Clinical Work with Attentional Defences

I would like to thank Joseph Fernando for inviting me to participate on this panel today, which is aimed at celebrating his excellent book The Processes of Defense. My brief remarks will take us somewhat away from the topic of trauma and is more in appreciation of Fernando's book in the practice of everyday psychoanalytic work. First, I will make a few comments on the place of this work in the history of psychoanalytic work on defences. In this context, an effort will be made to show how this volume stands as an excellent model for the presentation of psychoanalytic data. Furthermore, I will offer a few comments on how the theoretical underpinnings of the processes of defence offer a somewhat new and different take on a general psychoanalytic theory. Last, I will focus on the role of analyzing “attentional defences” in analytic work, something although done by many clinicians, including myself, has only recently been well explicated theoretically by Fernando's work. Here an ongoing analytic case of mine will be used as an illustration of working with “attentional defences.”

Let me start by saying that in The Processes of Defense Joseph Fernando offers us the most comprehensive reorganization of the theory and interpretation of defence mechanisms since Anna Freud's original 1936 classic on this subject. In a clearly written manner, this volume stands as a model for the presentation of psychoanalytic data in that it features a depth of case material that one rarely sees in psychoanalytic writing. As well, throughout this book one sees Fernando the psychoanalyst, warts and all, doing his work and making side comments on which aspects of psychoanalytic theory he advocates and which he doesn't. In our brief vignette-oriented psychoanalytical culture, the depth and breadth of the material presented