Collective Defense Mechanisms

Despite being an uncommon topic in sociological inquiry, collective defense mechanisms are a widely known phenomenon in social life. Whenever people experience anxieties in common, shared defensive processes can arise at an unconscious level, shunting off these anxieties from reflective awareness. This can happen in social and organizational settings that are intimate and impersonal, small and large, short-lived and enduring. How can we better theorize collective defenses and their role in the s