International Forum of Psychoanalysis.

2007; 16: 140 151

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Who defends itself from what? Toward a reformulation of the concept of

defense

GIAN PAOLO SCANO

Abstract
The theme of the present paper is the concept of defense. The aim is to explore the possibility of reformulating the concept
in a way that is free from any compromise with the drive model. The author first re-examines the classic conception of
defense and then identifies specific theoretical elements in the works of Freud (in particular, the notions of external fright,
primary defense, and signals of anxiety). These elements can easily benefit from further development in the current
scientific context, specifically from reconsideration in the light of modern emotion theories and somatic marker theory
(Damasio). The paper thereby identifies a regulating and meaning-attribution system that is deeply embedded in the
biological and that can nurture certain somatically marked emotion-expectation-action schemas. It is then proposed that
children’s progressive mastering of the semantic and linguistic universe determines the grafting of the symbolic sphere onto
this biological regulating mechanism. Indeed, it is the acquisition of competency in using verbal forms (especially active-
passive and passive-active transformations) and in using metaphor as a meaning-construction mechanism that leads to a vast
range of transformation and transfer mechanisms for somatically marked schema. It is therefore possible to account for an
individual’s idiosyncratic construction of a myriad of contexts and meanings, which can use the emotion system to activate
powerful wishing or avoiding forces. This junction of the symbolic with the somatic/biological thus makes it possible to
delineate specific defense mechanisms that are similar to those described in the clinical tradition. In particular, the author
shows how identification, projection, condensation, and displacement can be reformulated, but also points to the ego’s
fundamental narrative nature as an area in which the analogous mechanisms of repression, negation, idealization, and
rationalization might also easily be located.

Key words: Theory, defense, emotions, somatic marker, metaphor

For an entire century, the concept of defense played
a prominent role in the theoretical, clinical, and
technical vision of psychoanalysis, but its pre-emi-
nence has been on the wane for some time now.
Although the literature continues to examine con-
flicts, resistance, and defense, this conceptual core
certainly enjoyed much greater significance in the
past. The reasons for this state of affairs are not quite
clear; the transition has mostly been a silent and slow
drift, determined perhaps by the same events that led
to the weakening of ego psychology.
M. Eagle (1984, 1990, 1991) accounted for the
eclipse of the notion of conflict by the growing
success of concepts of ‘‘deficit’’ and ‘‘need.’’ He
criticized the dichotomy between conflict/wish and
deficit/need, noting that it seemed (erroneously) to
imply that a psychology of conflict must necessarily
be linked to the concept of drive. In the general
climate of the abandonment of drive theory, in fact,
this inference may have justified the twilight of the
concept of conflict in the eyes of many. Eagle then
showed how deficit and trauma are not alternatives
to conflict, that the idea of need does not necessarily
render the idea of wish obsolete, and that such
schemas seemed rather to imply a surprising return
to pre-psychoanalytic positions.
Gedo (1991) started from a different context but
also reaffirmed that the central concepts of psycho-
analytic theory are the concepts of wish, intrapsychic
conflict, and defense. By pursuing the goal of a
simple and orderly general theory, he proposed
highly valuable suggestions on how these corner-
stones of classical theory might be utilized from a
different theoretical viewpoint.
Although it is certainly true that ‘‘conflict’’,
‘‘wish,’’ and ‘‘defense’’ are crucial features of classi-
cal theory, there is a general consensus that these
concepts also represent something quite close to the

Correspondence: Gian Paolo Scano, Via Lattanzio 76, IT-00136 Roma, Italy. Tel:
06-39729874. E-mail: gianscan@tin.it

(Received 19 May 2006; accepted 27 February 2007)

ISSN 0803-706X print/ISSN 1651-2324 online # 2007 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/08037060701302642

