Within this context, one is speaking of shifts or transformations in the degree of employment of certain defense mechanisms of the ego, and the consequences directly stemming from them. In general, the trend is clear: one sees fewer hysterical reactions and more hysterical characters, fewer ritualistic compulsives and more obsessive-compulsive characters, fewer neurasthenics and more narcissistic characters.
Viewed psycho-culturally, the changes in the way the personality copes with the drives tends to be reflective of, but also reinforced by the outer transformations of the institutional structures and forces of the culture itself. For instance, the massive repression of the sexual drives, reaching its zenith in the Western middle classes before World War I, has been markedly lifted and is undergoing a systematic cultural assault at the present time. A similar finding may be noted in the “choice” and use of projection as a primary defensive maneuver, where the object of projection (i. e., the so-called “projective institution”) is no longer able to serve the original externalizing function. The intrinsic nature of this “assault” would seem to lie at the basis of our understanding of just how this shifting or transforming process is occurring and just what its final outcome or resolution might be. However, let us put aside this “how” process for the moment, and first address ourselves to the question of why this change should be transpiring in Western culture.
Perhaps the most consistent observations of this generation