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I SHOULD LIKE TO BEGIN WITH A BRIEF QUOTE FROM JONAthan Swift (1704) who herein articulates the eighteenth-century position on coping with psychic trauma:
In the proportion that credulity is a more peaceful possession of the mind than curiosity; so far preferable is that wisdom, which converses about the surface, to that pretended philosophy which enters into the depth of things … I do here think fit to inform the reader that in such conclusions as these, reason is certainly in the right, because in most earthy beings, which have fallen under my cognizance, the outside hath been infinitely preferable to the in [p. 474].
This pithy advice from the brilliant satirist, apart from its nihilistic view of our profession, could well serve as credo on the prelatency child's journey toward psychic comfort. That journey can be eased, or complicated, by the adaptive tools the personality has acquired to date on its lifelong quest for differentiation and happiness. The focus of this paper is that special assortment of tools known as mechanisms of defense, and how a brother and sister, victims of a most particular life circumstance, acquired