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Among the manifold defense employed by the ego we find certain mechanisms, such as isolation, denial, introjection, projection, which appear to play a far more prominent role in borderline or psychotic patients than in neurotics. Apparently, such patients call upon this type of defense because of a deficient repressive ability of the ego. But this statement does not cover the much more complicated facts.
To be sure, these patients do not present an even, firm barrier of repressions with solid countercathectic ego formations which permit only certain id strivings and id derivatives to pass or intrude into the ego. Latent psychotics may have very rigid reaction formations, mostly of a compulsive type. But the latter are very fragile. During treatment we observe that such patients obstinately cling to them in frightening awareness that their potential breakdown might usher in an overt psychosis. As to the nature of their repressions, we are surprised to find that the same patients who are at any moment ready to produce undisguised id material, such as conscious incestuous and homosexual fantasies and the like, may present amnesias covering the most significant and traumatic childhood periods like an iron curtain that cannot be lifted. Their oedipal and preoedipal past is—or may become—alive in terms of the present, but quite disconnected from their infantile history which cannot be unearthed.
For instance, a schizophrenic boy of nineteen would at times develop abundant pregenital and genital incestuous and homosexual