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I am far from maintaining that this is a harmful or unnecessary thing
to do, but it is clear that the prophylactic effect of this liberal measure
has been vastly over-estimated. After such enlightenment the children
know something that they did not know before but they make no use
of the new knowledge imparted to them. We come to the conclusion
that they are by no means ready to sacrifice those sexual theories
which may be said to be a natural growth and which they have con-
structed in harmony with and in dependence on their undeveloped
libidinal organization–theories about the part played by the stork,
about the nature of sexual intercourse and about the way in which
children are born. For a long time after they have been enlightened
on these subjects they behave like primitive peoples who have had
Christianity thrust upon them and continue in secret to worship their
old idols.

V

Our starting-point was the question how to shorten the tediously
long duration of an analysis and, still pursuing the question of time,
we went on to consider whether we can achieve permanent cure or
prevent illness in the future by prophylactic treatment. We saw
that the success of our therapeutic work depended on the influence of
traumatic factors in the ætiology of the neurosis, on the relative
strength of the instincts which have to be mastered and on something
which we called modification of the ego. Only the second of these
factors has been discussed in any detail and we have had occasion
in so doing to recognize the paramount importance of the quantitative
factor and to stress the claim of the metapsychological standpoint to
be taken into account in any attempt at explanation.

Of the third factor, the modification of the ego, we have as yet
said nothing. The first impression received when we turn our attention
to it is that there is much to ask and to answer, and that what we can
say on the subject will prove very inadequate. This impression is
confirmed when we go into the problem further. We know that the
essence of the analytic situation is that the analyst enters into an
alliance with the ego of the analysand to subdue certain parts of his
id which he has failed to master, i.e. to include them in the synthesis
of the ego. The fact that in the case of psychotics this co-operation
is never successful brings us to our first definite conclusion. If we
want to make a compact with the patient’s ego, that ego must be
normal. But such a normal ego is, like normality in general, an ideal
fiction. The abnormal ego which is of no use for our purpose is un-
 

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fortunately no fiction. Now every normal person is only approxi-
mately normal: his ego resembles that of the psychotic in one point
or another, in a greater or lesser degree, and by its distance from one
end of the scale and his proximity to the other we may provisionally
estimate the extent of that which we have so indefinitely called the
‘modification of the ego’.

If we ask what is the source of the infinite variety of kinds and
degrees of ego-modification we cannot escape the first obvious alterna-
tive that such modifications are either congenital or acquired. The
second case will be the easier to treat. If they are acquired it must
certainly have been during the individual’s development from the
very beginning of his life. From the very outset the ego has to try
to fulfil its task of acting as an intermediary between the id and the
outside world in the service of the pleasure-principle, to protect the
id from the dangers of the outside world. If, while thus endeavouring,
the ego learns to adopt a defensive attitude towards its own id and to
treat the instinctual demands of the latter like external dangers, this
is at any rate partly because it understands that gratification of
instinct would lead to conflicts with the outside world. Under the
influence of its upbringing, the child’s ego accustoms itself to shift
the scene of the battle from outside to inside and to master the inner
danger before it becomes external. Probably it is generally right in
so doing. In this battle on two fronts—later there is a third front
as well—the ego makes use of various methods of fulfilling its task,
i.e. to put it in general terms, of avoiding danger, anxiety and un-
pleasure. We call these devices defence-mechanisms. Our knowledge
of them is as yet incomplete. Anna Freud’s book has given us our
first insight into their multiplicity and their manifold significance.⁵

One of these mechanisms, that of repression, provided the starting-
point for the study of neurotic processes in general. There was never
any doubt that repression was not the only method which the ego
could employ for its purposes. Nevertheless, repression is something
quite peculiar, more sharply differentiated from the other mechanisms
than these are from one another. I think I can make its relation to
these other mechanisms clear by a comparison, but I know that
comparisons never carry us very far in such a context. Let us imagine
what might have happened to a book at the time when books were
not printed in editions but written out separately by hand. We will
imagine that such a book contained statements which at a later time

⁵Anna Freud, The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence. Hogarth Press.

