Anna Freud’s Defense Mechanisms of the Ego and the Dharma Path | The Karma Lectures, Part Three

So if the self is not fixed but formed, it begs the question then: how is it held together?

This is a transcript of a lecture delivered by Sensei Michael Brunner to his students on May 15, 2025 at One River Zen in Ottawa, IL.

That’s at the heart of tonight’s class. Last week, we traced the wheel of life and saw how the self is born link by link through karma, through clinging. And we saw how the realms and poisons aren’t some distant metaphysical notion, but inner landscapes—patterns of suffering and identity that we traverse every day. We saw how karmic momentum keeps turning the wheel of delusion, and how even our suffering becomes part of the engine that reinforces identity. Ironically, when it hurts, we cling more.

So this week, I wanted to go one level deeper. Because once that karmic self is born—once the pattern has coalesced—it doesn’t just persist on its own.

It’s a fragile, cobbled-together structure built out of many conflicting and sometimes painful elements. And it has to be protected—not only from the world, but from the parts of ourselves we don’t want to see. From the dark matter of our own experience—our memories, our impulses, our hurts—that we push to the side.

Now, there are many frameworks we could use to explore how this constructed self defends itself, but tonight we’re going to look through the lens of Anna Freud’s Defense Mechanisms of the Ego.

Anna Freud—daughter of Sigmund Freud—was a brilliant theorist in her own right. She catalogued many of the ways the ego defends itself—not just in pathology, but in the ordinary movements of life.

Let me be clear: these strategies aren’t signs of weakness. They’re tactical. They arise out of fear, shame, trauma, confusion. They are attempts to protect something that feels fragile. And often, they work. They help us survive. But over time, they can harden into barriers—barriers to connection, to clarity, to transformation.

In Buddhist terms, these are karmic grooves. Patterns of avoidance, control, and misperception. They operate unconsciously, but like all karma, they can be brought into awareness.

So tonight, we’re not trying to reject these mechanisms—we’re trying to see them clearly. Not to destroy the self, but to understand how it’s constructed. And once we see that, we can begin to construct it more skillfully, more intentionally. With awareness. With compassion. With vow.

Because while the ego protects itself, the Dharma reveals what needs no protection—our true nature.

Defense Mechanism 1: Repression

Let’s start with repression. It’s subtle, but incredibly powerful.

Repression happens when something feels too overwhelming to face—a memory, a fear, a desire, a truth. The ego tucks it away, and we forget. Not just ignore—it’s deeper than that. The thought disappears from conscious view. But not from consequence.

What is repressed doesn’t vanish. It settles into the body, into our nervous system, our reactions. It shows up in the way we act before we think. And in the Dharma, we recognize this as ignorance—not stupidity, but the turning away from what is. It’s the very first link in the chain of dependent origination.

That’s repression: the moment we close our eyes and say, “Not this.”

And we do this so automatically, so habitually, that we don’t even know we’re doing it. Until one day, our life has become rigid, narrow, and anxious, and we can’t quite name why.

But Zen doesn’t ask us to name it. It asks us to turn toward it.

Zazen isn’t doing nothing. It’s not-doing—a fierce act of presence. We stop manipulating what arises, and so what we’ve repressed begins to surface. Not because we dig for it—but because we’re no longer pushing it away.

And the Dharma says: “Bring this, too, into the light.”

We don’t free ourselves by fighting repression. We free ourselves by seeing clearly what we’ve been hiding. Not with shame. Not with analysis. Just with clarity. Just with breath.

And when we can sit with it—when we can witness what once felt unworthy or dangerous—something shifts. The fear doesn’t vanish, but it loses its grip. And we step into the truth: that nothing in us is unworthy of attention.

Defense Mechanism 2: Regression

Regression is the ego’s retreat. When the present moment becomes too painful, we fall back—not physically, but emotionally. We revert to younger, simpler versions of ourselves.

It’s not always obvious. It could look like an adult reacting to criticism like a child. Or someone feeling powerless suddenly becoming dependent, needy, or irrational. This isn’t about immaturity. It’s about vulnerability.

When the present feels like too much, we default to a version of ourselves that once helped us survive. And that version resurfaces—not because we want it to, but because it never felt fully seen. It comes up now asking not to be judged, but to be held.

Here’s where the Dharma does something extraordinary. It doesn’t say, “Snap out of it.” It gives us a space to hold all these selves, all these ages and voices, without collapsing into them. We become the one who can witness both.

Practice gives us the capacity to stay—to remain open and aware in the presence of what once overwhelmed us. This isn’t fixing the child or erasing the pain. It’s welcoming them into the field of compassion, and in doing so, integrating what once felt unbearable.

Freedom isn’t pretending we’re past it. It’s being present with it, now.

Defense Mechanism 3: Projection

Projection is one of the ego’s most effective defenses—and one of the hardest to catch in ourselves.

It works like this: when something arises in us—an impulse, a fear, a desire—that we can’t accept, we assign it to someone else. “She’s so arrogant.” “He’s so needy.” “They’re the problem.” We offload our own discomfort by seeing it “out there.”

