In this podcast we go right back to basics to ask the simple question “Who am I??”. Of course Sigmund Freud had a few theories about this and so we start this podcast by taking a look at Freud’s ideas about how our ‘self’ is constructed.

We also look at the ideas that his daughter, Anna Freud, developed around the defences that we commonly put in place to protect ourselves when we’re faced with difficult experiences in life. There’s a great little video from The School of Life posted below which outlines ten of the most common ego defences. As the video rightly points out, Anna Freud wrote about defence mechanisms in a kind and gentle way, pointing out that it’s perfectly natural to use some of the defences to protect ourselves in the short term. Given what’s happening in the world at the moment we could all do with a bit of self-protection along with the awareness of how and why we might be seeking to do this.

Listen to the podcast link using the Spotify player above or by going to our Youtube channel. 

The handout accompanying this podcast can be downloaded as a PDF here or viewed as a webpage here.

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