Chapter 25: Know Your Defense Mechanisms

While you have met Wilhelm before, in this chapter you get to discover important traits in Madeleine’s friend.  First Wilhelm had been strongly influenced by a sea captain several years before. The man, Captain Migault, was Huguenot, which is a French Protestant.  Huguenots rejected the teachings and rituals of the Catholic Church and peeled Christianity down to the bare bones of the Scriptures and the Blood of Christ.  The French government despised this practice of religion, but in 1681 it was not yet illegal to be a Huguenot.  (That problem would come in 1685 with the Edict of Nantes.)  Wilhelm married the captain’s daughter, Ellen.Second, Wilhelm tells Madeleine: “I have received the power of the Holy Spirit that flows to us from the resurrected Christ.”  And he shares more about his faith, an act that would be considered traitorous if he were discovered.  Madeleine becomes curious about the Holy Spirit’s power.Third, Wilhelm becomes Madeleine’s counselor as they discuss the fact that Robert LaSalle has turned out to be a liar.  Jenet tries to provide a rational explanation for Robert’s lie and challenges Madeleine to talk to her fiancé about it.Our characters in this chapter show us two types of defense mechanisms.  A defense mechanism is an unconscious, psychological process that is used for self-protection. The ego or mind/soul shields the individual from unacceptable or painful ideas or impulses by them.We all have defense mechanisms. Each of us uses a variety of them. We each have our favorites.  The defenses we use depend on how healthy our ego is and the level of stress we are under.  The more mature or advanced defense mechanisms take various forms.  These include (but are not limited to) the following:  altruism (helping others in order to ward off  your feelings of guilt); humor (couching unconscious perceptions in sarcasm, or warding off pain by finding the absurd in it); and rationalization (presenting an intellectual understanding of the emotional problem that causes pain.)The more immature or primitive ones include (but are not limited to) the following:  delusions (hardened beliefs that are not based in evidence); denial (the refusal to believe thoughts, feelings, or facts that one cannot tolerated if they became conscious); and projection  (ascribing to another person feelings or thoughts present in oneself.)Robert practiced “denial” when he lied about his marriage plans.  Madeleine adopted “projection” when she assumed that Robert had “used her”.  Remember her history of abuse, and how she had had the dream about being “used.”In both cases, a friend confronted the defense, allowing the people to bring what they were doing into consciousness. Only then did they have the choice to change their behavior. Wilhelm pointed out an alternative interpretation to Madeleine so that she was able to see that maybe Robert wasn’t just “using her”.  And (when Madeleine could catch up with Robert) she talks to Robert about his true intention when he wrote the letter.You can improve your psychological health by doing three things: 1.)  recognize your personal defense mechanisms; 2.)  identify those that other people use around you, and 3.) confront the processes gently and appropriately.Remember that these defenses are not bad things.  They have a protective purpose. So don’t confront a defense unless the person is ready for it.  It would be like ripping skin off the muscles and bones from their body.  But if the person is aware of the need for “removal”,  and if the skin is unhealthy, then confronting the defense can be beneficial.Good psychotherapy does this: it helps the client identify her defenses and choose the role she wants each defense to play in her psychological life.

Up Next: Wednesday's blog post on Chapter 26!

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