ego defenses

“The Jungians tell us that we have a 45-minute window from the time we wake up before we get our ego defenses in place,” she said.

While Michael Pollan survived the dissolution of his ego defenses after ingesting psilocybin, other people with mental illness or difficulty coping with life may not be so lucky.

His quietly persuasive argument: the analysts talk of ego defenses being torn down in a psychosis, and when this happens the already anxious patient is overwhelmed.