One of my favorite good old boy psychoanalysts, D.W. Winnicot, has a fantastic (if at times hard to comprehend) essay, written sometime in the sixties, called Fear Of Breakdown. In his article, Winnicot defines a breakdown as a capsizing of the individual’s defense organization. When this happens he says there is a consequent arising of an “unthinkable state of affairs that underlie the defense organization”.
Winnicot thinks of the Self as a cauldron of bubbling emotions, memories, images, ideas and experiences that are held in place (and generally kept out of our conscious thinking) by the tight lid of the “defense organization”. By “defense organization,” Winnicot is referring to a protective mechanism or buffer that helps us keep under wraps certain aspects of our emotional life that for one reason or another we cannot freely express (e.g. it is socially acceptable or “not how I am supposed to be” or it will “hurt someone I love”). Defenses are what allow us to go to work and “act normal” on the morning we had a dramatic miraculous-feeling spiritual experience or on the afternoon we heard about the death of a loved one. Defenses are also what contribute to our sense of feeling inauthentic or feeling “like I just can’t be myself”. On one hand defenses keep us away from ourselves by distracting from certain emotional truths that are unfolding inside of us. On the other hand defenses help us to “get on with our lives,” they give us the space to shop at the supermarket or crunch numbers at work by providing a break from the fullness of our emotional lives.
A few examples of defenses: one common one is constant insistence on cheerfulness and fun, belying underlying hurt, emotional pain or anger. An individual or group who is defending like this may feel or even appear upset, but reiterate “I’m fine” or “I am having such a good time, isn’t this just wonderful?” Another socially acceptable defense is a constant focus on work and productivity, thereby circumventing underlying memories or emotion that might arise if the individual were to reduce these energy-consuming activities. An example of a defense that helps calm the system without actually addressing the deeper trouble could be overeating or over-exercising in order to come to terms with hard-to-digest emotions that are not addressed but rather “consumed” or “worked out” via eating and exercise respectively. A more rigid defense could be the action of a gay man who gets married to a woman and even convinces himself to have sex with her, not because he wants to but because he feels unable to deal with how doing otherwise would shake up his conservative family. Another defense might be the action of a very ambitious person who avoids applying for all job opportunities due to a fear of rejection or failure which is in conflict with her ambition. In each of these examples, the defense is an armor that protects an underlying vulnerable emotion.
While necessary at times and even for periods of time, defenses are not tenable forever. They protect us from the blow of our emotional rawness but they also expose us to the alternate blow of an efficiently functioning but mundane reality that lacks the richness of emotions. Defenses also break down, either when they have been holding so long they cannot hold anymore or when the hitherto silenced unconsciousness pushes through with a scream. For the part of us that has been waiting for a bite of freshness and authenticity such a breakdown of the defenses may be a palpable (albeit painful) relief.
Over a lifespan, I think being human means gradually finding ways to be at home with the range of our emotions such that the armor of the defenses becomes less necessary and less compulsive. Claiming the privilege of our human-ness includes allowing our defenses to drop in order to commune with the underlying vulnerable emotion instead of striving to go through life looking "put together". Having the cauldron of true feelings bubbling over and spilling may feel like a breakdown, but being able to lift the lid and see what’s cooking inside of us and even scent our surroundings with the aroma of this inner richness is a delicious freedom. Then, as conflicts are resolved and unvisited places in our psyches are invited to show themselves, we begin to feel at liberty to live from a less defended and more authentic place.
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