Psychodynamic Practice

Individuals, Groups and Organisations

ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rpco20

A new defence mechanism in the modern world:

flowing

Oğuzhan Herdi

To cite this article: Oğuzhan Herdi (2023) A new defence mechanism in the modern world:
flowing, Psychodynamic Practice, 29:2, 154-158, DOI: 10.1080/14753634.2022.2127553

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14753634.2022.2127553

Published online: 22 Sep 2022.

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Psychodynamic Practice, 2023
Vol. 29, No. 2, 154–158, https://doi.org/10.1080/14753634.2022.2127553

OPEN SPACE
A new defence mechanism in the modern world: flowing
Oğuzhan Herdi

Department of Clinical Psychology, Antalya Bilim University, Antalya, Turkey

Defence mechanisms have always been a part of psychoanalytic theories since Anna
Freud published her book in 1936. However, in developing technology and increas­
ing social communication platforms, new defence mechanisms could be emerging.
In this paper, a new defence mechanism termed flowing is proposed. Flowing is
a neurotic level defence mechanism and it consists of unconsciously accessing
social media applications and quickly passing the presented contents without con­
scious attention to temporarily relieve mental distress. Flowing, a suggested and
emerging defence mechanism in the modern world, is proposed and discussed.
Social media has become an essential element of our daily life. Existing
social media platforms maintain their existence by adding new content, there is
an exponential increase in the number of new platforms. While some of these
platforms are used for finding friends and/or chatting, others give an opportunity
to share photos, conduct a poll, meet with celebrities, with live feeds. These
platforms are accessed for a variety of reasons according to their users' (psy­
chological) preferences.
However, there is an impulsive as well as short attention span issue with
using these platforms. It is less an issue than a behaviour. I term this behaviour
as flowing. Flow means the flow of, and subsequently algorithmically presented,
content shared by users. Flowing is opening the app, especially on smartphones,
without giving detailed attention to what content is sliding by, with a finger
movement. Flowing has two features. One is that an individual sometimes uses
flowing unconsciously, and the other feature is that an individual does not give
attention to images or text. Certain individuals use these platforms actively and
give attention to topics or content which attract them. However, their social
media platforms-related behaviour is not flowing. When an individual makes use
of flowing, he/she takes hıs/her smartphone into hıs/her hand, opens the app
without saying ‘Now, I’ll open my app and look at content”, and then passes the
contents without giving it any detailed attention. Although this behaviour
appears non-purposeful, I believe it has an important purpose: reducing anxiety.

