Deep breath moment: A lot of people have heard of Sigmund Freud, but few have heard of his brilliant daughter Anna, who has much to teach us about common defense mechanisms that the ego deploys to protect itself. As we face the possibility of a madman as a lame duck president...

I thought it would be interesting to review some of her very keen insights.

Anna Freud identified many common defense mechanism, but I want to focus on these five:

1. Denial. If the brain can deny there is a problem, then the problem doesn’t exist. Admitting the problem exists at all is to admit a need to deal with it. Think Covid-19 and what our president has done...

2. Projection. When negative feelings fester inside, some project them onto others. Instead of feeling frustrated at their own shortcomings, they accuse others of having those very issues, so they don’t have to wrestle with them. Trump is a master projectionist...

3. Regression. As children we were shielded from responsibility. Some adults, when confronted with problems, throw tantrums and act like babies. We’ve seen this in the White House. Trump solves a problem by getting upset, just like an infant does when hungry...

4. Rationalization. People come up with excuses for their bad actions, carefully structured so that they get the outcome they want and feel what they need to—that they are successful, smart, powerful. The election was rigged comes to mind. He can’t have ever lost it “fairly”...

5. Displacement. When someone has an aggressive desire for something that can’t be satisfied, they might redirect it to others who are easier to blame. Watch Trump start to blame everyone around him for this loss and begin to fire people because of it...

I’m going to keep these in mind whenever I see Trump acting dangerously defensive, to try and understand what really lies behind his belligerence, bullying and whining. There is a real danger that if we don’t properly assess his mental state we might mispredict his next actions.

So thank you, Anna Freud, for providing keen insight, passed down through generation, that continue have such relevance to our current predicament with our current denying, projecting, regressing, rationalizing, anger displacing lame duck president.