ABSTRACT
The self needs to protect and preserve itself in the case of major internal, such as painful memories, and external, such as trauma, events. Like the physiological immune system of the body that provides antibodies against foreign antigens like viruses, defense mechanisms can be understood as the self’s psychological strategy to defend its own hierarchical organization against foreign intrusions that threaten the existence of the self. Defense mechanisms are often associated primarily with specific affective and/or cognitive functions, including their respective neural correlates in the brain. That neglects the dynamic, multi-layered structural, and highly context-dependent nature of defense mechanisms, though. Following the previous chapters, we propose a topographic and dynamic view of defense mechanisms that accounts for their hierarchy along immature and mature strategies in a neuro-ecological way. This is paradigmatically illustrated by dissociation, which, following the original concept by P. Janet, is characterized by disintegration of the topography and dynamic of both brain and psyche, amounting to “falling through the cracks of consciousness and brain”. We conclude that defense mechanisms can be characterized as topographic and dynamic reorganization of both brain and self, which serve the purpose to defend and stabilize the self during its encounter with internal or external intrusions and threats.
