My Ego Defends
Even when I don’t want it to
Contradictions. I find myself contradicting almost everything I do, from apologizing to showing love. I’ve done it so many times that it just doesn’t feel genuine. Then I face a situation where I have been beaten, bruised, and violently stabbed in my heart that I remember how it feels to be authentic. Characters need that kick to be genuine because we humans have a hard time being honest.
In John Yorke’s book Into the Woods: a Five-Act Journey Into Story, I find myself not reading it, but skimming through the chapters to see what is relatable to me here and now.
I found myself on the idea of the Ego Defence Mechanism. This got me thinking because there is some much truth in each one.
What I mean is, I find myself using them even though I didn’t have a name for it.
Ego Defence Mechanism (EDM)
John lists about ten of them from Anna Freud:
- Intellectualization
- Repression
- Regression
- Sublimation
- Rationalization
- Isolation
- Projection
- Denial
- Displacement
- Reaction Formation
At a glance, some might make sense and others might not. These defences are what we do to hide our weaknesses/ flaws.
You will notice that some of the defences are recognizable in your friends and family. This does not mean you can go and bother them and try to find out their flaws. That will get you blacklisted in friend groups and make your life miserable.
If someone is hurting, let a professional take care of it or wait for them to tell you in person.
Intellectualization
Have you ever had a friend who may or may not be that smart, or use facts to cover up their own mistakes? It is something I frankly see too often and is very common in this information age.
These characters use significant words and facts to prove to you and everyone around you that they are smarter than the average bear. This doesn’t mean they are stupid, but to everyone else, it might come off that they are compensating for something.
Like how a man will buy a large truck to hide the fact he has a small penis or how people will buy expensive clothes to show they are not poor.
[Guilty.]
There is also another meaning to Intellectualization. It is similar to Rationalization but closer to Isolation. The character blinds himself from the trauma with facts and logic. For example, a character doesn’t want to go on a plane because, logically, a metal bird flying in the makes no sense. In reality, he’s just hiding the trauma of his fear of heights.
Repression
It is used to hide guilty pleasures. Things that characters think and believe is embarrassing for the public to know about. The main keyword is shame.
It drives this type of defence.
“I love sex, but I don’t want other people to think I am a prostitute.”
“I love drinking, but when I am out with friends, I only ask for water.”
“I love to eat, but when I eat out, I only eat half of the meal and ask the waiter for a take-out box.”
Sometimes this is good, but other times it is terrible and can create some tense situations.
Regression
“How’s that screenplay/novel/report/project coming along?”
“It’s in early works, I’m still working on it.”
Characters will tend to regress things to the basic forms for one reason. Fear.
No one likes to fail, and I know this for sure, I hate to fail. That is why it takes so long for me to pump out finished works. I don’t want people to think I am terrible in something. I don’t want others to hate my work that I’ve spent days and countless nights working on. We don’t want to make someone upset.
Regression goes hand in hand with timid and shy characters. Take a look at Hughie for the Tv show The Boys. He wants a raise at work, but he can’t really bring up the urge to actually fight for it. He regresses into himself and puts himself back into his corner and away from things that might hurt him.
That is just the fear of failure talking. Countless other fears can be the reason. The interesting thing about Regression is that it not only stop characters from doing things, but it can also regress the character to childish ways and immature actions. To shy away from facing the trauma.
Sublimation
Sublimation is a unique one that really hides the weakness of the character. In short, it is the act of doing greater good for the evil we have already committed.
For example, if a character threw his girlfriend in front of a train and she died. His guilt would devour him from the inside, and he would vow to never let that happen again and become a Station engineer making sure no one else makes the same mistake he did.
The characters end up wearing a mask that hides the problems they have committed. It’s not wrong, but not right. They are just running away from their actions and hoping the good they do blinds other characters to it. Yet one black stain on white will show through.
Rationalization
“There must be a logical reason to why everything is happening to me.”
Sometimes there is, but in reality, there isn’t. Everything is random and happens by chance. Maybe you believe God is involved.
The point of this defence is to rationally come up with a reason why something is happening. Characters love using it, and we writers let them, but perhaps we should limit the use before it becomes cliche.
Isolation
This is one I use more often than I should. It is typical among people who are thick-skinned. Trust me when I say being thick-skinned is good, but having a heart can be better; it’s situational.
Some characters tend to feel the pain and then block it. They do not deny it, just cutting all relations with it. For example, A character is auditioning for a role and gets rejected. Instead of feeling hurt and upset they choose to block that audition from their mind and move one with their day. They go cold and numb to it.
Cold is the keyword. The character tells it’s mind to cut all relations and move on. The characters do this, so they don’t get hurt by people or events. They’ve been scarred before and never want it to happen again. This goes hand in hand with Rationalization.
Projection
“It’s not my fault.”
We’ve heard characters say these words over and over. They take the blame, the problems and project it to someone else. It’s a glorified blame game.
But like all blame games, four fingers are pointing back on you. Characters attack other characters because of the weakness they have in themselves. They are not displacing this aggression; they are merely attacking everyone because everyone is a threat to knowing the character’s weakness.
It’s too much work to hold up all that trouble on our shoulders.
Denial
Unlike Isolation, the character doesn’t cut off relations but blocks the truth. Denial also goes hand-in-hand with Rationalization. “It hurts too much, and so if I don’t believe it, I should be fine.”
What makes this defence interesting is that we can take it and really project to crazy levels. We can create characters that have blocked memories involving the trauma or create characters that are insanely naive to the cruelness of the world because they’ve been hurt before.
A common defence that can be twisted to spectacular heights.
Displacement
This one is interesting. I find myself never using it, but I might be blind to it. Like Sublimation, instead of shifting that negative emotion to something greater, it shifts the importance of an object or person in the mind. It’s similar to Isolation but instead of creating a gap and reducing interactions with characters. The character just changes who or what is important in the mind.
For example, if a character loves his mother and then she ends up killing the character’s favourite dog. That character will shift mom from an important loving caretaker to a ‘stranger that the character lives with.’
Shifting is the key.
Reaction Formation
Do you remember that girl or boy that picked on you when you were little? Then later down the line, you learn that the boy or girl just liked you a lot but didn’t know how to show it.
Pretty much the same thing here. Reaction Formation is when the character does the opposite of what they are feeling to hide it. It’s a tricky defence to understand and to use because the emotion must but equal to the opposite.
For example, if you have a character that hates someone but doesn’t know what they are feeling. The character will decide that this hate is love and will love the life out of this someone. This becomes a bad thing because now we have a corpse to hide.
It’s tough to understand Reaction Formation. Still, the more you play with the concept with your characters, the more you’ll basically understand how it works. The key to understanding is that it is flexible and unpredictable, just because someone hates someone and calls it love doesn’t mean that hate is the reason for the defence. That hate can be something different, like their cruelty or sadness.
I’ll stop there. Anymore, and I will be confusing you and me.
Conclusion
Overall, these defences can spark up some interesting changings into your characters. They can make your stories more compelling and more mysterious. Each defence can be used to help hide trauma or past. Each EDM brings in the fourth dimension of character building.
Yes, there is a fourth dimension of character building. It is rarely used, and when it is used, not a lot of people use it right. I will touch on that topic soon.
That’s it for now. Keep writing and evolving. Thanks for reading.
