The Power and Impotence of Denial

Psychoanalyst Anna Freud wrote in her 1937 classic, The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense, that we all need defenses to function in our daily lives. These keep our ego intact, protect us from undue anxiety, and prevent psychic disintegration.  In other words, defenses help us  “hold it together.”

Some defenses are more constructive than others. For example,

intellectualization uses reason to cope, attempting to make sense of  an aspect of reality. By contrast, the defense of denial may distort and prevent an individual from facing a fact.

The recent film Denial, based on the screenplay by the British playwright David Hare, relates the true event of a 1996 libel suit brought by a discredited British historian, David Irving, against the American scholar of the Holocaust Deborah Lipstadt. Ultimately, the judge in the case, Charles Gray, concluded that Irving was “an active Holocaust denier...anti-Semitic and racist.”

Oddly, Irving did not seem perturbed by his loss in the courthouse. He seemed to relish the attention that he had gained. He also persisted in his denial, seeming to have a psychological need to maintain his image of Hitler as a hero.

 Another person who has openly denied a fact is Donald Trump. He insisted for years  (2011 to 2013)  that President Barack Obama had not been born in the United States. When he was finally convinced of Obama’s natural-born-citizen status and asked about the matter, Trump stated, “I don’t think I went overboard. Actually, I think it made me very popular.”

Like Irving, Trump seemed to thrive on the attention. Sometimes a façade of bravado hides what lurks beneath: a fragile ego and the need to distort reality.

Although we can’t know what motivated Trump, we can speculate that his goal may have been to challenge reality in order to  grab attention. Or perhaps, the distortion of truth was used as a technique to distract and throw others off balance. Or perhaps Trump suffered from a temporary delusion—that is, an idea that is not readily altered by facts.

What to do when confronted with a person who must distort the truth in order to function? In treating people who live in the grip of delusions, psychiatrists know that to directly confront their patients is likely to alienate them. Instead, our goal is to form a relationship, create a safe environment in which they gain courage to examine their perceptions. For example, I accept that Ms. S. hears voices telling her to get back to work. I empathize with the suffering of her tedious life. I hope that medication will lessen her anxiety and fear that lie behind the delusion, often a result of a combination of environmental and neuro-chemical factors.

Hypothetically, in a psychotherapeutic setting, Irving would realize that he had elevated Hitler in his mind to compensate for the lack of a (or an inadequate) father figure in childhood.

Conclusion: Denial is a defense or unconscious mechanism that serves to assure psychic survival. Dealing with the problem of denial in a psychiatric office may be easier than confronting a public figure.  In the world we need to confront the denier with the facts.

Denial is a defense dangerous enough to lead us into war. (Please refer to my blog of October 17, How We Defend Against Death (from Ebenezer Scrooge to Eleanor Roosevelt).    

Dear Reader, I welcome your responses. Jsimon145@gmail.com