ABSTRACT
The concept of defense has been a cornerstone of psychoanalytic theory and a major subject of Rorschach investigation (Schafer, 1954; H. Lerner and P. Lerner, 1990). Until recently, however, the concept has remained relatively immune to the impact of object-relations theory and self theory. As Stolorow and Lachmann (1980) noted, “An examination of the history of the concept of defense indicates that while ideas about what a defense wards off have evolved, the concept of defense itself has remained static” (p. 89). Historically, several writers (A. Freud, 1936; Jacobson, 1971; Gedo and Goldberg, 1973) have attempted to introduce developmental schemes that rank defenses, from archaic or primitive to higher order or advanced, yet these conceptualizations have remained exclusively related to the vicissitudes of psychosexual development and have excluded object-relational and self considerations.