Corresponding author. Oğuzhan Herdi Oguzhan.herdi@antalya.edu.tr

© 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

 Psychodynamic Practice 155
Anxiety is an indispensable part of existence; it will vanish with death. We,
as humans, have developed some defence mechanisms to cope with anxiety.
Although these mechanisms do not eliminate our anxiety, they help make life
liveable. The mechanisms that were presented in detail by Anna Freud (A.
Freud, 2018) had been raised by her father (Freud, 2014). The psychic apparatus,
in the structural modal, has three parts: id, ego, and superego, whose borders are
vague and have different features. Defence mechanisms are the most important
weapon of the ego to soothe the anxiety arousing from the conflict between id
and superego. Defence mechanisms have particular features. First, they cannot
be used consciously and they cannot produce a certain solution. Moreover, while
these mechanisms protect the self to a certain level, if they are over, or
dysfunctionally, used, they can have negative consequences. It was first sug­
gested by Vaillant that defence mechanisms have a hierarchical order and he
divided them into four groups: pathological, immature, neurotic and mature
defences (Vaillant, 1971). Although this division maintains its validity, I would
suggest a three levelled-order. Hierarchical order is made according to how
primitive a defence is, which means to what extent it belongs to earlier pre-
oedipal periods of development. These three defence levels are immature,
neurotic and mature. Immature defences divide into two: depressive and non-
depressive. Reflection, reflective identification, idealisation, devaluation, and
omnipotence are examples of immature defences. Defence mechanisms at the
immature level are frequently used by individuals whose personality organisa­
tions are at the psychotic or borderline level. The neurotic level defences at
a higher level are divided into two: obsessional and neurotic. Displacement,
dissociation, repression, intellectualisation, undoing, and isolation are examples
of neurotic level defences. At the highest level, there are mature defences.
Sublimation, altruism, humour, and suppression, are examples of mature
defences. Although mature defences are aimed to deal with anxiety, they do
this in a way which is the most compatible with reality and the world.
I propose that flowing is a defence mechanism which has emerged in the
modern world. A comprehensive presentation of defence mechanisms by Anna
Freud was published in 1936, and Vaillant made his division in 1971. In 1988
Kernberg made his contributions with his research related to borderline person­
ality organisation (Kernberg, 1988). Readers will see that opinions, research, and
writings related to defence mechanisms belong to the pre-social media age. My
contention is that we need to incorporate the social media age into our thinking
about defences. In this paper, I propose that the modern world could reveal new
defence mechanisms and one of them is flowing. Why is flowing a defence
mechanism? As mentioned above, flowing is exhibited unconsciously. An indi­
vidual takes the smartphone in his/her hand, opens the app and starts sliding the
contents shown on the screen. Although each step of flowing seems goal-
directed behaviour, actually it is not. The individual is aware of taking their
156 O. Herdi
smartphone in their hands but does not do so with the intention of ‘I have to pick
my phone up’. They open the app but do not think that ‘Now, I’ll open the social
media app’ and this unintentional attitude is valid for sliding content. The
individual sometimes becomes aware of what they are doing, however, most
of the time they go on if the flowing is not interrupted by an external stimulus.
Another feature that I observe in the people around me is that individuals exhibit
flowing when they feel distressed. For example, they do flowing when their
minds are busy with a current concern, they do not want to do obligatory actions,
such as studying or doing homework, or they feel distressed and do not under­
stand the source of the distress. In other words, they do flowing to soothe their
anxiety. Flowing does not provide an exact solution, it is used to deal with
anxiety at that particular moment and is soothing. When flowing is over-used, it
is no longer adaptive. As a result of wasting time the individual could feel more
distressed due to wasted time. It can also disturb relational socialisation when it
is over-used. In other words, the person using a flowing defence can have
difficulty integrating with the social environment. Equally when individuals
feel they are not enjoying their social environment, they pick their smartphones
up and begin flowing in their social media apps.
Flowing seems to be a neurotic level defence. It tends to be used by
individuals with neurotic personality organisation or neurotic disorders.
I believe that further research will illuminate this. The answer to the question
of why is flowing a distinct defence? is that flowing does not resemble any other
defences. If we accept the hypothesis that flowing is a neurotic level defence, we
can compare flowing with other defence mechanisms. Di Giuseppe et al. pre­
sented defence mechanisms hierarchically in their recent paper (di Giuseppe &
Perry, 2021). Defences at the neurotic level are divided into neurotic defences
and obsessional defences. We can compare the two neurotic defences displace­
ment and reaction-formation. Displacement is the re-directing of an emotion or
desire from the actually related object to a more irrelevant one. An example is
when a person who gets angry with his boss at work comes home and directs this
anger towards his partner. If we compare it with flowing, the distress is not taken
from the environment or taken from another object and directed to the device
used. On the contrary, the person relieves his distress by exhibiting this beha­
viour, but there is no feeling or impulse directed towards the phone or the
content that is passed quickly. Reaction-formation is exhibiting an attitude
which is the opposite of the emotion or desire felt. It is obvious that there is
no similarity between flowing and reaction-formation. At a higher level, there
are repression and dissociation. In flowing, the emotion or desire is not unin­
tentionally pushed into the unconscious as in repression. Dissociation is disrupt­
ing one’s sense of continuity in the areas of identity, memory, consciousness, or
perception as a way of retaining an illusion of psychological control in the face
of helplessness and loss of control(Griffith, 2015). Dissociation may be the most
 Psychodynamic Practice 157
similar defence to flowing. The individual could be oblivious to time and space
when flowing. Moreover, in over-usage of flowing, the individual could be
unaware of how much time had passed while flowing. However, there is an
important difference between dissociation and flowing. In dissociation, but not
in flowing, it is difficult to integrate dissociated content with the rest of the
psyche. At the neurotic obsessional defence level, there are isolation, undoing,
and intellectualisation. There is neither separation of emotional content from
intellectual content, nor undoing, in flowing. In flowing, using excessive and
abstract ideation to avoid difficult feelings and urges is not possible, as in
intellectualisation. As mentioned above, none of the defences at the neurotic
level is similar to flowing. Primitive defences usually point out a disintegrated
ego. For example, in splitting, projection, projective identification or denial
(sometimes dissociation is accepted as a primitive defence) a part of the self,
or a part of another’s self, detaches from the rest of the self and the detached part
is ignored or projected out. However, flowing is not similar to primitive
defences. If we look at mature defences, flowing is not similar to sublimation
nor humour. In sublimation, the individual transforms socially objectionable or
internally unacceptable feelings and desires into socially acceptable ones, like art
or music. However, over-usage of flowing is socially unacceptable and the
individual who uses excessive levels of flowing usually disconnects from social
environments. It is also unlike suppression, which is conscious repression.
Therefore, it is not similar to other defence mechanisms.
As a result, flowing could be a new defence mechanism created by the
developing technology and the modern world. It is not unreasonable that new
defence mechanisms may emerge in a virtual and a social media driven world.
The speed at which technology, and what it brings, is influencing human life
affects the ability of individuals and groups to process it. Social technology may
influence dynamic psychology and bring forth new forms of functioning.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

ORCID
Oğuzhan Herdi http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0101-2663

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