ABSTRACT
We are asked in this symposium to have a new look at the question of defence mechanisms and phantasy in the analytic process. When one looks into the literature it is clear that this area has been revisited and reviewed a number of times before. I refer, for example, to Dr Van der Leeuw’s interesting survey of the literature as recently as 1971, ‘On the development of the concept of defence’. I do not intend to go over the historical background again but rather to concentrate on the question of phantasy in relation to defence mechanisrns and some clinical aspects of this.
