Defence mechanisms in medical students: An Australian perspective.

ObjectiveMedical students' entry and adaptation to the health system represents a unique psychological challenge. To operate successfully within a hospital's institutional culture, they must learn its unspoken rules and their place in its hierarchy. Such a transition is complicated by anxieties inherent to being in the hospital, a place where disease can end in death rather than discharge. In defence against these anxieties, medical students deploy a range of individually and institutionally preferred defence mechanisms. This article will provide a psychoanalytical account of these defences an