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IN 1926, FREUD REVIVED HIS CONCEPT OF DEFENSE, WHICH HE had used in his very early writings and then abandoned. In the context of discussing anxiety, he became aware of the fact that a variety of procedures, in addition to repression, clearly had defensive purposes. He singled out regression, isolation, and undoing and pointed to the possibility "that there is an intimate connection between special forms of defence and particular illnesses" (p. 164). Subsequently Anna Freud (1936) greatly enlarged the inventory of defense mechanisms.
It has become clear that a variety of methods can be used by the ego to protect itself from awareness of painful affects and conflicts. In this paper I describe generalization as a mechanism of defense, delineate how it operates, and compare it to other defense mechanisms.
I first observed the use of generalization for purposes of defense in Mr. G., a 35-year-old, successful corporate executive, who went into analysis mainly because of unrealistic fears that either he or members of his family would fall ill and die. These obsessive fears had significantly increased a year before he began his analysis when his father was stricken suddenly with a chronic and serious illness. Mr. G. had many friends and a close, though inhibited, relationship with his wife and two children. He participated actively in the analytic process; and