heart of psychoanalysis itself. Yet we must also
acknowledge that it is unlikely that the traditional
conception can survive unaltered after abandon-
ment of the drive model. Even a fleeting considera-
tion cannot ignore the fact that the Freudian
perspective viewed defense directly and essentially
as the counterpart of drive. Therefore, although it is
no longer necessary to link a conception of conflict
to the drive model, there is still an important matter
be resolved*that is, that an alternative general
theory that can reinstate the central role of the
conceptual core of defense has yet to appear on the
horizon.
The issue therefore requires a general re-examina-
tion: specifically, is it possible, in this transitional
situation, to work out a theoretical framework that
allows for the re-conceptualization of defense? How
might this problem be re-formulated coherently and
in such a way as to salvage the richness of the
traditional conceptions? And, once all is said and
done, if we abandon the metapsychological frame-
work, ‘‘who’’ is it that defends itself from ‘‘what,’’
how does it do so and why?
In this brief essay, I shall illustrate an example of a
feasible reformulation of the concept of defense in a
new theoretical context. To this end, I shall first
briefly review the classical conception and then
propose a re-formulation of the concept by exploit-
ing an earlier and under-used Freudian theoretical
fragment, in association with recent contributions
from the neurosciences.
Conflict and defense in the classic conception
In the Freudian model, ‘‘conflict’’ and ‘‘defense’’ had
a dual connotation: on one hand, they referred to
‘‘structuring’’ processes; on the other, they had a
more specifically clinical valence in the etiology of
symptoms and in accounting for subjective experi-
ence and behavior in general. The concept of defense
also took on a third type of meaning within the
confines of the therapeutic situation, where defenses
emerged as ‘‘resistance.’’ By virtue of the role
attributed to the libido, defense was always viewed
as the counterpart of drive, and it therefore gained
ground for ego structures and functions by inhibiting
the primary process and progressively establishing
the secondary process. This was considered the
structuring function of defense in psychogenesis.
Yet, the libido had valence and potential for circulat-
ing in the psychic sphere only through ideational and
affective representation. Defense followed this same
route to rise up against drive and turn against the
representations of affective objects and structures
connected to objects. This link allowed for a connec-
tion between the structuring role of defense and the
Who defends itself from what? 141
sphere of wish, fantasy, and relations, and thus with
subjective experience.
At the same time, however, implementation of
these same defenses in the analytic situation,
through the mechanisms of regression, projection,
and identification, constituted the sphere of resis-
tance during treatment. The framework of this
conception therefore made it possible to start from
the constitutive level (psychosexual development),
pass through the etiological level (symptom devel-
opment mechanisms), and arrive at the defense
mechanisms that are active during therapeutic ses-
sions (resistance). Thus, the same mechanism could
be recognized as being active during a session, be
identified as a causal element of a symptom, and be
considered the foundation of both instances, due to
its role in the formative phase of an individual.
This reunification into a simple and coherent
unitary design constituted a model in the narrow
sense of the term, and its loss has since left a
difficult-to-fill void. Indeed, it served as a map for
identifying and understanding defensive phenom-
ena; a topographical, dynamic, and genetic explana-
tion; and a guide for clinical intervention as well.
Under the guidance of this model, analysts could
identify a patient’s defensive layers, understand their
logical position in relation to that patient’s symptoms
and behavior, and confer sense to the patient’s
associations. As a consequence, analysts were able
to work out their treatment tactics and strategies as
they went, adapting them to their patients’ global
clinical pictures, and they could do so feeling the
security of walking on firm ground, through a well-
known space.
The simplicity, flexibility, and manageability of the
model, however, disguised its not few and not
insignificant aporia and led to an underestimation
of some its more troubling implications and con-
sequences. Thomä and Kächele (1987) identified
the nodal point of these fractures in the central role
that defense theory attributed to anxiety, and they
linked this unjustified centrality to the general
conception of affect as the discharge of a drive.
They also maintained, however, that Freud’s later
theory of anxiety as a signal was inadequate and
revealed how such conceptions overlooked the
interactive aspect of affect, its communicative value
and its ‘‘defensive’’ nature in a protective and
regulative sense *that is, the true richness of emo-
tional life.
A reconsideration of the entire issue and a precise
redefinition of the concept of defense was then, and
is now, therefore deemed necessary, due not only to
general renunciation of the drive model, but also to
the inherent limits of the traditional conception of
defense. Yet, the notions of conflict and defense
142 G. P. Scano
should not be viewed as some remote, outer pro-
vince. They seem rather to comprise (together with
the highly associated transference and resistance
concepts) the alpha and the omega of psychoana-
lysis, and thus to represent an inalienable element *
herein lies the high priority for reformulating this
theoretical core in nondrive terms.
Motivation and defense
We must note, however, that this pressing need was
perceived as early as 1970. In fact, Klein (1976), in
his pioneering attempt to ferry psychoanalytic me-
tapsychology theory over to psychology, was the first
to locate a natural substitute for energetic constructs
in the motivational sphere. Application of the con-
cepts of ‘‘motivation’’ and ‘‘need’’ later became
frequent practice. The most well-known and com-
prehensive example is that of Lichtenberg (1989),
which lists five motivational systems: (1) physiologi-
cal needs; (2) attachment/affiliation; (3) exploration/
assertiveness; (4) sensuality/sexuality; (5) fight/flight.
His proposal presents the clear advantages of refer-
ring to observational data, proposing neurophysio-
logical mechanisms, and covering previously
neglected areas of subjective experience. It therefore
appears to be a highly promising model, with a
valuable organized framework for data and general-
izations that can serve as a base for work of
conceptualization. In its current state, however, it
does not lend itself to consideration as a general
theory. Indeed, a theory is more than just an
organized field of data. At the beginning of his
book, in fact, Lichtenberg revealed what can be
considered his strongest point observationally, but
his weakest conceptually. He stated that anything
children do with observable constancy, they do
because they are motivated to do so, and he
concluded that, from the very beginning, human
beings are motivated to perceive, feel, act, learn, and
strive through self-regulation in a mutual system of
regulation of interaction.
Although we can certainly subscribe to these
assertions, their obviousness conceals a logical pitfall:
using motivation to account for an action can
certainly be useful on a descriptive plane. The
problem is that, on an explicative plane, this line of
reasoning is none other than a truism (e.g. ‘‘James
kissed Mary because he wanted to’’) or is, at the very
least, essentialist argumentation (e.g. ‘‘The lily is
white because it has whiteness’’). In fact, the asser-
tion limits itself to repeating in the explanans what is
already implicitly contained in the explanandum.
Now, a psychoanalytic theory can certainly benefit
from a motivational grid to describe and generalize
classes of behavior, but its fundamental task is to
account for motivation * that is, the processes through
which meaning is constructed. This meaning in turn
determines psychoanalytically relevant behavior by
shaping or eliciting motivation itself. Not even a
neurophysiological account can fulfil this task, be-
cause, in this case, we would have a scientific brain
theory and not a psychoanalytical theory (Gedo,
1991). Even if we happened to discover the neuro-
physiological substrates for the five motivational
systems, we would still not have a theory that could
account for an individual’s own personal meaning,
fantasy or action. In fact, Popper (1982) extensively
showed how a coherent account of an element in
World 3 (the world of culture and meaning) cannot
consist in an element from World 2 (the world of
neurophysiology).
Gedo (1991) clearly outlined the aims to be
pursued, by reaffirming the importance of finding a
way to conjugate the psychology of meaning (i.e. the
symbolic contents of the mind) with a biological
conception of human behavior on the presymbolic
level. Freudian theory represented none other than a
solution of this type. In fact, it was a conceptual
construction that enabled ‘‘meaning’’ to be linked to
the biological function of the psychical apparatus. A
fundamental instrument in this operation was the
concept of drive, which went beyond the rigid fixity
of instinct, and therefore enabled the grafting of the
variability of experience, history, and meaning onto
biology. This solution was thoroughly logical in the
domain of physicalist determinism but is now
unfeasible due to its reductionism. The task at
hand now, rather, is to investigate whether Gedo’s
proposal can be developed coherently, through the
construction of a truly explicative and epistemologi-
cally satisfactory model.
An earlier, untapped Freudian inheritance
We shall therefore now attempt to explore this
possibility, focusing mainly on the concept of de-
fense. This undoubtedly arduous endeavor can find,
however, an unexpected antecedent in the works of
Freud himself. There was a time, in fact, when
Freud verged upon the issue, coming quite close to
our own current needs. This occurred when he was
attempting to deal with the problem of psychosis and
found himself obliged to alter his theoretical frame-
work to account for ego object opposition. It was
then that he ‘‘introduced’’ the concept of narcissism.
Hence, the ‘‘ego’’ that had been rigidly expunged as
an epiphenomenon of his topographic theory was
then readmitted into the psychoanalytic dictionary.
It was a completely different ‘‘ego’’ from his later
structural ego and was closer, if anything, to the
notion of ‘‘self ’’ (Hartmann, 1950).