And the ego breathes a sigh of relief. “I don’t have to feel that. I get to judge it instead.”

But the Dharma holds a mirror. It says: there is no “out there.” There’s no safe distance from your own projections. Karma doesn’t end where your skin does. And what you push away in yourself will come to meet you again and again, until you finally stop running.

Projection is karmic outsourcing. But when we pause—when we don’t know what’s arising—we can begin to trace how the pattern moves within us. And then we realize: “Oh. This anger I see in her—that’s mine. This need I can’t stand in him—that’s mine.”

This is why koan work is so powerful. It dismantles projection. A koan doesn’t care who you blame. It wants you to stand present, undefended, open to the truth without assigning it to someone else.

As Dōgen says: “When we are actualized by the ten thousand things, our body and mind, and the body and mind of others, drop away.”

When projection ceases, self and other collapse. There is just this moment, arising fully. And we meet it.

Defense Mechanism 4: Reaction Formation

Reaction formation is a complex mask. When a feeling arises that feels too dangerous—anger, lust, jealousy, fear—the ego doesn’t suppress it. It flips it.

We feel rage, but express sweetness. We feel envy, but speak admiration. We feel deep doubt, but insist we’re certain.

It’s as if the ego says, “If I can’t accept what I feel, I’ll become its opposite.”

But Zen isn’t interested in opposites. Zen is interested in what is. The harder we cling to an idealized version of ourselves, the more we hide from the truth.

This shows up all the time. The person who’s always cheerful, but inside, is exhausted. The student who speaks with perfect insight, but is terrified of being wrong. The practitioner who plays the humble role because they’re afraid of shame.

No ideology will save you. No opposite emotion will resolve the root. These are masks—and masks don’t liberate. They perform.

The moment we stop resisting what’s alive in us, the mask falls. Then, we can begin the honest, compassionate work of integration.

Defense Mechanism 5: Isolation of Affect

This defense is subtle and often mistaken for wisdom. Isolation of affect is what happens when we separate emotion from experience. We talk about a trauma. We describe a death. We list the facts—but there’s no feeling.

It can look like calm. It can sound like clarity. But something is missing.

This mechanism often helped us survive what once overwhelmed us. Sometimes, it was all we could do to keep moving. But in long-term practice, this severing becomes a habit. We gain insight without intimacy, understanding without transformation. And that’s not awakening.

This shows up even in seasoned practitioners. People who can quote the sutras, who can discuss impermanence with fluency—but who can’t tell you how it felt to lose someone they loved.

This is the danger: isolation of affect can masquerade as liberation. We think detachment is freedom. But detachment without compassion is just another mask.

And Zen isn’t calling us to float above the world. It’s calling us to enter the world fully.

If you can’t feel it, you can’t free it. And if the emotion is gone from consciousness, it still lives in the body. Or worse, it moves into our behavior, where it begins to act through us unconsciously—and others suffer the cost.

Zazen is not an emotional performance. You don’t need to cry every time you sit. But you do need to be available when the tears come. If we stay with that openness long enough, something melts. And when it does, the Dharma begins to move—not just in thought, but in your whole body.

This is not a path of knowing. It is a path of becoming. And you can’t become what you refuse to feel.

Defense Mechanism 6: Undoing

Undoing is the ego’s reset button. We do something we regret—lash out, fall short, break a vow—and instead of facing it, we try to cancel it out. Not by repair, not by reflection, but by performing its opposite.

We’re cruel, so we become excessively kind. We betray someone, so we double down on generosity. We fail, so we retreat into spiritual overcompensation.

But undoing isn’t about truth—it’s about denial. The act becomes symbolic: “See? That never happened.”

In Dharma practice, this can look like spiritual bypass. We bow harder instead of facing our anger. We chant louder instead of sitting with our grief. We over-study the texts to avoid feeling the guilt that threatens to crystallize into shame.

But the Dharma doesn’t erase karma through performance. It transforms karma through presence. Undoing is magical thinking. The Dharma is grounded in reality.

Practice asks us not to cancel the past, but to meet the present fully. Karma doesn’t disappear by pretending. It moves through us when we take responsibility.

Each word, each action, each silence shapes the path ahead—not just for us, but for everyone we touch. So when you catch yourself trying to undo, pause. Bow, if you must—but bow from truth. Not shame. Not denial. Just this moment, met completely.

Defense Mechanism 7: Introjection

Introjection is the voice in your head that isn’t yours—but sounds like it is.

It happens when we absorb external messages—rules, judgments, beliefs—without question. It’s safer, we think, to accept them than to risk disconnection.

As children, we internalize voices of authority: parents, teachers, society. Over time, those voices take root and speak with our voice. “I’m not good enough.” “I shouldn’t feel this.” “I have to be this way.”

But if you listen carefully, you’ll hear it: those aren’t your words. They’re echoes.

In Buddhist language, this is relational karma—the imprint of others’ minds on our own. It’s how dependent origination continues to unfold.

