ABSTRACT
S. Freud found that when anxieties were concerned with the oedipal situation—castration, loss of part of the body, loss of an object or of self-esteem—a transference neurosis was developed in analysis, and could be resolved. It is by analysing defence mechanisms, which never comprise one sole aspect that the psychoanalytic process develops. These mechanisms occur in the most diverse, multiple, combined, and complex ways, and always relate to anxieties that emerge in the transference and countertransference movements. M. Klein suggests thinking of primitive anxieties as linked to the main defence mechanisms that appear within analysis. Since anxiety mobilises various forms of resistance, it is the job of psychoanalytic work to explore them and link them up and so bring about an economic reorganisation of the defence mechanisms, thereby enabling the ego to better appreciate the internal and external conflicts between it and reality.