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would be regarded as undesirable. For instance, Robert Eisler ⁶
maintains that the writings of Flavius Josephus must have contained
passages about Jesus Christ which were offensive to later Christendom.
At the present day the only defence-mechanism to which the official
censor would resort would be the confiscation and destruction of every
copy of the whole edition. At that time other methods were employed
to render the book innocuous. Either the offensive passages were
heavily obliterated, so that they were illegible, in which case they
could not be transcribed and the next copyist of the book produced a
text to which no exception could be taken but which had gaps in
certain places, probably making the passages in question unintelligible.
Or, not satisfied with this, they tried to conceal any indication that
the text had been mutilated. They therefore proceeded to tamper
with the text. Single words here and there were left out or replaced
by others and whole new sentences were interpolated – at best, the
passage was completely erased and replaced by another in exactly
the opposite sense. When the book was next transcribed the text
aroused no suspicion but had, in fact, been falsified. It no longer
contained the author’s statement and very probably the correction
was not in the interests of truth.

Without pressing the comparison too closely we may say that
repression is to the other methods of defence what the omission of
words or passages is to the corruption of a text, and in the various
forms of this falsification we can discover analogies to the manifold
ways in which the ego may be modified. It may be objected that this
comparison breaks down in an essential particular, for the corruption
of a text is the work of a tendencious censorship to which we have no
counterpart in the development of the ego. But this is not so, for
this tendency is amply represented by the compelling force of the
pleasure-principle. The psychic apparatus is intolerant of unpleasure
and strives to ward it off at all costs and, if the perception of reality
involves unpleasure, that perception—i.e. the truth—must be sacrificed.
For quite a long time flight and an avoidance of a dangerous situation
serve as expedients in the face of external danger, until the individual
is finally strong enough to remove the menace by actively modifying
reality. But one cannot flee from oneself and no flight avails against
danger from within; hence the ego’s defence-mechanisms are con-
tinued.

⁶Robert Eisler, Jesus Basileus. Religionswissenschaftliche Bibliothek,
begründet von W. Streitberg, Band 9, Heidelberg bei Carl Winter, 1929.

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demned to falsify the inner perception, so that it transmits to us only
an imperfect and travestied picture of our id. In its relations with
the id the ego is paralysed by its restrictions or blinded by its errors,
and the result in the sphere of psychic processes may be compared
to the progress of a poor walker in a country which he does not know.
The purpose of the defence–
mechanisms is to avert dangers of
various kinds. It cannot be disputed that they are successful ; it is
doubtful whether the ego can altogether do without them during its
development, but it is also certain that they themselves may become
dangerous. Not infrequently it turns out that the ego has paid too
high a price for the services which these mechanisms render. The
expenditure of energy necessary to maintain them and the ego–restric–
tions which they almost invariably entail prove a heavy burden on
the psychic economy. Moreover these mechanisms are not relinquished
after they have helped the ego through the difficult years of its develop–
ment. Of course, no individual makes use of all the possible
mechanisms of defence : each person merely selects certain of them,
but these become fixated in his ego, establishing themselves as regular
modes of reaction for that particular character, which are repeated
throughout life whenever a similar situation occurs to that which
originally evoked them. They are, in fact, infantilisms and share
the fate of so many institutions which struggle to maintain themselves
when they have outlived their usefulness. ‘Reason becomes unreason,
beneficence a torment’,⁷⁾ as the poet laments. The adult ego with
its greater strength continues to defend itself against dangers which
no longer exist in reality and even finds itself impelled to seek out
those real situations which may serve as a substitute for the original
danger, so as to be able to justify its clinging to its habitual modes of
reaction. Thus the defence–mechanisms produce an ever–growing
alienation from the outside world and a permanent enfeeblement of
the ego and we can easily understand how they pave the way for and
precipitate the outbreak of neurosis.
For the moment, however, we are not concerned with the patho–
genic rôle of the defence–mechanisms. Our purpose is to discover
how our therapeutic work is affected by the ego–modification they
produce. The material for the answer to this question is contained
in Anna Freud’s work, to which I have already referred. The main
point is that the analysand repeats these modes of reaction during

⁷⁾‘Vernunft wird Unsinn, Wohltat Plage’.