It was in that context then that Freud (1914)
found himself almost spontaneously modifying the
concept of defense. In fact, (1) he redefined the
notion of repression, which then had to develop out
of the ego and out of the ego’s consideration of itself;
(2) he perceived the need to identify the narcissistic
mechanisms of defense that precede repression; and
last, (3) he clearly expressed (1917) his aspiration
towards an ‘‘ego’’ psychology. In modern terms, and
regardless of Freud’s intentions, this amounted to
proposing something quite similar to a theory of
subjectivity. Moreover, in Instincts and their vicissi-
tudes (1915), Freud indicated the more general
parameters of such a theory by stating that psychic
life is dominated by three polarities: subject object
(ego external world), pleasure displeasure, and
activepassive. This idea was then abandoned, due
to its incompatibility with the fundamental position
of metapsychology, but it established an encouraging
antecedent for us *now that there is no libido to be
preserved any more.
With its clarification of general coordinates, this
earlier proposal of Freud’s provides us with a unitary
framework. In fact, the first polarity allows for a
preliminary demarcation of the terrain: the classic
defenses were rigidly intrapsychic structures, but in a
theory of subjectivity, the intraspsychic perspective
can be substituted by a simple ‘‘intersubjective 
intrasubjective point of view,’’ that is, an actual
subject object (ego external world) polarity. Such
a perspective can easily embrace the genesis of
subjectivity and therefore self-organization of the
ego, in the self-protective and defensive sense as well.
At the same time, this vision can also encompass the
sphere of intersubjective interaction, where this self-
construction actually occurs. Similarly, in the clinical
context, this view can intersubjectively encompass
‘‘resistance’’ and defense phenomena, in terms of
concrete therapist patient interaction. Yet it can also
intrasubjectively allow for the inferences required for
defensive intentionality, which can be viewed as the
equivalent of traditional ‘‘intrapsychic defense.’’
Freud’s works also bestow us with another un-
expected ‘‘gift’’ *a scarcely used theoretical frag-
ment that can enhance the value of the second
polarity of pleasure displeasure. The very moment
Freud tied defense and libido together through
repression theory, he also delineated an alternative
route. He had already located painful experience at
the base of defense in Project for a scientific psychology
(1895), noting how a state of wishing produces a
positive attraction toward a mnemic image, whereas
painful experience has the consequence of aversion
to continuing to invest a hostile image. He called this
avoiding tendency ‘‘primary defense’’ and later
pursued the theme in Traumdeutung (1900), where
Who defends itself from what? 143
he indicated the experience of external fright as the
counterpart of the experience of satisfaction. He
explained that the action of a painful perceptual
stimulus on the psychical apparatus produces irre-
gular motor actions, until one of these actions
releases the psychical apparatus from the perception
and therefore from the pain. As soon as the percep-
tion reappears, the manifestation reoccurs immedi-
ately, for example as a retreating ‘‘movement,’’ until
the perception vanishes again. In this instance, and
conversely to what happens after a satisfying experi-
ence, no tendency to reinvest in the perception
corresponding to the source of pain remains. A
tendency, rather, to abandon the distressing image
begins to establish itself as soon as the image is
somehow detested, because its perception would
cause displeasure. This process of recoiling from a
memory provides the model and the first example of
psychic repression. Initial references to the notion of
signal of anxiety, which later became the pivotal
point of Freud’s reformulation in 1925a, were
already present in the above-cited works.
At this point, it would be perfectly legitimate to
wonder from a historical-critical perspective why
Freud chose not to construct his general theory of
defense on a systematic development of the notion of
primary defense *even in the presence of all these
elements *and why he opted, rather, for the path of
libido transformation (which proved to be a rocky
road indeed). In fact, he completely disregarded the
experience of external fright, and this is surprising,
especially if we consider the attention he dedicated
to the corresponding experience of satisfaction,
which became the conceptual foundation for his
notion of wishing and theory of thought. Yet,
although it is an important question, attempting to
answer it would lead us too far astray from the aims
of our present thesis. In any event, we must note that
Freud established the experience of satisfaction and
pain at the base of approaching and recoiling
behavior and that he linked defensive behavior to
painful emotion and feelings (although, for easily
explained historical and critical reasons, he ended up
considering anxiety a consequence of repression).
As Rapaport (1967) noted, at that time, Freud’s
emotion theory represented one of the weaker points
of his entire theoretical framework. He was, of
course, in line with the German psychology of the
age when he considered affect a purely discharging
process. He therefore searched for a regulating
principle, not in the psychological meaning of
emotions, but in the economy of energy and in the
economic principle of pleasure. In any event, emo-
tions have always implied an essentially somatic
connotation in the psychoanalytic tradition (Gedo,
1991).
144 G. P. Scano
This observation establishes an important point of
contact with results from research conducted in the
neurosciences on the role and functioning of the
emotions, which allows us thereby to develop and
probe further into this remote but far-sighted
Freudian suggestion.
The somatic marker
Damasio (1994) reconsidered the role of bodiliness
in the genesis and functioning of the mind, propos-
ing that the mind originates in the activity of the
neural circuits representing an organism as it inter-
acts with the environment. Hence, the body’s con-
tribution to the brain cannot be reduced to mere
modulating effects or to support for vital operations,
but must also include content that is an essential part
of mental functioning and of our feeling of being
‘‘ourselves.’’ This ‘‘feeling’’ is continuously con-
structed through the coordinated activity of multiple
brain areas. Yet this ceaseless activity of construction
is highly fragile: emotions, underlying sentiment,
and current feelings play a crucial role in its fabric.
Damasio also introduced the simple and elegant
notion of ‘‘somatic marker’’ in the realm of his more
general neurobiological emotion theory. The somatic
marker is seen as a value and expectation attribution
mechanism, which is structured, based on the
primary emotions (happiness, sadness, fear, anger,
and disgust) and their progressive specification into
secondary emotions and feelings, as individuals
interact with other people, situations, and events.
The brain is predetermined not to ‘‘feel’’ these
emotions, but to activate specific bodily states that
correspond to these situations. Emotion, in fact, is
not primarily perceived, but is something that occurs
in the body. The prefrontal cortex stores memories
of the ‘‘bodily states’’ that result from interaction
with the environment, categorizing relations with
situations, people, events, and objects in terms of
their somatic and emotional consequences. Thus, an
entire ‘‘encyclopedia’’ is slowly built up *an ency-
clopedia of links established in remembered experi-
ence, between positive or negative ‘‘bodily states’’
and events, occurrences, scenarios, situations, and
outcomes.
From this perspective, therefore, somatic markers
are secondary emotions (or feelings derived therein),
which are linked by learning to the future outcomes
of specific events or scenarios. The on-line avail-
ability of these marked links allows for a constant
activity of evaluation, expectation, and anticipation.
When a negative somatic marker is activated in
relation to a given situation, event, or person, the
combination serves as an alarm bell or ‘‘stop’’ sign.
Conversely, a positive marker becomes a signaller of
incentive. Hence, these markers function as an
automatic qualifying system for our expectations
and therefore as ‘‘sign’’-attributing devices.
This system of automatic signaling and meaning-
outcome attribution originates in experience, based
on an internal preference system and hence on
mostly innate regulating devices. This occurs in
interaction with external circumstances, which in-
clude not only events and objects, but also social
convention and ethical norms. The system is ac-
quired in childhood and in adolescence, but the
accumulation of somatically marked stimuli actually
continues over the entire lifespan, unfolding as a
continuous process. Damasio’s proposal enables us
to confer a neural foundation to this value and
anticipation attribution system and to conceive of it
as something that occurs in the body. In fact,
somatic markers depend on learning through a
mechanism that can link given entities, events or
situations with a pleasurable or displeasurable bodily
state and hence with an emotion.
The notion of the somatic marker, the develop-
ment of secondary emotions and feelings, and the
role of emotions in maintaining a satisfied organis-
mic state all allow for a new and different approach
to the concept of defense. Among other things, such
a reformulation would present the major advantage
of further developing, not only the inspired (but
restrictive) Freudian idea of signal of anxiety and
painful experience, but also the intuition that viewed
affect as the vestige of satisfied and external fright
states.
Emotions and defense
We have now lined up several issues: a theoretical
sliver, later abandoned by Freud, that refers to a
constructing an ‘‘ego’’ psychology; the three, more
general, poles of psychic life; the experience of
external fright; the notions of primary defense and
signal anxiety; and last, the concept of the somatic
marker in the broader context of the role of emo-
tions. Let us now see whether it is possible to
coordinate all these elements into a coherent propo-
sal.
The main onus here falls on the somatic marker
concept, which rests on a neurophysiological emo-
tion theory that has already received important
experimental confirmation. The somatic marker
theory also presents a promising opportunity for
developing the earlier Freudian idea of signal anxiety
by extending it to the entire range of emotions. This
proposal would allow the interpretation of emotional
life development (from primary to secondary emo-
tions and to feelings) as the progressive organization
of a regulating organism environment interaction

