ABSTRACT
Freud (1923) placed the responsibility for defense on the ego and described some of the methods by which the ego could defend itself, mainly from eruptions from within. Anna Freud (1936) assembled a list of the methods that seemed stable enough to be considered mechanisms of defense. This work became a major statement of what came to be called ego psychology, a departure from the earlier approach that focused mainly on the presumed operations of the id and stressed the power of drive and instinct.
