The role of the intellect in the process of defense

Ordinary intellectual capacities can be used for defensive as well as adaptive purposes. The author focuses on how a particular aspect of the intellect--language skills--can serve defensive functions. Using clinical examples, he examines how the defense "mechanism" of isolation operates through the use of common verbal formulas, through the deletion or substitution of conjunctions, through vagueness and indefinite reference. Other expressions of isolation include shifting emphasis away from what is important, excessive generalizing, and the development of an elliptical private language. He concludes with a discussion of how clinicians can learn both to listen to the patient empathically and to recognize and work with these defensive operations.