Defense Mechanisms of the Ego

François-Marie Arouet (1694-1778) known by his mom de plume Voltaire, was a French Enightenment writer, historian and philosopher sais it, ->

According to Isaac Asimov  (born 1920 Petrovichi, Soviet Russia - died, April 6, 1992 in NY) the classic dilemma is that religious moderates and scientists do not argue to force everyone to follow the dictates of science, but in almost all (now also high) societies and nations, religious fundamentalists strive to force their beliefs on all and make disagreement illegal.

Imagine the people who believe such things and who are not ashamed to ignore, totally, all the patient findings of thinking minds through all the centuries since the Bible was written. 

According Asimov there are these ignorant people, the most uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among us, who would make themselves the guides and leaders of us all: who would force their feeble and childish beliefs on us; who would invade our schools and libraries and homes.

The true enemy may be the substitution of thought, reflection, and curiosity with dogma.

This influence is Mephistophelean, said Rudolf Steiner, even though dogmatists fear devils: they have dogmatized it into a spiritless image that, in reality, serves the needs of darkness.

Anna Freud (1895-1982) addressed one particular problem (by her work The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence that is with the ways and means by which the ego wards off unpleasure and anxiety, and exercises control over impulsive behavior, affects, and instinctive urges. 

Anna Freud, daughter of Sigmund Freud, was a very brilliant theorist in her own right. 

She catalogued many of the ways the ego defends itself—not just in pathology, but also in the ordinary movements of life.

See that Anna Freud’s Defense Mechanisms of the Ego and the Dharma Path.

According to Eckhart Tolle (Ulrich Leonard Tölle, born 1948) we can stop this cycle of ego-defence by stepping out of your thoughts, becoming the silent observer of our mind, and anchoring our awareness purely in the present moment.

To understand the core teachings of Tolle on anxiety, we have to recognize one fundamental truth: individuals are not your anxiety, and are not the voice in our head.