To set the context for talking about repression during the Congress proper, this talk will review the broader category of defence mechanisms. Defences are mechanisms of the mind that protect us from thinking or feeling things which are expected to lead to negative outcomes. These include repression, regression, reaction formation, displacement, projection, isolation, undoing, denial, identification with the aggressor, dissociation, splitting, introjection, projective identification, intellectualizing, rationalizing, sublimation, and sexualizing. This talk will briefly review, in everyday, experience-near terms, some of the central features of each of these defences. Connections will also be made to brain circuits or functions that may be related to some typical defences.

Maggie Zellner, Ph.D., is a behavioral neuroscientist and a licensed psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City. She is executive director of the Neuropsychoanalysis Foundation, and co-editor of Neuropsychoanalysis, an interdisciplinary journal for psychoanalysis and the neurosciences. Early in her psychoanalytic training she developed a deep interest in how early experience affects the emotional infrastructure of the brain. Neuropsychology seemed a natural choice for a course of study. After doctoral research on the *** system in reward learning, and postdoctoral work with Don Pfaff at The Rockefeller University, Dr Zellner developed a specialty teaching neuroscience to psychotherapists. She has a reputation for being able to describe complex information about the brain in terms anyone can understand. Dr Zellner was a curator of the exhibit Brain: The Inside Story at the American Museum of Natural History in 2010-11. Maggie is also a member of the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis (NPAP) in New York City.