Ego Defense Mechanisms

There is controversy in the literature as to whether
alexithymia reflects a deficit in the cognitive processing of emotions or a defensive coping style. Previous
studies with clinical populations reported a strong
association between alexithymia and a maladaptive
(immature) ego defense style. The present study was
designed to examine this relationship in nonclinical
populations. and also to explore the relationships
between alexithymia and three general styles for
coping with stressful situations. Sample 1, 287 non-clinical adults, completed the Twenty-Item Toronto
Alexithymia Scale (TAS-201) and the Defense Style
Questionnaire (DSQ). Sample 2, 83 undergraduate
students who had been categorized previously into
alexithymic and nonalexithymic subgroups, completed the DSQ and the Coping Inventory for Stressful Situations (CISS). ln sample 1, the TAS-20 and its three
factors were associated most strongly with an immature
defense style, weakly with a neurotic defense
style, and negatively with a mature defense style. In
sample 2, alexithymic students scored significantly
higher than nonalexithymic students on the immature
and neurotic defense factors of the DSQ and significantly
lower on the mature defense factor. Alexithymic
students also scored significantly higher on the
emotion-oriented coping scale and the distraction
component of the avoidance-oriented coping scale of
the CISS and significantly lower on the task-oriented
coping scale. The results fail to support the view that
alexithymia is an adaptive defense or coping style. Copyright c 1998 by W.B. Saunders Company

Once in Europe, migrants often face an aggressive and stigmatizing inclination against themselves by the residents. European often feel them as enemies. From a psychiatric point of view, we identify peculiar Ego defense mechanisms that are able to produce this feeling that amplifi es social confl icts. In the essay The Uncanny, Freud links this word to something removed from the "unconscious" that is fearful but refl ects and connotes our identity. In this way, we need to put outside the uncanny part of us and "the other", the "diff erent one", could easily become the enemy. In a parallel, the gothic medieval buildings show monstrosities in their facades. Without any architectural structural function, they may have the symbolic role to maintain the demoniac presence outside. It suggests that we can only feel safe inside the holy buildings, together with the believer "extra ecclesiam nulla salus".The approach described above is opposite to a phenomenological one, which confers several meanings to the discourse about the other. As human beings, we are all in a relationship, which needs a sort of ethical approach. Phenomenology is a science based on this ethics in aiming the other as an understandable human beings and this represents a sort of ethics that infl uences phenomenology as a science to understand the other.