system. Indeed, the assumption is quite simple:
From birth onward, the primary emotion represents
both the conduit and the instrument for environ-
mental transactions with the environment. Yet,
thanks to the human ability to experience, represent,
and remember the effect of objects, events, and
situations on the bodily state, this mechanism
gradually develops into the main regulatory agent
of these transactions. Specifically, the system’s func-
tioning leads to the construction of an encyclopedia
of emotional outcomes of interaction with objects,
subjects, events, and situations, which cannot, as
such, be genome-predictable. This encyclopedia
expands with progressive experience and is always
available to the organism, but its construction does
not proceed by simple assembly or increment. It is
the system’s own functioning that determines its
organization, by rendering it ever more complex.
This process extends the applicability of the biolo-
gical emotion mechanism from the original survival
domain to the humanized, cultural, social, and
relational environment.
The operative instrument of this complex system
of regulation is the somatic marker, which previews
and evaluates all contingencies and anticipates the
most probable bodily state for a given future situa-
tion. When the marker signal activates an expected
emotional state, the process of anticipation initiates
approach, withdrawal or caution behavior in any
motivational sphere. There is no need to construct
specific systems for each motivational class because
the process itself can be intended as the basic
motivation-forming mechanism. The possibility of
proposing defense in the analytical sense of the term
rests on this general regulatory mechanism, which
mostly functions unconsciously. In fact, defense
might consist in progressive structuring in the sym-
bolic and relational sphere, which is based on the
(real, imaginary or transferred) experience of specific
perception emotionexpectation action schemas.
This simple biological mechanism is certainly not
a ‘‘psychoanalytic’’ mechanism and is probably not
even specific to Homo* at least not in its essential
aspects. Its basic elements are grounded in evolution
and rest on more primitive regulating systems, such
as the genome-determined systems for bee or ant
behavior, or for the flight behavior of a chick when it
sees a shadow cut across the sky. We can reasonably
assume that a mechanism regulating an organism
through the bodily memory of experience is as
developed and close to the mechanism described
for Homo, as a given species has invested in parental
care and social organization. Evidence for the role of
emotions in constructing social hierarchies in pri-
mate and higher-order mammal groups could pro-
vide important confirmation of this hypothesis.
Who defends itself from what? 145
The underlying idea for these considerations is
emphasized by both Damasio (1994) and Dennett
(1991). Developing a mind, in fact, allows for the
regulation of highly flexible and effective interaction
with environment because a mind can construct
specific responses for all genome-unpredictable
occasions. According to Damasio, the source of
this adaptability arose out of created images of the
body in action, that is, of the body responding to the
environment with external movements (e.g. of a
limb) and with an internal modification (e.g. the
state of one’s own internal organs). It is important to
consider, however, that evolution has selected the
brain in the fight for survival. Yet, the development
of a mind that can represent and narrate with words
has enormously complicated the evolutionary lot-
tery, by obliging the brain to run programmes that
are new and alien to those for which it was originally
selected. This is a particularly crucial point when we
consider the enormous cultural acceleration that
occurred during the Neolithic Age, when the
domestication of animals and crops radically mod-
ified the rules of survival. In terms of biological
evolution, in fact, the time required for this accel-
eration is of truly little significance. This considera-
tion leads us to think that searching for specific
intersubjective, cultural, and complex social inter-
action structures in the brain would prove to be a
fruitless and inappropriate search. In other words,
the problem of survival has metamorphosed ever
more decidedly into a cultural, social, and psycho-
logical problem, based, however, on the same brain
that ‘‘learned’’ to use its own structures to solve an
infinite variety of problems. Indeed, it used (and has
continued to use) the primary emotion mechanism
as a regulating instrument in complex intersubjec-
tive transaction. Perhaps establishing this link be-
tween the biological and the symbolic in this
concrete evolutionary framework might help us
shed light on the link itself.
The experience of emotion and
scenic-narrative schemas
Now that we have identified a regulating mechanism
that is deeply rooted in the biological and somatic
spheres, we can attempt our search for a link with the
symbolic universe. When a newborn emits its first
cry, the process of constructing a ‘‘mind’s I’’
(Hofstadter & Dennett, 1981), has already begun.
This being already has a highly evolved brain with
visual, auditory, proprioceptive, kinaesthetic, and
transmodal capacities. He also has an efficacious
system for regulating his relationship with the
environment (the primary emotion array), and he
has the appropriate neural structures that will allow
146 G. P. Scano
for the regulating this system’s development (sec-
ondary emotions, feelings, somatic marker).
Hence, with this early functioning, newborns are
already able to manage their relationships with the
environment, using their emotional responses to
‘‘make’’ adults do things for them and their ability
to intensify relational engagement or to withdraw
from interaction. Of course, it would be reductive to
call this self-protective capacity of newborns ‘‘de-
fense.’’ Yet, in this early phase, they already start
creating their own encyclopedias of marked links
among perceptions (visual, auditory, kinesthetic,
etc.), bodily states, and emotions, and they start
assembling approach withdrawal anticipation
packages, based on the pleasure or unpleasurable
overtones they experience. This phase also presum-
ably pertains to the first scene-fixing of Stern’s
‘‘being with’’ (1985) and the beginning of attach-
ment profile structuring, according to well-known
attachment theory studies. All of these schemas will
progressively structure themselves, based on the
guidelines of emotion. Emotions modulate overall
interaction with the environment, because (as Freud
noted quite early on), they have semantic, expres-
sive, and interactive valence from the very beginning.
At first, this valence is, to all purposes, automatic,
but it soon becomes intentional, voluntary, and ever
more efficiently correlated with adult responses,
which are always emotionally meaningful.
In fact, a child’s anticipational array grows pro-
gressively ever more elaborate, thanks to his richer
interactive competence. He can resort to crying
voluntarily, smiling, and using goal-targeted move-
ments, and can rely on his already appreciable ‘‘card-
index’’ of marked connections. As his mother’s
anticipations start to couple with his own, the
game of interactive negotiation intensifies.
Thus, it is already possible at this point to identify
precise self-protective activity, which can also pro-
gressively be considered defensive. A positive antici-
pation (correlated with pleasure-wellbeing) or a
negative one (correlated with pain-suffering) elicits
motivation and approach or withdrawal behavior,
which tends to either secure a pleasurable bodily
state or to safeguard the body.
In this realm of self-protective regulation, there-
fore, defense functions by avoiding a situation/event
anticipated as being correlated with a negative state,
and this marking can also be extended to the people
associated with this state. These primordial con-
structions can be understood as the founding source
of actual defenses (in the sense of Freud’s primary
defense), but it is also important to consider that the
psychoanalytic notion of defense concerns different
and much more complex processes than the simple
logic of withdrawal from displeasure. These more
intricate structures appear to involve direct ground-
ing in the somatic and biological sphere, as well as a
great deal of branching into the symbolic world and
into meaning-producing mechanisms. Hence, a
psychoanalytic theory of defense must focus on the
necessary link between the semantic/linguistic world
and these protostructures, which the system of
primary emotions and the notion of somatic marker
allow us to view as being essentially physical and
profoundly rooted in a biological substrate.
In synthesis, then, our hypothesis is that emotional
experience in interaction with attachment figures
leads to the construction of somatically marked
emotion expectation action schemas , which have a
nonverbal and nonverbalizable scenic-narrative
structure. These schemas profoundly impact the
feeling of ‘‘me’’ and, through the force of emotional
expectation, tend to shape an array of limited
possibilities *possibilities that are limited by an
individual’s organization of experience and relational
competence. We can also assume that a child’s
progressive entrance into the linguistic universe (by
establishing the junction of these protostructures
with the semantic and grammatical domain) creates
the right conditions for proper defense and for
specific defense mechanisms. The specific task of a
psychoanalytic theory of defense, therefore, is to
determine the modalities and mechanisms of this
link between the somatic and symbolic domains.
The command of verbal forms, identification,
and projection
A general theory of defense should express a limited
number of simple principles providing the following:
(1) a general account of defensive phenomena from a
functional and genetic perspective; (2) a theoretical
framework allowing the main defensive modalities to
be identified; and (3) potential for using observa-
tional procedures to describe single mechanisms.
More generally and provisionally, it should also
verify whether highly emotionally marked links
(and thus avoiding or desiring protostructures) can
be transformed into the complex and unique pat-
terns of meaning that nurture motivation and
behavior. In fact, the clinical literature has always
described defenses in terms of behavior that is
motivated by distinctly individual unconscious
meaning. Owing to this essentially idiosyncratic
symbolic connotation, these behaviors are frequently
characterized as being incomprehensible, illogical,
and/or counterproductive for an individual.
The somatic marker mechanism allows us to
comprehend eventemotion links. It therefore allows
us to propose that the constant processing and
evaluation of stimuli, situations, and events is a

