The Integration of Defences

This paper develops an idea that a group of analysts1 found useful in explaining certain aspects of the therapeutic process. Stated simply, this idea is that during analysis the patient's defences undergo the same kind of integration as his impulses. The patient's defences, such as repression and undoing, like his impulses, are at first unconscious. Though they are part of the ego they act beyond the control of the conscious ego. During analysis, they are brought under the control of the conscious ego, and thus come to act in harmony with the other trends of the ego. They are thereby transformed from unconscious defence mechanisms to ego-syntonic control mechanisms. The ego-syntonic control mechanisms that result from the integration of the defences are used by the ego to regulate the impulses previously warded off by the defences. Thus the integration of the defences contributes to the ego's gaining control of the impulses.

The above conceptualization is consistent with formulations made by Freud (1937) in his paper, 'Analysis Terminable and Interminable'. In that paper, Freud wrote about the importance of the change during analysis from unconscious defence mechanisms to ego-syntonic control mechanisms, and he described the analyst's aim of bringing the unconscious resistances (used by Freud in the sense of defences), which are segregated within the ego, into relation with the rest of the ego by making them conscious.

Freud (1937) stated that the failure of an analysis to effect a 'change in the defensive mechanism' is one explanation for an unfavourable outcome. He accounted for the variable results of an analysis in the following way:

… in endeavouring to replace repressions that are insecure by reliable ego-syntonic controls, [we] do not always achieve our aim to its full extent—that is, do not achieve it thoroughly enough. The transformation is achieved, but often only partially; portions of the old mechanisms remain untouched by the work of analysis.

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