But here’s the truth: the self is not a fixed identity. It is a pattern, a process. And those patterns can be seen, questioned, and re-formed.

We mistake the voice of the critic for the voice of conscience. We act out our parents’ unfinished karma and call it our nature. But it isn’t. It’s inherited. And it can be unwound.

Practice doesn’t ask you to destroy the self. It asks you to see it clearly. To see what was taken in without discernment, and to release it.

Freedom is not just the end of clinging. It’s the end of unquestioned inheritance. You don’t need to carry what was never truly yours.

Defense Mechanism 8: Turning Against the Self

This one is particularly cruel.

Turning against the self happens when anger or aggression arises—and the ego turns it inward. Instead of expressing it, we suppress it. We blame ourselves. We judge. We shame. We self-punish.

And over time, that becomes our identity: “I am the problem.”

It can begin in childhood. A child who’s angry at a parent but can’t express it might become “the bad kid,” acting out to take on the punishment they don’t know how to articulate. As adults, we do the same—becoming overly apologetic, self-critical, chronically guilty.

And the Dharma is clear: there is no fixed self to punish. The self is impermanent, dependent, fluid. So to direct violence inward is to harm a phantom.

We think punishing ourselves will purify us. But guilt and shame are not the path. They are just more self-reference, more illusion.

Awakening is not found in self-loathing. It’s found in self-awareness.

Practice is not self-improvement. It is self-responsibility. It means facing our karma, owning our actions, and then releasing the idea of a separate self who is beyond redemption.

Compassion is not weakness. It is the tool we need to unwind the cruelty we’ve mistaken for growth.

When we stop waging war on ourselves, healing becomes possible. The river of karma flows on—but now, we move with it, not against it. We meet the wound where it began, and we offer care.

Defense Mechanism 9: Reversal

Reversal is the ego’s attempt to survive by switching roles. If we feel helpless, we become controlling. If we feel dependent, we become fiercely independent. If we fear vulnerability, we wear armor and pretend we don’t need anyone.

It’s a kind of karmic judo. The ego flips the feeling on its head. But what seems like power is still rooted in fear.

We think we’ve transcended the feeling—when all we’ve done is switch costumes.

The child who felt small becomes the adult who must dominate. The one afraid of being abandoned becomes the one who always leaves first. The spiritual student who feels unworthy becomes the zealot.

But Zen practice isn’t about becoming a better role. It’s about seeing through the roles altogether.

What you are is always evident—as long as it’s totally inclusive. You are not the child. You are not the controller. You are the one who can witness both, without clinging to either.

Reversal tells us that our original feeling is too dangerous to survive. But that’s not true. You can survive anything you’re willing to feel with full presence.

So when you find yourself overly identified with a role—teacher, helper, stoic, warrior—pause. Ask: What am I reversing? What am I hiding from?

And then breathe. Step out of the role. And see clearly that what you are has never been a role. It has always been the whole field.

Defense Mechanism 10: Sublimation

We end with sublimation. Unlike the others, this one has the potential to point us toward liberation.

Sublimation is the alchemy of the ego. It takes the raw material of our karma—anger, lust, sorrow, confusion—and channels it. Not by rejecting it. By transmuting it.

We turn rage into courage. Grief into art. Longing into service. Suffering into vow.

Nothing is wasted. Nothing is shamed. All the energy is conserved—but now it is offered, not hidden.

This is not bypass. It’s not cosmetic. It’s the real work of the Way. To transform suffering, not by fleeing it, but by making it the ground of our awakening.

It is the third Transformative Touchstone:
To Transform Suffering—not by escape, but by expression through vow, through presence, through skill.

And we cannot do that unless we also hold the first Touchstone:
To Maintain Wonder—to stay open to the unknown, to question even our most cherished strategies, to let ourselves be surprised by the Dharma.

And we can’t stop there. Because the moment we begin to choose what parts of ourselves to bring and which to leave behind, we’ve already fallen back into defense.

So we bring in the second Touchstone:
To Include Everything—every flaw, every fear, every defense, every trace of clinging. It all belongs. It all has a seat at the table.

These three together—Wonder, Inclusion, Transformation—allow us to meet the karmic bull not with fear, but with skill.

The bull, remember, is not an enemy. It is your life force. Your momentum. Your karma. You can’t kill it. You can’t tame it with delusion. But you can turn it—not through force, but through intimacy.

When you stop resisting the bull—when you bow to it, learn its rhythms, and merge with its momentum—it begins to run as you bid it. And then you are the master. Not because you’ve conquered, but because you’ve listened.

The bull still runs. But it runs in service of the Way.

These mechanisms helped you survive when you didn’t know who you were. They protected a self that hadn’t remembered its own true nature.

But now you do.

Ask yourself: Do I still need this?

Am I willing to meet this moment directly, without hiding?

Then the transformation begins.

This is the Dharma: not escape, but intimacy. Not rejection, but vow. Not perfection, but participation.

You are not broken. You are becoming.

And the way you become is the Way itself.