mostly unconscious activity, consisting in the forma-
tion of anticipations that define meaning and there-
fore contexts, motivation, and actions. The relatively
inevitable approach or recoil impetus should be
determined by the strength of emotional marking.
Our next step, then, is to verify whether progres-
sive entry into the semantic and linguistic register
can justify the possibility for symbolic transforma-
tions of protoscenes and somatic marker categories.
If an emotionally marked link can be transferred to
different situations but still maintains its distinctive
ability to move the powerful emotion system, we can
observe actions that are descriptively assimilable to
what the clinical tradition usually denotes as ‘‘de-
fense.’’ We must also propose general transfer
modalities and shared mechanisms, which can create
transformations and still account for the individual
construction of meaning and motivation. The ac-
tions motivated by these transformations may appear
illogical and obscure, such as little Hans’ terror of
horses or Emma’s inability to enter a shop on her
own.
It is the progressive command of different verbal
forms that represents the terrain whose construction
can nurture a wide range of transformation and
transfer mechanisms. The semantic environment in
which children take their very first breaths grows
ever more complex as they acquire tenses and verbal
moods, thereby multiplying their possibilities for the
construction and expression of meaning. We know
that, as children grow, they develop various types of
‘‘theory’’ concerning things in the world, as well as
concerning the functioning of their own and other
people’s minds. Competency in using verbal forms,
moods, and tenses plays an essential part in the
construction of these (conscious or unconscious)
theories. In fact, this competency functions as a
multiplier of worlds *that is, of ‘‘real,’’ ‘‘future,’’
‘‘possible,’’ ‘‘conditional,’’ and ‘‘virtual’’ worlds, in
which each desired or feared experience can be
endowed with different levels of existence, reality,
and power. The vast range of emotional anticipation
can thereby be linked with the worlds of the past,
future, conditional, and hypothetical; and expected
outcomes can be linked to probable, possible,
conditional, or imaginary scenarios. This gradual
process will lead to a combinatorial array that can
create any number of individual outcomes for the
emotional anticipations of any connection schema.
This paves the way for the construction of any
meaning and any context capable of activating
powerful wishing or recoiling forces.
For example, when my daughter was two-and-a-
half years old and was out strolling with her mother
one day, she suddenly stopped and said, ‘‘You can’t
leave me alone here, because I don’t know the roads.’’
Who defends itself from what? 147
Thus, in the world constructed by the present
indicative, my little girl was experiencing emotions
tied to her mother’s presence, that is, a sense of
security and trust. In the world constructed in the
future and conditional tense, there was the possibi-
lity that her mother might disappear, exposing the
girl to danger and to the fright of losing her mother
and getting lost. In the present perfect or past tense
world, the girl had evidently already experienced the
painful emotion of abandonment and of loss. Hence,
the point here is that a fear relative to a hypothetical
or future world can motivate action in the indicative
present world. These ‘‘incongruous’’ actions are
sometimes denoted as defenses, and occasionally as
symptoms.
In the context of this multiplication of worlds and
scenarios, crucial importance should be placed on
the acquisition of active and passive forms of verbs
and of action. Indeed, quite early on, Freud (1915)
identified the defenses preceding repression in the
transformation of the passive into the active, and
active into the passive, and he used them in his
analysis of voyeurism and sadism. It now seems
possible that these processes could play a much more
general role in the overall area of competency in
using verbal forms *a supposition that allows us to
re-evaluate the third (activepassive) Freudian op-
position. In fact, these processes seem closely inter-
linked with the construction of the world of things
and of the objective social world, but mostly with
construction of ‘‘I’’ and ‘‘You,’’ and thus with
theories on the functioning of one’s own and other
people’s minds and their reciprocal interaction.
Passive and active forms concretely manage to be
the subject and object of all action expressed by all
verbs. Any conceived action that is desired or feared,
as a ‘‘subject’’ or as an ‘‘object,’’ can therefore be
transferred into the future, conditional or hypothe-
tical world that anticipates its consequences. Transi-
tion from one position to another is also possible.
The same action executed as an active subject can
simultaneously be anticipated as being experienced
passively, and vice versa. Hence, this process opens
the door to a regular exchange between theory
content concerning one’s own mind and theory
content concerning other people’s minds. Children
can thereby attribute what they do, feel, think, wish
for or fear to the mind of ‘‘you’’ and can acquire
what other people say, do, wish for, and fear in their
minds and actively act upon it.
Children frequently also employ a third element in
these conversion processes, such as a teddy bear or
an imaginary friend. They also tend spontaneously
to select any object to be immediately deployed in
the role of ‘‘object’’ or ‘‘subject.’’ In children’s
recurring scenic experimentation, they do not merely
148 G. P. Scano
limit themselves to play-acting and to playing roles
(such as when they upbraid their teddy bear in the
same tone in which they have just been scolded).
They can feel, for example, anger, hate or even rage,
and they can imagine that they might act congru-
ently on these emotions and feelings in a future,
hypothetical or conditional world. Moreover, chil-
dren can use the active-to-passive transformation to
attribute these same emotions and actions to adults
and then consequently fear these adults *not in a
hypothetical world, but in the present one. They can
then implement adequate defensive procedures.
We can easily locate and re-translate what the
psychoanalytic tradition has always taught about
identification and projective mechanisms as struc-
turing elements, and also as defense mechanisms, in
the terms described above. In fact, active passive/
passiveactive transformations can be simply con-
sidered the mechanisms through which identification
and projection are achieved. We can also state that
these transformations can serve as an operative
definition of identification and projection.
Defense, emotions, and metaphor
Language acquisition therefore progressively allows
for this multiplication of worlds and signification
possibilities, in which the linguistic meaning-con-
struction mechanism of metaphor seems, by its very
nature, to be specifically linked to defensive activity.
Yet metaphor as a semiotic instrument goes far
beyond the linguistic universe (Eco 1975). In fact,
we normally extend and apply our knowledge and
experience to new domains in logical or analogical
ways, but we also have a much more powerful and
much less tractable linguistic gadget at hand. Aristotle
defined metaphor as ‘‘giving the thing a name that
belongs to something else.’’ Moreover, Eco (1980)
has underscored how metaphor produces something
highly similar to what Freud called ‘‘condensation’’;
Jacobson and Halle (1956) earlier associated the
mechanisms described by Freud with metonymy
and metaphor; and Lacan (1966) developed this
suggestion by connecting displacement with meto-
nymy and condensation with metaphor. Condensa-
tion and displacement were considered the
mechanisms of dream-work. Freud envisaged the
displacement and condensation of quantities of en-
ergy, but the result of this ‘‘economic’’ operation was,
in any event, a meaning-condensation, an explosion
of emotionally marked meaning obtained through
transfer. This is how Freud accounted for the anxiety
that blocked Emma from entering a shop on her own.
Metaphor also produces unexpected explosions of
meaning by displacing and condensing meaning; it
therefore spontaneously represents the best semiotic
instrument to serve as a substrate for the meaning-
transformation operations described and explained
by Freud, in economical terms, as condensation and
displacement. We might therefore more generally
consider metaphor as the formal mechanism for each
and every transfer of meaning, which might make it
possible to reformulate the concept of transference
in a way that is devoid of any drive legacy (Scano,
2006).
More generally, however, the Freudian uncon-
scious was viewed as the unsaid and the unsayable *
that is, that which is denied translation into words.
The unconscious therefore represented the very
birthplace of all possible metaphor*in dreams, in
neurosis, in discourse, and in everyday life. Meta-
phor, as the interface between the unsayable and the
linguistic code, can achieve unexpected transforma-
tions and meaning transfer, and can even, at times,
create meaning. For instance, we have no word in
Italian to denote the slender part of a bottle that
stretches upward to receive a cork. We use a
particular form of metaphor (catachresis) to say
‘‘neck of the bottle,’’ meaning that this particular
part is to the bottle as a neck is to a body. There is an
infinity of experiences with even less ‘‘sayable’’
names than ‘‘neck of a bottle’’, which can find a
name through an even more basic catachresis.
In fact, we can consider somatically marked links,
anticipations, narrative scenes, and prototheories as
a field of experience fragments, which are strongly
marked emotionally, but are inaccessible through
language. These powerful shards of experience, with
no name and no voice, can find a ‘‘name’’ through
metaphor, in the same way as the neck of a bottle
does, and this occurs not only in the dreams,
fantasies, and perceptions of artists and poets, but
also in our own commotion, anger, fear, and anxiety.
Any element of experience can therefore be literally
transformed into something else through metaphor;
it can be extended or expressed through new
situations and objects. Moreover, metaphor has
another semiotic characteristic that renders it parti-
cularly effective in this role: although metaphor is, to
all effects, a linguistic mechanism, its construction
and comprehension calls for non-linguistic material,
by referring to visual, auditory, tactile, and olfactory
experience.
According to a view advanced earlier by Freud,
any link or schema can be utilized through metaphor
to gain an understanding of many different areas of
experience. This is when he used the ‘‘inside/out-
side’’ schema to construct a sequence of fields of
meaning that ranged from the ‘‘swallowing/spitting’’
of the dietary regime, to the ‘‘good/bad’’ of the moral
regime, to the ‘‘right/wrong’’ of the logical regime
(Freud, 1925b). We might imagine that this can

