On the Mechanisms of Spacing and Crowding Emotions1

Defences against emotions are more basic and archaic and were studied earlier than defences against instinctual drives. As early as 1900, in the Interpretation of Dreams, Freud mentioned several defences against affects, namely, repression, postponement, and displacement. Later he described isolation, change of quality, projection and introjection. There are special defences against feelings of guilt, for instance, sharing and borrowing of guilt, and regression. Against anxiety there are additional defences, e.g. denial, active anticipation, in the turning from passivity to activity, in libidinization, etc. Asceticism and intellectualization, which Anna Freud describes as defences against the sexual upsurge in adolescence2 are at the same time defences against the sexual affect.

In this paper I am trying to describe a mechanism which I have been able to observe in a number of cases whereby, out of fear of an excess of emotion, the affect is subdivided and the parts experienced at different times. In the psychological sphere this is similar to certain surgical operations which are performed in two parts, with an interval during which the patient may recover. In trying to explain this mechanism I am faced with the difficulty which complicates every psycho-analytic study, that of overdetermination. It is usually the mechanism of isolation which is also involved. I would therefore ask you to believe me that I have gone through the usual psycho-analytic interpretations of their peculiarities with these patients.

Jean, who suffered at that time from various phobias, was engaged and had to arrange the date for her wedding. She would have liked to elope, but her parents insisted on a formal wedding. For her a formal wedding meant a theatrical performance which she contemplated with some stage fright; but the actual wedding meant more to her—namely, arriving at a decision after a long period of doubt as to whether she was making the right choice of a husband. Besid