Defense mechanisms: From the individual to the collective level

Abstract

In this article we shall deal with the construction and defense of subjective identity as a topic at the intersection of psychology and anthropology. In this perspective, defense mechanisms are seen as falling along a spectrum that stretches from the individual to the collective level. The individual mind is the sphere of the intrapsychic defenses and the interpersonal maneuvers to which each of us appeals, in the relationship with other people and with one’s own environment, to defend one’s own self-describability and, indissolubly, the solidity of one’s own self-conscious being. At a social and collective level, on the other hand, the individual self-protective structures are supported by cultural interventions that organize and intersubjectively “domesticate” our subjectivity and our feeling of being-there.

Keywords

• autobiographical reasoning
• defense mechanisms
• grief
• narrative identity
• ontological insecurity