occur for many other schemas, not only through
Freud’s analogical route, but also through much
more individual ones. For example, C., a young
woman, used the inside/outside schema to describe a
certain feeling she felt as an adolescent: When she
was 14 or 15 years old, she felt as if she were always
standing at the threshold of her own house, with all
of her desire to go ‘‘out,’’ to be free, and to throw
herself into the world, but in spite of the restlessness
she felt about family rules and restrictions, some-
thing always kept her stuck ‘‘inside’’ the house. She
had also occasionally suffered from slight panic
attacks in ‘‘outside’’ situations and from slight
claustrophobia in ‘‘inside’’ situations.
Years later, she underwent emergency surgery for
a severe form of uterine fibromyomatosis, which left
little hope for her ever becoming mother. Her
claustrophobia erupted more dramatically at this
time, in hospital and during her convalescence, and
lasted approximately 2 weeks. Then, over the
following months and after an initial elaboration of
her frustration (she had just married and had never
doubted wanting to have ‘‘many children’’), she took
a deep look at both the desiring and resisting aspects
of her relationship with maternity. During that time,
she referred repeatedly to the inside/outside schema,
mostly using it to describe her relationship with her
therapist:
You sit here in your little garden . . . Goodness
knows . . . it’s a nice garden . . . neat . . . quiet . . .
but it’s closed in . . . it always works in the same
way . . . always with the same rules . . .Instead, my
own life is outside of here, where everything is
confused, chaotic . . . and yet, I come here and I sit
in your little garden . . . and I feel good here, even
too good so I should probably leave now.
She then expressed her impatience with people
who now treated her ambiguously, as she saw it, as if
she were just an ill person: ‘‘I have to find a way to
change this thing . . . it’s like a bubble . . . I try to
break it . . . but it is a sticky, stretchy bubble . . . you
try to puncture it, but it gives and bounces back.’’
She later used this same schema to express her
emotional expectations about a fetus inside her
uterus: ‘‘when I think about it, I shudder; I feel a
sensation of closing in and suffocation, of claustro-
phobia.’’ This claustrophobic feeling, however, did
not refer to a ‘‘child closed inside her uterus,’’ but to
the sense of suffocation she experienced at the idea
of that ‘‘unspeakable intimacy’’ of perpetual connec-
tion with a child.
Based on this unexpected meaning, C. started to
grasp her own difficulty in entering into intimate
situations: ‘‘Lately, I have felt grateful to you . . .
Who defends itself from what? 149
really felt it emotionally . . . but then as soon as I feel
it . . . it feels fake as well . . . like something from a film
that doesn’t exist in real life.’’ She then realized that a
sense of gratitude had, for her, always been some-
thing that tied her down, and was therefore the
material of her ‘‘little gardens,’’ ‘‘bubbles, and all
her ‘‘insides’’ *that is, the matrix of all of her
‘‘claustrophobia.’’ Hence, she was suddenly able to
use her claustrophobic feeling to denote what had
been allowing her to avoid situations that might
induce too intense or too pleasurable emotions in
her. By anticipating her own experience of suffoca-
tion and panic, she was forced to ‘‘close the door’’ just
when she might have let herself go to an ‘‘excess’’ of
intimacy, of sexual emotion, or even to ’’fuzzy,’’
peaceful abandon. She still perceived the shadow of
a paralyzing anxiety behind these emotions, but her
capacity for experiencing intimate situations gradu-
ally started to expand.
Some time later, the ‘‘inside’’ metaphor reap-
peared even more unexpectedly. C. recounted feel-
ing as if she were in a cave, with neither barrier nor
door between the light ‘‘outside’’ and the intense
‘‘inside’’ darkness, but an impalpable place of
transition. But this time, it was pleasurable, peaceful,
in that darkness, and she could have stayed there for
ever*were it not for the fact that her many shifting
ways of being and feeling made her feel like staccato
notes lost somewhere in that darkness. The following
Monday, however, C. opened the session smiling
happily: ‘‘I spent a wonderful weekend inside my
cave.’’
‘‘Who’’ defends itself from ‘‘what’’?
All that has been discussed so far concerning the
acquisition of the ability to use verbal forms and
metaphor (and therefore concerning identification,
projection, condensation, and displacement), should
now be located in the realm of comprehensive action
of the ‘‘mind’s I’’. In fact, ever more frequently now,
theories of subjectivity view the ‘‘I’’ as a ‘‘narrating
I’’ *that is, as simultaneously the author and result
of its own narrations. This conception was first
proposed by Vygotskij as early as the 1920s and
was later developed by the semiologist Bachtin. If we
start from the assumption that what we call ‘‘I’’ is the
substance of narration and that we are the narration
of ourselves, then even our understanding of our-
selves is not so easy to define and explain, because it
does not seem so different from our understanding
of others. In fact, none of us has direct and
immediate access to a secret ‘‘warehouse of mean-
ing,’’ in which meanings are stored like well-ordered
and classified objects, to be selected and expressed as
