A defesa no Projeto de uma psicologia de Freud

Abstract

This work aims to investigate the concept of “defense” (Abwehr) as developed by Freud in the manuscript "Project for a Scientific Psychology" (1895). To this purpose, based on some of the author’s texts published between 1893 and 1896, it addresses issues related to the theory of hysteria, such as the concepts of “repression” and “symbol-formation”, illustrating them with the clinical cases of Lucy R., Katharina, and Emma. Based on the Project, it presents defense first as a “normal” activity of a neural organization called the “ego”, which, according to the “principle of constancy”, inhibits the displeasure’s development aroused by painful memories. Secondly, it presents, according to the Project, the distinction between a “normal” defense and a “pathological” defense, given that the latter, in hysteria, results in the “repression” an intolerable idea to the “ego” and its replacement by a “symbol”. Finally, it discusses the importance, for this result, of the process, which occurred during puberty, of (unconscious) understanding of a scene with sexual content that occurred in childhood, according to Freud’s theoretical developments in the period considered here.