The Development of Defenses in Childhood

Abstract

The authors review empirical studies of defense mechanisms and suggest that this concept can be operationalized to permit an investigation of the chronology of the development of defense in childhood. Studies on the coping and defense patterns of normal children are compared with studies that attempt to explain defense patterns in disturbed children and adults. It is argued that empirical study of the development of defense in the normal child will help to determine the validity of theoretical psychoanalytic speculations derived from the retrospective reconstruction of defenses that might have existed in the childhood of ill adults. An attempt is made to place our knowledge of the development of defense in childhood into the context of our knowledge of cognitive development. The authors review the research that attempts direct empirical assessment of defenses in childhood, and make suggestions for how such research could be furthered. It is argued that it may be possible to construct a schedule for the early maturation of defense, and to identify how this changes with pathology, gender, and family context. Such a schedule would be fundamental to our understanding of normality, and the role of regression and precocity in pathology.