When a human experiences “mental pain”, they can adopt a “defence” to avoid this pain. This can lead to “damaging consequences” and set up a vicious circle.

(Malan, 1979: Paraphrase of his summary points 1 and 7 on page 15).

I picture this as a self-reinforcing feedback cycle linking dread (mental pain), defence, and damage:

When this vicious cycle takes hold: (1) a stronger dread (2) increases the use of a defence against the dread, which (3) increases the damage caused by the defence, which (4) strengthens the dread, and then (5) the cycle repeats.

The Cyclic intervention

The cyclic intervention that I used in the counselling session with client Zed followed this form, when you take Zed’s dread to be his need for respect, and his defence to be gambling.

During a counselling session with my client Zed, I identified a vicious cycle that was a revelation to him. (Zed is a fictional client.)

You gamble more to feel respected – that’s when you are winning.		Damage: You lose more money & respect
	You need more respect.

During the session, we built a diagram of key parts of his story. The vicious cycle emerged from this diagram, and I summed it up, saying to him, “There is a cycle here: (1) the more you gamble to feel respected, while on winning streaks, (2) the more money you lose and the less respect you get at home and at work, so (3) the more you need respect, and (4) this throws you back to gamble more. This vicious cycle is making your life very difficult.”

The method for generating and using the cyclic intervention is critical: the page describing the example counselling session details this.

Psychodynamics

The book “Individual Therapy and the Science of Psychodynamics” (Malan, 1979, p.15) identifies central aspects of psychodynamic therapy:

• People’s consciousness of their defence mechanisms ranges from nearly fully conscious to totally unconscious. (Malan, p.15)
• People use defensive mechanisms to avoid something that they dread. (Weinberg, 1995, uses the term dread.) There are three parts to these mechanisms:
  • A hidden feeling, unacceptable impulse, mental pain, or mental conflict. (Dread)
  • Anxiety: The feared consequences of expressing the hidden feelings.
  • Defence: the way a person avoids their dread.
• The therapist analyses the client’s situation, identifies the client’s defence mechanism, and presents this analysis to the client via interpretations.
• One form of interpretation is to draw links between two parts of a defence mechanism: dread, anxiety, and defence. (Malan, p.80)
• Therapy aims to connect the patient with “as much of his true feelings as he can bear” (Malan, p.74).

Note: You can read about psychoanalyst David H Malan on Wikipedia.

Gambling as a defence

Gambling can act as a defence by recruiting multiple recognised psychodynamic defences, including:

• Denial: Refusing to accept reality, e.g., denying the damage caused by gambling to their financial situation and their relationships.
• Fantasy: Retreating into far-fetched scenarios to escape reality, e.g., Zed’s conviction that he gained respect through his gambling.
• Repression: The exclusion of distressing thoughts, feelings or conflicts from conscious awareness,
• Passive aggression: Indirect expression of hostility, e.g. a gambler losing food money to express anger towards a partner.
• Acting out: Expressing feelings through impulsive actions instead of words.
• Avoidance: Avoiding people, places, or situations linked to uncomfortable thoughts or feelings, e.g., avoiding home problems by taking time out at a gambling venue.

Some clients with gambling problems also become involved with alcohol, drugs, or criminal activity. Like gambling, these behaviours can also serve as defences against dread.

A defence as an illusory solution to a dread

Zed’s defence of gambling offered him an illusory solution to his dread: his mental pain of needing respect. When he was on a winning streak, he felt like a respected, socially successful professional gambler. He was so convinced of this that he had his symbols for gambling and respect engraved on his belt, and his face lit up with excitement when he talked about gambling. As well as gambling being an illusory solution for his dread, he had another way of shielding himself.

A defence as a distraction from a dread

Zed’s gambling shielded him from his dread in a second way: distraction. His gambling distracted him from his awareness of his dread by capturing his full attention while he:

• gambled, e.g., deciding what horse to back and urging on his horse while it raced, and
• dealt with gambling crises, e.g., coping with having no money, trying to repay debts, and stealing to fund his gambling.

My intervention linked defence and dread.

A psychodynamic intervention can link two of the three elements of Malan’s triangle of conflict, which consists of (1) hidden feelings (dread), (2) defence, and (3) anxiety, where anxiety is the “feared consequences of expressing these hidden feelings”. (Malan, p. 15, p. 18).

I have never thought of my counselling as psychodynamic therapy. Nevertheless, my cyclic intervention had one feature of a psychodynamic intervention; it linked Zed’s defence (his gambling) and his dread (his conscious mental pain of needing respect). It linked these in a way that was a revelation to the client.

Zed’s consciousness of his defence

People’s consciousness of a defence mechanism can range from nearly fully conscious to totally unconscious (Malan, p. 15).

Zed’s design on his belt showed he was fully conscious of his gambling, his desire for respect and his conviction that gambling won him respect. He was not conscious of two aspects of his gambling. He seemed to overlook how his gambling lost him respect at home and at work. Also, he found it a revelation that his gambling established a vicious cycle that escalated his gambling.

Rapport

Rapport refers to the degree of emotional connection between the patient and therapist. An increase in rapport shows that the therapist’s interpretation is appropriate, and vice versa (Malan, p. 20).

Initially, Zed seemed reluctant to be in my office. His surprising and positive response to the intervention showed that it deepened our rapport and that Zed came to value the session.

Multiple dreads

A person often has multiple hidden feelings (Malan, p. 84).

During the counselling session, I wondered about another dread that could be fuelling Zed’s gambling. During the counselling session, Zed said his mother had been suggesting that he see a doctor about his head injury, and I could see that he was fully against that idea. I wondered whether he was frightened the doctor might say there was something wrong with his head.

