"DEFENSE MECHANISMS.

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1 DEFENSE MECHANISMS

2 HistoryFreud began rudimentary investigations into the nature of Ego defense

mechanisms in several of his works.The first comprehensive study of defense
mechanisms was reported by Freud’s daughter Anna Freud in her landmark work,
The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense (1937).Anna Freud expanded her
father’s work by providing detailed descriptions of a number of individual
defense mechanisms.

3 Basic ConceptsIn Sigmund Freud’s topographical model of personality, the

Ego is the aspect of personality that deals with reality.While doing this, the Ego
also has to cope with the conflicting demands of the Id and the Superego. The Id
seeks to fulfill all wants, needs, and impulses, while the Superego tries to get
the Ego to act in an idealistic and moral manner.According to Freud, if you have
a healthy Ego, you should be able to balance the Id and Superego without using
defense mechanisms.What happens when the Ego cannot deal with the demands
of one’s desires, the constraints of reality, or the demands of one’s own moral
standards? Anxiety acts as a signal to the Ego that things are not going right.
Anxiety comes in the form of fear or anger (from the Id) or the form of sadness,
guilt, or shame (from the Superego).

4 Basic ConceptAccording to Freud, anxiety is an unpleasant inner state that

people seek to avoid.When anxiety occurs, the mind first responds by an
increase in problem-solving thinking, seeking rational ways of escaping the
situation.If this is not fruitful, the Ego has some tools it can use in its job as the
mediator—tools that help defend the Ego from anxiety. These tools are called
Ego Defense Mechanisms. They help shield the Ego from the anxiety-producing
conflicts created by the Id, Superego, and reality.They are mostly involuntary—
that is, they operate in the unconscious mind.

5 Basic Concept

6 Acting OutActing out occurs when an individual deals with emotional

conflicts or stressors by actions rather than reflections or feelings.When a
person acts out, it can act as a pressure release, and often helps the individual
feel calmer and peaceful once again. The Id gets to vent its emotional pressure
without Superego’s constraints.Examples:1) Instead of saying, “I’m angry with
you,” a person who acts out may instead throw a book at the person.2) For
instance, a child’s temper tantrum is a form of acting out when he or she doesn’t
get his or her way with a parent.3) Self-injury may also be a form of acting out,
expressing in physical pain what one cannot stand to feel emotionally.
7 DenialDenial is the process of escaping from unpleasant realities by ignoring
their existence.The Ego makes the unpleasant emotions that occur in response
to reality go away by pretending the reality does not exist. These unpleasant
emotions come from the Id or the Superego.Many people use denial in their
everyday lives to avoid dealing with painful feelings or areas of their life they
cannot accept.Examples:1) Patient denies that his physician’s diagnosis of
cancer is correct and keeps seeking another opinion.2) Alcoholics vigorously
deny that they have a problem.

8 RepressionRepression is the exclusion of unpleasant or unwanted

experiences, emotions, or ideas from conscious awareness.The Ego protects
itself by placing the unpleasant or unwanted experiences (reality) or emotions
and ideas (from the Id or Superego) in the unconscious mind.The level of
“forgetting” in repression can vary from a temporary dismissal of uncomfortable
thoughts to a high level of amnesia, where events that caused the anxiety are
consciously forgotten.Repression is only partially effective, because the
unpleasant emotions often will return when the unwanted experience or idea is
encountered again.

9 RepressionRepression is not all bad. If all uncomfortable memories were

easily brought to mind we would be faced with the unceasing pain of reliving
them.Examples:1) A child who is abused by a parent later has no recollection of
the events, but has trouble forming relationships.2) A man has a phobia of
snakes but cannot remember the first time he was afraid of them.3) The cancer
victim does not even remember going to the doctor and receiving a cancer
diagnosis, but is too afraid to ever visit the doctor again.

10 DisplacementDisplacement is the transfer of emotions associated with a

particular person, object, or situation to another person, object, or situation that
is nonthreatening.It occurs when the Id wants to do something which the
Superego does not permit. The Ego thus finds some safer way of releasing the
psychic energy of the Id (often anger).Examples:1) The boss gets angry and
shouts at a person. He goes home and shouts at his wife. She then shouts at
their son. With nobody left to displace anger onto, the son goes and kicks the
dog.2) A man wins the lottery. He turns to the person next to him and gives the
person a big hug.

11 RationalizationJustifying illogical or unreasonable ideas, actions, or feelings

by developing acceptable explanations that satisfy the teller as well as the
listener.When a person does something of which the moral Superego disapproves
(through feelings of guilt or shame), the Ego defends itself by explaining the
behavior in a way that the Superego will accept.Examples:1) A parent cruelly
punishes a child and says that it is for the child’s own good.2) A person evades
paying taxes and then rationalizes it by talking about how the government
wastes money (and how it is better for people to keep what they can).
12 ProjectionProjection occurs when an unacceptable feeling, impulse, or idea
is attributed to another person or thing.It is the Ego’s way of dealing with
unacceptable feelings, desires, or ideas in a way that allows it to evade the
Superego’s judgment (and the feelings of sadness, guilt, or shame).Neurotic
projection is perceiving others as operating in ways one unconsciously finds
objectionable in yourself.Complementary projection is assuming that others
behave, think and feel in the same way that you do.

