Defensiveness and defense mechanisms

This introduction to the Journal of Personality's special issue on the topi c of defense mechanisms raises the question of why defenses have been large ly overlooked in personality research. Although defenses were originally di scussed in the context of psychopathology, for the past 60 years psychodyna mically oriented psychologists have understood that defenses play an import ant part in normal psychological development. Recently, psychologists outsi de the field of personality have incorporated the ideas of unconscious ment al processes and of defenses into their research programs. In this issue, p ersonality researchers discuss their ideas about defense mechanisms, organi zed around three topical areas: current conceptualizations of defense, the measurement of defense mechanisms, and the integration of defense mechanism s into personality research. The issue concludes with a commentary on these articles and provides suggestions for future work.