On Hierarchy of Defence
“Who am I even speaking to right now?”
Eolanda code-switched like crazy. She could accuse me of things and call me names in private in a party one second, then be praising and warm to me once another person walks in. I couldn’t stand it so I would call her out on it, frequently asking for on the spot mediators to help us deliberate whatever hot topic.
I see more and more people, especially on text, conveying a tone that is incongruent with how they would speak in person, especially face to face. This strategy has surely been around for as long as letter writing has been around, and famously the shyest people found that sitting in their faraday cages that are their horn-wielding cars gave them the sense that they could be far less courteous without consequence. Call it their super-egoless id, their true selves, or an opportunity to vent pent up stress as road rage. I encourage consistency, stoicism and a contiguous mood.
It’s a growing trend in text based arguments, to cap a contribution with “lol” or a laughing emoji as if to indicate that the debating partner’s disagreement is so far beneath the writer that they’re laughing at it, their opponent’s intelligence, and themselves for wasting breath on it. This performative indifference is cutting enough for us when it happens on twitter, but when we see it coming from our friend or partner, it’s devastating.
It seems to fit in a strange niche in the FFFF response to threats; it’s technically Flight but masked as Fight. John Gottman calls this contemptuous deflection out as the most corrosive of his ‘Four Horsemen’ (along with Criticism, Defensiveness, and Stonewalling) and the best predictor of relational breakdown he’s found. Contempt is communicating from a position of dark superiority through mockery, sarcasm, eye-rolling, or disgust, saying: “You’re beneath me. I’m better than you. Remember that.” Gottman even explicitly names ‘hostile humor’ as one of its forms and its application in putting distance between the speaker and the disagreement before the challenge can be internalised.
There is a way to enjoy a laugh in a debate. American Psychiatrist George Vaillant spent a career taking a Freudian theory called the Hierarchy of Defense and formularising it. He ranked the strategies people deploy to protect themselves against distress from immature to mature:
Level IV (Mature Defences) — The healthiest and most adaptive, these integrate unconscious drives with conscious awareness to promote resilience and interpersonal harmony:
Altruism: Handling stress by dedicating oneself to serving others, deriving pleasure from it.
Humour: Using wit to confront adversity and ease tension without denying the reality of the situation.
Sublimation: Channeling unacceptable urges or emotions into socially constructive and productive activities.
Anticipation: Realistically planning for future discomfort or adversity.
Level III (Neurotic Defences) — Common in the general population, these help manage anxiety but can result in symptomatic distress in daily life:
Intellectualisation: Overemphasising abstract, intellectual thinking to avoid dealing with uncomfortable emotions.
Reaction Formation: Expressing the exact opposite of true feelings in an exaggerated, noticeable way.
Repression: Unconsciously pushing disturbing thoughts, memories, or impulses out of conscious awareness.
Level II (Immature Defences) — Often seen in children, these inhibit awareness of unacceptable feelings and result in social awkwardness or friction:
Projection: Attributing unacceptable thoughts or feelings onto someone else.
Rationalisation: Creating logical, plausible excuses to justify behaviors or feelings that cause guilt.
Denial: Refusing to accept or acknowledge the reality of a painful truth.
Passive Aggression: Expressing hidden hostility toward others through procrastination, stubbornness, or failure to perform tasks.
Level I (Pathological Defences) — The most irrational mechanisms, these heavily distort reality, making it difficult to be engaged with by the outside world:
Psychotic Denial: Groundlessly rejecting external reality and arguments, operating as if a severe stressor doesn’t exist.
Paranoia: Being convinced of the presence of a threat or observer that others cannot find.
Delusion: Holding fixed, false beliefs about external reality like prejudices, and religious convictions.
Humour is a Level IV defence associated with greater success in relationships and which highlights amusing aspects of threat signals. Real humor works by finding what’s genuinely funny in a threat and sharing that with the other person, intact, without using it as a conversational killswitch. The semi-convincing shrug we’re talking about does the reverse: it borrows sharp wit and repurposes it as a dull blade, relocating the squirming from the utterer onto the newly ridiculed. They would do well to own the discomfort and learn to feel comfortable being challenge, state their case, and detach with more respect, especially if their interlocutor is using a high level of defence.
On the receiving end there’s a mature response that sounds like: “This is clearly less funny for me than it is for you. You’re welcome to laugh about this with people whose hearts aren’t on the line the way mine is. But I learn more from the people who take this debate seriously.” It’s sincere, disarming, and open-minded, and it shuts down the meta-discussion about whether the argument is beneath anyone’s paygrade.
