ABSTRACT
The characteristic feature of the social defence system, as we have described it, is its orientation to helping the individual avoid the experience of anxiety, guilt, doubt, and uncertainty. As far as possible, this is done by eliminating situations, events, tasks, activities, and relationships that cause anxiety or, more correctly, evoke anxieties connected with primitive psychological remnants in the personality. Little attempt is made positively to help the individual confront the anxiety-evoking experiences and, by so doing, to develop her capacity to tolerate and deal more effectively with the anxiety. Basically, the potential anxieties in the nursing situation are felt to be too deep and dangerous for full confrontation, and to threaten personal disruption and social chaos. In fact, of course, the attempt to avoid such confrontation can never be completely successful.A compromise is inevitable between the implicit aims of the social defence system and the demands of reality as expressed in the need to pursue the primary task.
