7 Discussion: Self Psychology's Additions to Mainstream Concepts of Defense and Resistance

In discussing this chapter, I will limit myself to a few points and resist the temptation to address the larger issues of competing paradigms. I prefer, where I can, to integrate new views within the ever-widening mainstream of psychoanalytic theory and technique. The chapter under discussion serves as a case in point. Kohut brings to the subject of defense and resistance his particular frame of reference and thereby contributes to my understanding of this important sector of psychoanalysis. For example, although we all shun the surgical metaphor that did, in part, inform Freud's early thinking, Kohut reminds us effectively that we as analysts are particularly vulnerable to falling into this way of thinking when dealing with ideas of resistance and defense. Thus, while it is now commonplace in all psychoanalytic teaching that one respects the defenses of the patient and not run roughshod over them, or, to retain the surgical metaphor, not penetrate the patient's defenses in hot pursuit of the content that is defended against, Kohut reminds us of the reason for this caution: there is a motive for all defenses. In self psychological terms, that motive is the principle of self-preservation.

It is this, I think, that constitutes Kohut's main point in this chapter, that defense and resistance must be considered in relation to the purpose they serve in maintaining the integrity of the self, and only secondarily in terms of what they defend against. Of course, when we speak of what is defended against and the person's specific motives for setting up defenses, we are in the realm, whether we like it or not, of ego psychology and conflict. Ego psychology holds that dysphoric affects such as anxiety, guilt, shame, or depression, which would be aroused by the awareness of unacceptable desires, ideas, or states, motivate the ego to initiate defenses against such awareness, leading to compromise formations that express all sectors of the personality. Such compromise formations ma