needed by upholstering with words. It seems, rather,
150 G. P. Scano
that it is our inexhaustible self-narration and narrat-
ing that constructs meaning. We therefore produce,
understand, and express meaning at the very mo-
ment we construct it. This is why Dennett (1991)
identifies Homo sapiens ’ own fundamental self-pro-
tective, regulating, and self-defining tactic in the
‘‘telling stories,’’ that is, in the human ego’s inherent
narrative leanings.
It is not difficult to find other specific defensive
activities in the realm of this narrative activity, which
interlaces and wraps our ‘‘I’’ with a virtual exoske-
leton of words, in a continuous self-protective
action. Of course, these defensive activities will
pertain more to the images, actions, virtues, defects,
and responsibilities of each narrative’s author, based
on modalities that also pertain to the stories that
peoples and ancient cities have always told over the
ages about their own origins and events.
The mechanisms pertaining to the I’s narrative
nature are presumably quite different from meta-
phor’s expressive explosions or from the construc-
tive action of identification and projection. They
should follow, rather, a literary design aimed at
embellishing, concealing, and ‘‘tidying things up.’’
The I’s narrative mechanisms are therefore quite
similar to forms that are already widely known in the
psychoanalytic tradition, such as idealization, re-
pression, negation, and rationalization. In this case
as well, the dynamic of defense should be governed
by the emotion system’s self-protective maxim,
through much more specified feelings such as
shame, pride, contempt, ambition, envy, jealousy,
gratitude, compassion, remorse, guilt, etc . . . . In any
event, these more specifically social emotions and
feelings rest on the bedrock of the primary emo-
tions, and they refer more directly to the cultural
and social worlds, and to the roles that the author
and the topics of the mind’s I’s narratives play in its
own narrating.
Therefore, who it is that defends itself is always the
organism in its totality. Defensive themes are situa-
tions or events that are symbolized or perceived as
menacing, based on the expectation of a negative
emotion and displeasurable bodily state. Hence,
situations, events or contexts are experienced as
menacing in a way that is highly similar to what
the Freudian signal of anxiety had earlier affirmed.
Yet, an organism’s action occurs through the mind’s
I, in a psychosocial, relational, and linguistic context.
The specifying of menacing situations therefore
branches out into the symbolic world in a highly
individual manner, based on the transformations
that each and every ‘‘I’’ has constructed and
continues to construct with its encyclopedia of
emotional markings. In the overall context of in-
dividual experience, these markings will determine
the anticipations and ‘‘theories’’ by which indivi-
duals construct their own contexts, and the contexts
of the contexts in which they move with their
wishing, avoiding or recoiling motivations and ac-
tions. Thus, defensive measures can easily seem
incongruous and objectively inadequate to the actual
nature of a given danger or problem. The fact that
individuals can experience these contexts as being so
menacing as to mobilize formidable, costly, and self-
detrimental defensive maneuvers depends on mostly
metaphorical transformation processes and under-
lying emotional and semantic links, which (being
strongly rooted in the somatic sphere) are literally
‘‘without words.’’ This conception does not seem far
removed from the essential content of the traditional
notion of unconscious fantasy, but is expressed here
in non-drive terms.
This underscoring of the individual marking of
menacing situations does not exclude the possibility
of the eventual identification of generalized classes of
danger that most individuals experience over their
lifespans. Yet a more precise determination of the
most frequently recurring ‘‘dangerous situations’’ at
various ages or in most individuals, and in different
psychopathological patterns, is a problem of empiri-
cal generalization.
Conclusion
It therefore seems possible to identify mechanisms
that are highly similar to Freudian ones by starting
from the tip of ‘‘a cone’’ and moving downwards
from the primary emotions and ‘‘being with’’ sche-
mas, through diversification of the ‘‘bodily sphere,’’
the ‘‘you sphere,’’ and the ‘‘linguistic sphere,’’ and
last, through metaphor and the I’s narrative nature.
These mechanisms can be described and formulated
in terms that are completely removed from libidinal
logic and can open up virgin territory thereby for the
concept of defense. This proposal also seems plau-
sible not only for essential processes such as con-
densation, displacement, identification, and
projection, but also for repression, negation, ideali-
zation, and rationalization. Defining, describing, and
classifying these mechanisms is, however, not a
theoretical, but an observational and empirical
task. Conversely, identifying the role these mechan-
isms play in various psychopathological syndromes
(or even in symptoms and simple experiences) and
determining the factors that are involved in specify-
ing the emotional weight that an anticipation can
achieve by eliciting rigid defenses (to the extent of
even symptomatic explosion) pertains to more gen-
eral clinical theory.
Specifically, the present proposal presents three
main advantages:

