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==See Also==
The term "defense" refers to all the techniques deployed by the ego in conflicts that have the potential to lead to neurosis. In the sense in which Freud first used the term, defenses are unconscious because they stem from a conflict between the drive and the ego or between a perception or representation (memory, fantasy, etc.) and moral imperatives. The function of the defenses is thus to support and maintain a state of psychic stability by avoiding anxiety and unpleasure. The concept of defense was broadened somewhat when Freud attributed an...
[[Category:Psychoanalysis]]
[[Category:Terms]]
[[Category:Concepts]]
From his earliest works, [[Freud]] situated the concept of [[defence]] (''défense'') at the heart of his theory of [[neurosis]].
[[Defence]] refers to the reaction of the [[ego]] to certain interior stimuli which the [[ego]] perceives as dangerous.
Although [[Freud]] later came to argue that there were different "[[defense mechanisms|mechanisms of defence]]' in addition to [[repression]]<ref>see Freud, 1926d</ref>, he makes it clear that repression is unique in the sense that it is constitutive of the [[unconscious]].
[[Anna Freud]] attempted to classify some of these mechanisms in her book [[The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence]] (1936).
Lacan is very critical of the way in which [[Anna Freud]] and [[ego-psychology]] interpret the concept of [[defence]].
He argues that they confuse the concept of [[defence]] with the concept of [[resistance]].<ref>Ec, 335</ref>
For this reason, [[Lacan]] urges caution when discussing the concept of [[defence]], and prefers not to centre his concept of psychoanalytic [[treatment]] around it.
When he does discuss [[defence]], he opposes it to [[resistance]]; whereas [[resistance]]s are transitory [[imaginary]] responses to intrusions of the [[symbolic]] and are on the side of the [[object]], defences are more permanent [[symbolic]] [[structures]] of [[subjectivity]] (which Lacan usually calls [[fantasy]] rather than defence).
This way of distinguishing between resistance and defence is quite different from that of other [[schools|schools of psychoanalysis]], which, if they have distinguished between defence and resistance at all, have generally tended to regard defences as transitory phenomena and resistances as more stable.
The opposition between desire and defence is, for Lacan, a dialectical one.
Thus he argues in 1960 that, like the neurotic, the [[pervert]] "defends himself in his desire," since "desire is a defence (''défense''), a [[prohibition]] (défense) against going beyond a certain limit in ''jouissance''."<ref>E, 322</ref>
In 1964 he goes on to argue: "To desire involves a defensive phase that makes it identical with not wanting to desire."<ref>Sll, 235</ref>
==References==
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==See Also==
[[Category:Terms]]
[[Category:Concepts]]
[[Category:Treatment]]
[[Category:Freudian psychology]]
[[Category:Psychoanalysis]]
[[Category:Jacques Lacan]]
