ABSTRACT
In psychoanalysis, the restrictions of subjective life that forestall that kind of anxiety are called defenses. Conscious, purposeful, though, again, unknowing of its purpose, mental activity, including speech, is central to the defense process. All neurotic styles have much in common, far more than may be immediately apparent. The transgression is experienced as shameful, perhaps as deserving even of severe and continued punishment, but is still not experienced as an expression of the person’s genuine wish or intention or in that way as fully owned or expressive of himself. The fragility and absence of conviction in this haughtiness shows itself in the paranoid person’s extreme sensitivity to slights or indignities. Hysterics’ diminished sense of their own authority, and self-protective disavowal of what authority they feel, has its complement in an over estimation of the authority of others. The particular symptoms or symptomatic traits are no more than extensions and repercussions of that retreat.
