Compromise Formation Between Id, Ego and Superego

So that the repressed takes to be admitted to consciousness, not to threaten the ego, returning, by deformation, which is the essential characteristic of the symptom. The compromise formation is characterized in the dream and, more generally, in any production of the unconscious that returns to the field and is threatening the conscious ego. The drives (psychical representatives returning) are then deformed by the defense, as to be unrecognizable by the ego as a defense, to protect the individual’s moral stability. In the same formation can thus be satisfied – in the same commitment – both the unconscious desire to return and the requirements of the defensive ego.
 
It is based on the study of the mechanism of obsessional neurosis, Freud stresses the idea that the symptoms are in themselves the mark of the defensive conflict that result. In New observations on the psychoneuroses of defense – and conversion hysteria (1896), indicates that the return of the repressed memory becomes so distorted representations haunting. They are “… compromise formations between the repressed representations with your sponsor (the id) and repressing (ego and superego). “

This idea of ​​commitment is quickly extended to all the symptoms, to dream and to all the productions of the unconscious. Freud states that neurotic symptoms “are the result of a conflict [...]. The two forces that broke (wish and defense) are, again, in the symptom and are reconciled, so to speak, by the commitment that represents the formation of symptoms. This is what explains the resilience of the symptom: it is supported on two sides (cleavage): I want X defense, i.e., pleases and is in the interest of both. “

Any symptomatic manifestation is always a compromise? The value of such an idea can not be contested. But there are rare case reports in which either the defense or the desire manifested so prevalent, so much so that at least at first glance, it seems to be then defenses that are in no way are contaminated by desire, that is, by that against which they operate and, conversely, a return of the repressed desire that will express it without compromise, without any action on defense. Such cases constitute the extremes of a gradient in the appointment, must be understood as a complementary series.

Examples:

§ Defense prevalent – reaction formation: extreme-investment against preventing the return of the repressed. It is characterized by extreme acts of self that make explicit the reverse of what is repressed. E.g., extreme hatred for someone, masking the intense love repressed.

§ Desire prevalent – psychosis: lack of counter-investment since it invaded the id ego.