Offence Mechanisms in Relationships

• George: “You can sit around with the gin running out of your mouth; you can humiliate me; you can tear me to pieces all night, that's perfectly okay, that's all right.”
• Martha: “You can stand it!”
• George: “I cannot stand it!”
• Martha: “You can stand it. You married me for it!”

(Dialogue from the film: “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf’)

In relationships, offence mechanisms are believed to be the opposite of Freud’s idea of defence mechanisms. While defence mechanisms are put in place to decrease feelings of internal conflict, offence mechanisms are put in place to increase external conflict. In relationships, both mechanisms are designed to separate oneself from the negative effects that are being felt from others (1).

The defence mechanism is an avoidance strategy that separates one from experiencing unpleasant events, actions or thoughts. The offence mechanism is an approach strategy that separates one from unpleasant relations through creating an escalation of unpleasant events, actions or thoughts (2 & 3).

Apter's book The Dangerous Edge: The Psychology of Excitement supports the concept of offence mechanisms as a possible means of separation from unpleasant relations through an escalation of excitement and high arousal. Ultimately, the most severe offence mechanisms arising in relationships could result in situations that could lead to the possible abuse of others. How do offence mechanisms evolve in relationships?

Detachment

Detachment allows an individual to participate in what is going on, but only as an observer. The detachment can be manifest physically, mentally, or emotionally. The detachment features putting others at risk while standing back at a distance, as an observer of the action.

This state is similar to what happens at a potentially violent sporting event. We can attend the boxing match, car racing event, rugby match, as merely an observer of the action. Should injury occur, we are safely detached from any of the negative effects of the action. The risk of injury may even heighten our pleasure of the experience. Horror films are another example of how being detached allows us to enjoy even gruesome scenes that we enjoy willingly because we are safe and they are not happening to us.

Offence mechanisms occur in a state of detachment. The damage inflicted by our speech or actions is not experienced as negative because we are separated through our detachment. The offence mechanism provides protection through detachment, which is not dissimilar from the protection of defence mechanisms. However, this occurs in a totally opposite direction, externally rather than internally. The objective is to inflict insult or abuse to create distance from the other. Substance abuse potentially promotes an individual’s ability to detach more often and more severely.

Make-Believe

A severe form of detachment associated with offence mechanisms is make-believe or fantasy. The pseudo-self is a great place to hide. Events, pre and post, can be manufactured in fantasy. When fantasy becomes necessary reality has been lost.

In the film “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf”, Liz Taylor and Richard Burton create a make-believe child. The fantasy becomes so real that they both maintain the fiction to avoid the reality of being childless. The film eventually escapes the fantasy child when George, Richard Burton, says: “I killed him”. In other words, he let go of the fantasy.

George only kills the fantasy child to hurt Martha, Liz Taylor, who wants to hang on to the fantasy. This is another example of the use of an offence mechanism to create the separation that George needs.

Martha creates her own separation from George by sleeping with their guest, Nick, husband of Honey who is also a guest for the night. The offence mechanisms in the movie come to a head with a game called “get the guests”. This turns into out and out war to create a large chasm between the guests and the hosts, which leads to a rapid end to the night.

Game Playing

Martha: “George, my husband... George, who is out somewhere there in the dark, who is good to me - whom I revile, who can keep learning the games we play as quickly as I can change them. Who can make me happy and I do not wish to be happy. Yes, I do wish to be happy. George and Martha: Sad, sad, sad. Whom I will not forgive for having come to rest; for having seen me and having said: yes, this will do.”

The sad part of offence mechanisms is the negative ramifications of using them long term. Game playing would appear to be one of the possible outcomes of resorting to these mechanisms of protection. Like any zero-sum outcome, someone always loses even if someone wins temporarily. Based on the characters of George and Martha in the film nobody wins in the end.