On Screen Defenses, Screen Hunger and Screen Identity1

In the early years of psychoanalysis, patients coming for treatment were suffering from symptom neuroses, a relatively clean-cut and well-defined group of pathological formations. The clinical picture changed as society changed and after World War I, patients seeking therapy were found to be suffering from character disorders, an ill-defined, heterogeneous form of neurosis. Since resuming practice after World War II, it seems to me that once again there is a change in the prevailing clinical picture of patients coming for psychoanalytic treatment. They are still preponderantly character disorders, but now the pathology seems to be centered around a defective formation of the self-image, an identity disorder. The struggle to establish one's self-image or self-representation has been elucidated in recent psychoanalytic literature in the writings of Erikson (5), Jacobson (32), (33), and Hartmann (31). Erikson goes so far as to state that the study of identity today is as strategic as the study of sexuality was in Freud's day. There is no doubt that disorders of the self-image are being described more frequently today (6), (38). In part this certainly is due to our particular interest in studying the vicissitudes of ego development.

Ever since the character disorders dominated the clinical scene, psychoanalysts have focused their attention on the ego functions. The ego's methods and motives in coping with the dangerous instinctual demands and painful reality are the decisive factors in character formation. Among the most important means available to the ego in this struggle are the defenses. The problem of defense is complicated because as yet we have no systematic classification either in regard to chronology or to complexity (16). Freud suggested, however, that it might be helpful to relate particular forms of defense to specific clinical disorders (22). This presentation is an