In this possible cycle: (1) Zed feared that something was wrong with his mind. To counter that fear, he (2) gambled more, chasing winning streaks so he could feel intelligent and in control, like a skilled professional, demonstrating there was nothing wrong with him. The increased gambling led to (3) greater damage with more losses and conflict, including his mother telling him he was “crazy” and needed to see a doctor. These consequences (4) reinforced his fear that something was wrong with his head, and then (5) the cycle repeated.

I did not mention this in the session because I thought it might have alienated Zed, but this could have been another amplifying feedback cycle that drove his gambling.

Anxiety

One of the main tasks of a psychotherapist is to understand the patient’s defence mechanisms in terms of (1) their defences, (2) anxiety, and (3) hidden feelings [dread], and to reveal this to the patient through interpretations.

Anxiety is a key concept for Malan. He describes anxiety as the feared consequences of expressing a hidden feeling (Malan, p. 15).

I would like to discuss this with someone.

When a hidden feeling is unconscious, how can a person be aware of and fear the consequences of expressing it? Perhaps, this anxiety appears as a protective warning, evidence that the person is on emotionally dangerous ground, even when they are unconscious of both the hidden feeling and the feared consequences. The expectation of danger is unconscious, learned early in life, and triggered automatically. Anxiety is the conscious experience of an unconscious prediction of danger.

Another way of thinking about anxiety is in relation to fear. Fear is a useful response to a recognised threat. Anxiety, by contrast, involves similar physical arousal but without an identified threat. (Anxiety can also arise when a threat is possible or anticipated.)

Here are three ways of incorporating anxiety into this framework.

*** The vicious defence cycle produces anxiety.

The first way uses the already described vicious cycle linking dread, defence, and damage, and considers that anxiety is a response to this cycle.

A self-reinforcing cycle, linking dread, defensive behaviour, and damage, can come to dominate a person’s life. When this happens, a real but unrecognised threats exist. They are unaware of: (1) the underlying dread, (2) the defensive function of their behaviour, (3) the driver of their persisting damaging behaviour, and (4) the vicious cycle that is escalating their difficulties. As the damage accumulates with no seeming threat, the result is a free-floating fear response. The vicious cycle transforms dread into diffuse anxiety.

Here, anxiety is not part of the vicious cycle, but the cycle generates the anxiety.

*** Include “anxiety” in the vicious cycle.

Proposing that dread leads to anxiety seems consistent with Malan’s description of anxiety as “the feared consequences of expressing a hidden feeling [dread]”. This suggests considering the following cycle.

When this cycle is dominant: (1) increased dread (2) increases anxiety, which (3) increases use of the defence, to temporarily reduce the anxiety, which (4) increases the damage caused by the defence, which (4) increases the dread, and then (5) the cycle repeats.

My concern about his cycle is that the purpose of the defence is to suppress consciousness of the dread, so the strong causal link is between dread and the defence.

*** Combine “dread and anxiety” in the diagram

Another possibility is:

When this cycle is dominant: (1) dread and anxiety lead to (2) greater reliance on defence against the dread, which leads to (3) increased damage, which leads to (4) greater dread and anxiety, and then (5) the cycle repeats.

Psychodynamic defences as vicious cycles

Standard psychodynamic defences can form a vicious cycle. Here are two examples.

Denial

The defence of denial readily forms a vicious cycle.

When this denial cycle dominates, (1) an increase in a problematic behaviour, say gambling, leads to (2) greater shocks caused by the gambling. The shocks can briefly pause the gambling; however, when they return to gambling, they (3) increase their ability to deny the impact of these gambling shocks, (4) increase their gambling, and then (5) the cycle repeats.

Projection of hostility

The defence of projection can also generate a vicious self-reinforcing cycle. Projection occurs when a person experiences an impulse, feeling, or trait that they find unacceptable, disowns it, and attributes it to someone else. Consider the hypothetical example of Peter.

When this vicious cycle takes hold, (1) Peter’s dread is that he cannot accept his own feelings of hostility toward others. For him, hostility is wrong and dangerous. He (2) increasingly projects his hostility onto others, perceiving others as hostile toward him. He becomes more hypervigilant, suspicious, and emotionally guarded, scanning for signs of threat. Increasingly, when he anticipates hostility, he withdraws pre-emptively to protect himself. His behaviour (3) increasingly damages his relationships with others. Others grow irritated by his guardedness and distance and respond with annoyance, withdrawal, or rejection. Their reactions confirm Peter’s expectations. He interprets their reactions as unprovoked hostility directed at him, which, for him, confirms that hostility is wrong and dangerous. This confirmation (4) increases the dread of his own hostility, and (5) the escalating cycle repeats. Over time, the defence that initially protected Peter from confronting his own hostility reproduces the very hostility he fears.

Wind up

Psychodynamic defences can be understood as self-reinforcing feedback cycles linking dread (mental pain), defences, and damage caused by the defence.

A person feels anxiety, which signals the anticipated danger of an emerging feeling or dread; they adopt a defence to contain that danger, yet this often causes damage that exacerbates their dread.

The cyclic interventions I used in counselling, for example, my work with client Zed, are consistent with psychodynamic concepts. They can be an effective way to uncover the dynamics driving the client’s presenting problem and to increase rapport.

Counselling Pages & References

The introduction to my counselling pages includes:

• Links to the other counselling pages, including those describing how this approach relates to other counselling practices and theories, see the top of the introduction page
• References for all the counselling pages, at the end of the introduction page.

Loaded 6 Dec 2025; Updated 4 March 2026.