This post was published to My College Class Notes at 3:39:25 AM 5/28/2008

Defense Mechanisms
Category

Focus Questions
What are defense mechanisms?
Defense mechanisms are the unconscious psychological processes that people develop to relieve anxiety.

MOST COMMON DEFENSE MECHANISIMS

The person tries to banish offending

desires from conscious thought to the

Repression
point of being totally unaware of the
(The Primary
original desires.
Mechanism)
(Keeping distressing thoughts and

feelings buried in the unconscious)

The person attempts to deal with a

stressful situation by claiming that the

stressor was of minimal importance

Rationalization and may even have had beneficial

effects.

(Creating false but plausible excuses to

justify unacceptable behavior)

The person unconsciously transforms

conflict and anxiety into different but

Sublimation
related desire that is more acceptable

to society and to him/her self.

The person attempts to take on the

virtues of an admired person.

Identification (Bolstering self-esteem by forming an

imaginary or real alliance with some

person or group)

Reaction Formation The person pretends to possess

 desires that are the opposite if the

desires that are causing conflict and

anxiety. (Behaving in a way that is

exactly the opposite of one’s true

feelings)
The person attributes to others the

desires or thoughts that have caused

Projection personal conflict. (attributing one’s

own thoughts, feelings, or motives to

another)
The person attempts to dispel anxiety

Denial by refusing altogether to accept

reality.
The person tries to escape the

discomfort of unwanted ideas or

Displacement
feelings by transferring them onto
Substitution
another person. (diverting emotional
Sublimination
feelings, usually anger, from their

original source to a substitute target)

The person retreats toward behaviors

that usually characterize a lower level

Regression
of maturity. ( a reversion to immature

patterns of behavior)
Introjection Identifying with some idea or object so

deeply that it becomes a part of that

person.

One example often used is when a

child envelops representational

images of his absent parents into

himself, simultaneously fusing them

 with his own personality.
Encountering failure or frustration in

some sphere of activity, one

overemphasizes another. The term is

Compensation also applied to the process of over-

Direct correcting for a handicap or limitation.

Compensation Examples: (1) a physically unattractive

Overcompensation adolescent becomes an expert dancer.

(2) a youth with residual muscle

damage from poliomyelitis becomes

an athlete. (3) Demosthenes.

(isolation). Concentrating on the

intellectual components of the

situations as to distance oneself from

the anxiety provoking emotions

associated with these situations.

Intellectualization is a defense

mechanism where reasoning is used to

block confrontation with an

Intellectualization
unconscious conflict and its associated

emotional stress. It involves removing

one's self, emotionally, from a

stressful event. Intellectualization is

often accomplished through

rationalization; rather than accepting

reality, one may explain it away to

remove one's self.

Fixation Fixation in human psychology refers to

the state where an individual becomes

obsessed with an attachment to

another human, animal or inanimate

object