ABSTRACT
Defences are better regarded less as mechanisms than as techniques, manoeuvres, strategies or ploys, all terms which are as applicable to active mastery of external and internal threats as to passive resistance of the kind exemplified by repression proper. Although the concept defence is used by analysts of all schools, considerable disagreement exists both as to the number of defences and as to how they should be classified. The chapter shows that the four defensive techniques described by Fairbairn and termed by him the obsessional, phobic, schizoid and hysterical defences, are psychological elaborations of the biological responses, attack, flight and submission. Flight implies not only movement away from danger but also movement towards safety, and flight towards safety occurs in both the phobic and schizoid defences.
