The archaic tendency to take a concept as a thing or a substance leads to confusion and unclarity in the theory of defense mechanisms, and inhibits the fullest understanding and classification of them. Defense mechanisms are constructs, man-made abstractions, which may be taken to refer either to mental contents, purposes, outcomes, or to certain processes. In this paper the

author attempts to specify the nature and sequential organization of these processes as he describes defense mechanisms as ways of relating one's self, one's consciousness, and one's body to inner stimuli.