Self Protective Devices

M just told me about an old professional hockey player ... retired and not doing too well ... taken in by a family ... putting his fists up, as he did 50 years ago, and saying that he wasn't going out without a fight ... I think his name was Larry Seidel. .............................. We all put our fists up or, else, beat ourselves. The animals are blessed with instincts and a Danger-Response system that pairs certain dangers with reactive reflexive responses. It has long been known that we members of Clan Anthropos .... we people animals ... with our ability to be aware and to reflect on dangers have a more complex set of responses .... maybe it's my species bias that has me calling them more complex? In any case they are different but still protect us from feeling endangered or "small" or emotionally vulnerable. ........... Sigmund's special child and in many ways his successor, Anna Freud, wrote a book on these protective devices called the Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense. A physicist came along -- he was also a psychoanalyst, Robert Waelder -- and said they were a mess ... confused ... any list of them, he said, would sound like "Protein, Egg, Cake" ... and then along came a Boston-trained psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, the valiant George Vaillant, who tried to organize them. All these people, in my estimation, succeeded and yet left out one such defense from their system. ....................... Anyone whose lived to Play in the Last Quarter has had the experience of folk pushing ahead of them at a traffic light, at a bank or supermarket, or just treating us as if they had rights not available to us. .............. For years, now, when I leave the house to drive, I try to bring along a piece of fruit. When I get in the car, I set the trip-meter back to zero so that I can see how long it takes for someone to express their narcissistic right to dominion over my path. I've never made it to 12 miles. I note the mileage, take a bite out of the bidden fruit, and say a little blessing: Blessed are you God, King of the Universe, who has chosen not to make me a sphinctor magnum. I then say: There goes another Sphinctor Magnum ... Go Sphinctor! ... and LOL, as we say here in cyberspace, I travel on. ............ I've begun to do the same thing in online discussions as folk accuse this oldster of simple-mindedness, self-indulgent behaviors and a host of other misdeeds. Any case, I call this the Sphinctor Magnum Defense or the A%& H*^& Defense, for short and for those who find Latin an offensive tongue! ..................... How could Sigmund have forgotten to list that defensive maneuver? I dunno.