Fairbairns notion of the moral defense so what does

Fairbairn's Notion of the "Moral Defense":
So what does the child do in a situation perceived as "bad"?
Fairbairn explains that one of the ways we may survive the
presence of what he calls bad object relations is to employ the
"moral defense" against bad objects. If we experience bad object
relations, we cannot stay in this state for too long. We cannot have
a situation as children in which we deem our care givers as "bad"
since this would be life-threatening: if they are bad and our life
depends on them, we are in big trouble! So we solve this dilemma
by splitting the badness from the care giver, and become all bad
ourselves thereby making them all good. By bearing the burden of
badness, we preserve the idealized good object out there and we
no longer feel our life is threatened. The price we pay for this
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solution, however, is a bad self-feeling. Nevertheless, it is a price
we are willing to pay since the alternative is too terrifying. "Outer
security is thus purchased at the price of inner security" (Fairbairn
1943, 65).
All of this happens out of our awareness. It is the unconscious and
creative solution of the child who needs to survive; and this
defensive mechanism can be employed mildly or intensely,
depending on the severity of the perceived bad object. This
strategy can in some cases be carried into our adult relationships,
or it can be employed again in adult relationships that reenact
situations of bad object relations similar to the childhood
experience described by Fairbairn. While the child may not have
any other options than to employ the moral defense, the adult in
most cases will have more choices, though they may be very
difficult for the person to see. From a psychoanalytic perspective,
using the moral defense as an adult is ultimately not healthy. Any
time we have to split off the bad and deal with it by either
introjecting it (as Fairbairn describes) or projecting it (as we will
see is Klein's view) we weaken ourselves. The challenge, then, for
the one who solves the problem of external badness by introjecting
it will be to find a way to let the badness be out there; and the
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challenge for the one who projects internal badness will be to take
back the projection.
Daniel Shaw, a psychoanalyst, was a member for more than 10
years of Siddha Yoga, a religious group he will talk about in his
paper you will read. He left the group in 1994, became one of the
founding members of "Leaving Siddha Yoga," went to graduate
school to study social work, became a psychoanalyst, and wrote
articles about his experience from a psychoanalytic perspective.
Shaw talks about how adults in an abusive situation introject the
bad in order to maintain connection with the abusive leader.