393

analysis itself, exhibiting them, as it were, before our eyes; in fact
that is the only means we have of learning about them. This must
not be taken to imply that they make analysis impossible. On the
contrary, they constitute half of our analytic task. The other half,
the first to be tackled by analysis in its early days, is the revelation
of that which is hidden in the id. In our therapeutic work we con-
stantly alternate between the id and the ego, analysing now a fragment
of the one and now of the other. In the one case our aim is to bring
a part of the id into consciousness and in the other to correct something
in the ego. The crux of the matter is that the mechanisms of defence
against former dangers recur in analysis in the shape of resistances to
cure. The consequence is that the ego’s attitude to the cure itself is
that of defence against a new danger.

The therapeutic effect of analysis depends on the bringing into
consciousness of that which is, in the widest sense, repressed within
the id. We prepare the way for this operation by our interpretations
and constructions, but so long as the ego clings to its former defences
and refuses to abandon its resistances we have interpreted merely
to our own satisfaction, not to that of the patient. Now these resist-
ances, although they belong to the ego, are nevertheless unconscious
and, in a certain sense, they are in a position of isolation within the
ego. The analyst recognizes them more easily than the hidden material
in the id; one would suppose it would be enough to treat them as
parts of the id and to bring them into relation with the rest of the ego
by introducing them to the patient’s consciousness. This would
mean that half of our analytic task had been accomplished: we are
hardly prepared for a resistance to the discovery of resistances. But
what takes place is as follows. While we are analysing the resistances,
the ego–more or less of set purpose–breaks the compact upon which
the analytic situation is based. It ceases to support us in our efforts
to reveal the id, it opposes these efforts, disobeys the fundamental
rule of analysis and suffers no further derivatives of repressed material
to emerge into consciousness. It is too much to expect that the
patient should have a firm conviction of the curative power of analysis,
but he may have come to the analyst with a certain amount of con-
fidence and this, reinforced by the various factors in the positive
transference which it is our business to evoke makes him capable
of doing his share. The effect of the unpleasurable impulses which
he feels stirring in him when his defensive conflicts are once more
roused may be that the negative transference takes the field and the

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whole analytic situation is broken up. The patient now regards the
analyst simply as an alien personality who makes disagreeable demands
upon him and he behaves towards him exactly like a child who does
not like a stranger and has no confidence in him. If the analyst tries
to explain to the patient one of the distortions which his defence has
produced and to correct it, he meets with a complete lack of compre-
hension and an imperviousness to valid arguments. We see then that
there really is a resistance to the discovery of resistances and the
defence-mechanisms do deserve the name which we originally gave
them before they had been more closely examined ; there are resist-
ances not only to the bringing of id-contents into consciousness but
also to the whole process of analysis and so to cure.

The effect which the defensive activities produce within the ego
is rightly described as ‘modification of the ego’, if by this we under-
stand the deviation of the ego from an imaginary norm which would
ensure the patient’s unswerving loyalty to his undertaking when he
entered upon analysis. We can well believe what our daily experience
suggests, that the outcome of an analysis depends principally upon
the strength and depth of the roots of the resistances constituting
the ego-modification. Once more we realize the importance of the
quantitative factor and once more we are reminded that analysis has
only certain limited quantities of energy upon which to draw when
matching itself with the hostile forces. And it does seem as if victory
were really for the most part with the big battalions.

VI

Our next question will be whether all ego-modification (in the
sense in which we are using the term) is acquired during the defensive
conflicts of early childhood. There can be no doubt about the answer.
We have no reason to dispute the existence and importance of primal,
congenital ego-variations. The single fact is decisive that every
individual selects only certain of the possible defence-mechanisms
and invariably employs those which he has selected. This suggests
that each individual ego is endowed from the beginning with its own
peculiar dispositions and tendencies, though we cannot predicate their
nature and conditioning factors. Moreover, we know that we must
not exaggerate the difference between inherited and acquired charac-
teristics into an antithesis ; that which has been acquired by our
ancestors is certainly an important part of what we inherit. When
we speak of ‘archaic inheritance’ we are generally thinking only