In Animals In Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior (2005), Temple Grandin talks about what makes normal people different from autistic people and human beings in general different from animals, with specific reference to Freud’s theory of defense mechanisms. She states:
“The reason I believe animals don’t have Freudian defense mechanisms is that animals and autistic people don’t seem to have repression. Or, if they do, they have it only to a weak degree. I don’t think I have any of Freud’s defense mechanisms, and I’m always amazed when normal people do. One of the things that blows my mind about normal human beings is denial. When I see a packing plant getting into a bad situation I’ll say, “That’s not going to work,” and everyone will immediately think I’m being really negative. But I’m not. It would be obvious to anyone outside the situation that what they’re doing isn’t going to work, but people inside the bad situation can’t see it because their defense mechanisms protect them from seeing it until they’re ready. That’s denial, and I can’t understand it at all. I can’t even imagine what it’s like.” (Kindle Locations 1726-1733)
I made personal connections while reading this particular section of Grandin’s book. In the course events in my life, I see many brushes with repression and denial. I became curious about what Freud might’ve had to say about defense mechanisms. And I felt a rush of memories about the numerous times I’d been told that I was negative, when it certainly didn’t feel that way to me. I will not elaborate on those experiences here. Rather, I will simply recount the trajectory of reading thinking that this particular excerpt pushed me.
I googled “Freud’s defense mechanisms,” perused the recommendations a bit. After reading this page on a site called Changing Minds.org, I made a mental note to keep the url as a future reference, and I eventually found myself most interested in this Wikipedia entry. I read the article in its entirety, because I couldn’t recall much of anything about Freud from Psyc 101 in undergrad (It was a boring text-based class in which I earned a “C”). I found the article fascinating enough to go on to the discussion, which could be viewed in the adjacent tabs of the articles. Toward the bottom, there was a post in the discussion about the content and construct of the Wikipedia article that rolled around in my head. It stated:
“I just removed a few short statements effectively comparing Freud's Id, Ego, and Superego to Eric Berne's Child, Adult, and Parent respectively. Please remember not to make any such correlations in this article. The TA article itself as well as Games People Play (the book that defined TA; yes, I have read it) both mention that there is no direct correspondence between them, even though they are distinctly similar concepts (for example, the Adult represents logical reasoning unaffected by emotional pulls and the Ego represents the reality principle).” User 192.83.228.119
TA, or Transactional Analysis, caught my attention, perhaps because of the title of a book by Dr. Eric Berne, Games People Play. Having felt great intellectual satisfaction with the first Wikipedia entry, I moved on to both the pages on Transactional Analysis and Games People Play, and decided that I wanted to read Berne’s book.
I moved on to Amazon, but found that Berne’s book was not available for Kindle in the U.S. I tried to find excerpts on Google Books, because that resource is often enough to satisfy my curiosity. While there was an entry at Google Books, there was no excerpt.
My next choice was to see if it was available through my local library system. One copy was all they had and I would’ve been number two on the wait list. Hmmmm. . . that could take a month or two, and what I needed was more immediate gratification to satiate my growing hunger to know.
However, there was a copy available at my neighborhood Barnes and Nobel. Now, you would think that I would have gone straight to the store to at least flip through the pages, but that was when I told myself that I wanted to finish Grandin’s book before moving on to a new one. I was very good about the decision at the moment, but by 9 o’clock in the evening, I knew that it weighed heavily enough on my mind that I should just buy it.
So, here it is sitting on my cluttered dining room table taunting me when I should be out for a walk on this lovely summer morning. There are complex connections in my muddled mind right now. Hopefully, I can sort through them well enough to articulate what I mean to say in future posts. I am still focused on Grandin's work, for she has inspired my thinking in so many ways, not just this little diversion.
One last thought or link that I would like to explore more: Psychology Portal at Wikipedia
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