Defense Mechanisms in Guajiro Personality and Culture

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Abstract
The techniques of psychic defense against anxiety identified by Freud have often been used by anthropologists as though they constituted an altogether reliable taxonomy for describing the psychological processes of people in non-Western cultural settings. There is reason to believe that the matter is not quite this simple. This paper uses psychological data from Guajiro Indian subjects to answer several questions concerning defensive mechanisms in an alien society, namely: 1) Are these mechanisms present and, if so, to what extent are they modally significant? 2) Into what forms are these defenses organized by the culture? and 3) What is the general relationship of defensive behavior to personality and social functioning? While one society can hardly provide a definitive test for hypotheses about the ultimate validity of Freud's concepts, it can, perhaps, suggest some useful propositions.

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