Defense Mechanisms

A little excerpt from A Brief History of Everything by Ken Wilber that particularly tickled me:

Defense mechanisms, when operationg naturally and normally, are like a psychological immune system. They help maintain the integrity and stability of the self boundary, and they toss out any invaders that threaten the self sytem. But, as always, there can be too much of a good thing. Defense mechanisms can become an auto-immune disorder - the self starts attacking itself, eating itself up. The defending army turns into a repressive state police. The self starts defending against pain and terror by incarcerating its own citizens. It seals of its own potential. It closes its eyes. It starts to lie. No matter what the "level" of this lie - from splitting and fusion and projection to repression and reaction formation and displacement - the self hides from itself, lies to itself, becomes opaque to itself.

In place of the actual self, there grows up the false self.