摘要：This paper attempts to analyze Blanche＇s psyche in relation to her employing defense mechanism to restore her mental health and herself in A Streetcar Named Desire （1947） by the American playwright Tennessee Williams. It focuses on her replacing reality with fantastic embodiments or illusion. She has taken unacceptable impulses into acceptable forms by unconsciously blocking the impulses such as superego and thereby reducing agony for the earlier traumatic experiences left indelible marks on her mind, and anxiety for survival. Her anxiety becomes too overwhelming that her ego urgently employs defense mechanisms to protect her. With her new hopes and dreams she desires to replace the highly stressful loss. Under mental and social stress, her illusion and her falsification of reality nevertheless became unable to overcome recurring trauma-causing situation in reality and her healing process thereby leaving her on the verge of extinction.

摘要：This paper attempts to demonstrate Hester Prynne＇s, in Nathaniel Hawthorne＇s romantic work of fiction The Scarlet Letter （1994）, sublimation of her sexual impulses into identifying with the socially acceptable humanitarian actions, and societal demands in order to avoid the confrontation with the scorn of the people of Boston, her sexual urge, and with her weakness. Hester＇s libidinal energy was channeled into socially approved activities in her self-devoted years that made up her identity and reality. The scarlet letter ceased to be a stigma which once attracted the world＇s scorn and bitterness, later looked upon with reverence, and transformed into a thing to be sorrowed over. She had not ignored a large part of reality of her life （the past and present）. If she ignored her past she would entirely detach it from the present. She integrated her stigma into her life in the continual process of self-making, and thereby projecting herself into the future