On Denial of Objective Sources of Anxiety and 'Pain'

'The [adult] human ego', writes Anna Freud, 'cannot make more extensive use of the mechanism—at once so simple and so supremely efficacious—of denying the existence of objective sources of anxiety and "pain". The ego's capacity for denying reality is wholly inconsistent with another function, greatly prized by it—its capacity to recognize and critically to test the reality of objects.' As for when and how this restriction in the use of denial develops, she says, 'It is difficult to say when the ego loses the power of surmounting considerable quantities of objective "pain" by means of fantasy… For one thing, we conjecture that the faculty of reality testing is objectively reinforced so that it can hold its own even in the sphere of affect.'1

A clinical observation is presented which may have some bearing on these questions of 'when' and 'how', and incidentally reports an interesting variety of dream wish.

A twenty-six-year-old married woman, with two children, sought treatment for depression and a deep sense of inadequacy and worthlessness. It soon became apparent that she suffered from a severe masochistic character neurosis. She was unable to achieve orgasm in intercourse unless she fantasied she was being beaten on the buttocks by an unidentified man; also, with variations, this was her usual masturbatory fantasy. In her marital and social relationships she was regularly extremely passive, stubborn and uncoöperative, in a manner which provoked resentment and hostility, and when periodically such 'injustices' accumulated, she would enact dramatic scenes of screaming, weeping and threatening to commit suicide or to run away. This was all re-enacted in the transference. Gradually it became apparent that the 'injustices' were derived from her severe castration complex. During the third year of treatment, when she had improved sufficiently to successfully seek and hold a responsible position, an incident occurred.

She was employed in a large concern which manufac