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We see only what we know.
No understanding of responses to loss, whether they be healthy or pathological, is possible without constantly invoking concepts of defensive process, defensive belief and defensive activity—the three categories, I argue, into which defences are best grouped. In this chapter a sketch is given of how the phenomena observed and the processes postulated can be understood within the conceptual framework adopted. Although here and there comparisons are made between the present theory and certain of Freud's concepts of defence and mental structure, for reasons of space no systematic attempt is made to relate the two models.
The conceptual tools on which I draw have been made available by students of human information processing. These tools enable us to examine defensive phenomena from a new point of view, to collect data more systematically and to formulate hypotheses in a language shared by other behavioural scientists. These are great advantages. Nevertheless, there is clearly a long way to go before the theory sketched is within sight of doing justice to the wide range of defensive phenomena met with clinically. Until more work has been done, therefore, it will remain uncertain how successful the new approach is going to be.
In the first volume of this work, at the end of Chapter 6 and throughout Chapter 7, I have drawn attention to current work in neurophysiology and cognitive psychology that points to the central control of sensory inflow. Whether inflow derives from the environment through exteroceptors or from the organism itself through interoceptors, sensory inflow goes through many stages of selection,