Denial of reality may be effected via identification with a person who has mastered an analogous unwelcome reality. Two examples are given. In one, a

young man identified with the character of Scaramouch, whose birth origins are unclear and who found himself free to marry a woman whom he had incorrectly thought a close relative. The patient, also of uncertain origin, had grown up in a large polymorphous perverse family, believing his mother to be his sister. In the second case, a young man attempted to rid himself of a strong infantile attachment to his mother by doing what his father had done—fighting, drinking, and deserting his family. Such primitive identifications serve to deny the continued existence of an unpleasant reality.