1. It helps us recover the most important link,
which was also characteristic of the traditional
conception *that is, that defensive action is
concretely expressed in therapeutic interaction
as resistance. In fact, by adopting the inter-
subjectiveintrasubjective viewpoint, we can
easily distinguish between the two domains.
From the intersubjective viewpoint, defensive
phenomena emerge in interactional flow as
friction between therapist- and patient-con-
structed contexts, and *defined in this
sense *resistance appears as a mainly inter-
subjective phenomenon. By assuming the in-
trasubjective viewpoint, however, we can
further investigate the meanings and defensive
function of intrasubjective correlates of beha-
vior qualified as ‘‘resistance,’’ on a different
level.
2. It is limited to providing a general explicative
hypothesis, which can serve as a framework for
guiding both the identification of mechanisms
that can be unequivocally generalized to the
entire population and the identification of
syndrome and symptom classes. The specifica-
tion and description of each single mechanism,
however, is a task delegated to empirical
observation.
3. Last, and coherently with the requirements of
the logic of scientific research, it provides a
crucial focus point for its own corroboration or
falsification: each piece of evidence providing
support for emotion and somatic marker the-
ories can also be interpreted as support for the
presently proposed conception. Conversely, any
falsification of these theories would also falsify
the hypotheses described and proposed herein.
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Author
Gian Paolo Scano, psychoanalyst, lives and works
in Rome. He also teaches in Brescia, where he is in
charge of a research laboratory on the theory of
treatment. His interests have always been mainly
theoretical. Currently, he is working on trying an
organic reformulation of the method from an inter-
subjective and constructivist point of view. This
essay anticipates an outstanding passage to such a
work.