ABSTRACT
Psychoanalytic theory has been applied, with considerable success, to history, anthropology, sociology, political science, literary criticism and culture studies, and many other forms of intellectual endeavor as well. Freud argued that as people develop they pass through a number of sexual stages. In An Elementary Textbook of Psychoanalysis, Charles Brenner describes the stages: For the first year and a half of life, approximately, the mouth, lips and tongue are the chief sexual organs of the infant. Freud later developed his "Structural Hypothesis" which suggested how the mind works. It is used to set up a typology to interpret and understand material culture. One way the ego tries to maintain equilibrium is through the use of various defense mechanisms. This chapter describes some of the common defense mechanisms, because psychologists may find them useful when making psychoanalytic interpretations of material culture. They are suppression, reaction formation, undoing, denial, projection, identification, fixation, regression, rationalization, ambivalence, and sublimation.
