I’m new to studying psychology. My understanding is that the stronger a person’s defense mechanisms are, like projecting, blame-casting, etc. the stronger the ego. Am I correct in thinking that? Does having a strong ego mean being less connected with your id? What does having a strong ego actually mean? Does it mean that the person wants to protect themselves from instances that trigger past traumatic memories and therefore they build up strong defense mechanisms?
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Caveat: It’s been a while since I studied psychology as part of my cognitive science degree. While I’m fairly confident in how I use these words, I’m not positive my definition of terms necessarily line up with how they are used in the study of psychology. Keep that in mind (and feel free to correct me if I misuse anything).
My understanding of defense mechanisms is that they’re a way of avoiding pain. Everyone depends on having some defense mechanisms, but some people have defense mechanisms that kick in sooner, cover a wider range of scenarios or filter out pain more strictly (e.g. someone who completely rejects a painful truth vs. someone who partially accepts it). I would call this having *strong* defense mechanisms, and my understanding is that this suggests a *fragile* ego, not a strong one. Because their ego (their sense of identity and self-worth) is fragile (can’t tolerate pain well), they need stricter, stronger defense mechanisms to protect it.
For example, consider someone who can’t tolerate criticism, treating any and all criticism as hostility. This would suggest someone whose sense of self-worth would be unduly harmed by accepting the criticism; perhaps they’ve been made to feel worthless over their mistakes in the past (which could have been traumatic for them, as you mentioned trauma), or perhaps they’ve built up a self-image of being perfect. As a result, they’ve developed the defense mechanism of casting any criticism as an attack, allowing them to ignore whatever truth it may contain. Thus, a strong defense mechanism suggests a weak ego. Someone with more confidence (and thus a stronger ego) could accept the criticism (and pain of acknowledging their faults) without needing to shelter their ego from it.
I think you may thinking of the idea of someone being egotistical or “having a big ego.” But a big ego is not necessarily a strong ego; if that egotism/big ego is a defense mechanism to protect themselves, then ironically it could be a sign of someone who has a fragile/weak ego. Someone who needs to be seen as “important” or “above criticism” may be attempting to compensate for the fact that they don’t actually have a strong sense of self-worth. Their egotism may be a way of both attempting to garner external validation to compensate for their lack of self-validation (as they expect people to accept their “important” status to validate it), as well as a way of keeping people at a distance to shelter their fragile ego from any kind of turmoil/upset.
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