13 ProjectionProjection is a common attribute of paranoia, where people

project dislike of themselves onto others, so they believe that most other people
dislike them.Projection helps justify unacceptable behavior. For example,
whereExamples:1) An unfaithful husband suspects his wife of infidelity.2) A man
does not like another person. But he has a value that says he should like
everyone. So he projects onto that person that she does not like him. This allows
him to avoid her and also to avoid his own feelings of disliking another person.3)
An aggressive person claims that she is only sticking up for herself by claiming
that everyone else is being aggressive.

14 RegressionRegression involves taking on the point of view of a child in some

problematic situation, rather than acting in a more adult way.The Ego is avoiding
the unpleasant emotions that the Id or Superego generate in response to a
situation.Examples:1) A person who suffers a mental breakdown assumes a fetal
position, rocking and crying.2) A child suddenly starts to wet the bed after years
of not doing so (a typical response to the arrival of a new sibling).3) A adult
patient makes childish demands and becomes dependent on the nurse for care
that he could do for himself.

15 Reaction FormationReaction formation occurs when a person feels an urge

to do or say something unacceptable and then does or says the opposite of what
they really want.When a person desires something of which the moral Superego
disapproves (through feelings of guilt or shame), the Ego defends itself by
channeling the energy of the unacceptable desire into its opposite, so the
Superego will accept it.Examples:1) A person who is angry with a colleague
actually ends up being particularly courteous and friendly towards them.2) A
homosexual whose Superego believes homosexuality is morally wrong become
an outspoken, if not violent, homophobe.

16 DissociationDissociation is the involuntary splitting or suppression of

mental functions from rest of the personality.The Ego avoids unpleasant
experiences, desires, or memories that provoke fear or anger (from the Id) or
sadness, guilt, and shame (from the Superego) by disconnecting from the
personality that is experiencing the painful emotions.Examples:1) People who
have a history of any kind of childhood abuse often suffer from some form of
dissociation. Any situation that might be similar to the original trauma might
make them automatically go to their mental happy place.
17 Dissociation More Examples:
2) A person’s Ego avoids the fear caused by a traumatic experience by
disconnecting from the traumatized personality and living in another personality
(“Multiple Personality Disorder”).3) A man’s Superego provokes such strong
feelings of guilt and shame when he want to be a cross-dresser, that his Ego is
forced to accommodate the strong desire by creating a separate cross- dresser
personality.

18 UndoingUndoing is the attempt to take back an unconscious behavior or

thought that is unacceptable or hurtful.A person tries to “undo” an unhealthy,
destructive or otherwise threatening thought by engaging in contrary
behavior.For instance, after realizing you just insulted your significant other
unintentionally, you might spend then next hour praising their beauty, charm and
intellect.By “undoing” the previous action, the person is attempting to
counteract the damage done by the original comment, hoping the two will
balance one another out. A teenager who feels guilty about masturbation ritually
touches door knobs a prescribed number of times following each occurrence of
the act.

19 SublimationSublimation is the transformation of unwanted impulses into

something less harmful. This can simply be a distracting release or may be a
constructive and valuable piece of work.Sublimation is probably the most useful
and constructive of the defense mechanisms as it takes the energy of something
that is potentially harmful and turns it to doing something good and useful.Freud
believed that the greatest achievements in civilization were due to the effective
sublimation of our sexual and aggressive urges that are sourced in the Id and
then channeled by the Ego, as directed by the Superego.Examples:1) An angry
man does push-ups to work off his temper.2) A person who has an obsessive
need for control and order becomes a successful business entrepreneur.

20 IntellectualizationIntellectualization is a form of thinking, where a person

avoids uncomfortable emotions by focusing on facts and logic. The situation is
treated as an interesting problem that engages the person on a rational basis,
while the emotional aspects are completely ignored as being irrelevant.Example:
A person who is deeply in debt builds a complex spreadsheet of how long it
would take to repay using different payment options and interest
rates.Intellectualization protects against anxiety by repressing the emotions
connected with an event.

21 SplittingViewing of self or others as either all good or all bad without

considering the whole range of qualities—thinking in extremes. Splitting helps to
preserve one’s own “good” self-image by splitting all the bad parts and projecting
them onto another (usually weaker) person or group. Splitting accounts for how
scapegoating and persecution occur.Examples:1) Seeing all people without
mustaches as feminine.2) Believing personalities as the hero is all good and the
villain all bad.

22 Anxiety: When repression proves to be inadequate, previously contained

primitive instinctual urges threaten to come to expression and this threat
creates the sense of apprehension characteristics of anxiety.Phobia: Through
the mechanism of displacement a phobia replaces anxiety. Regression is
inherent as phobia involves return to primitive mode of thought through which
child copes with his own threatening impulses.Mania : Denial is the defense
mechanism characteristic of mania. When denial is threatened patient may then
resort to Projection - attributing his own anger to others Regression- return to
the magical thinking characteristic of a small child.

23 OCD :Isolation of affect is responsible for the symptom of obsessional

thoughts, Undoing creates compulsive acts (a ritual which magically undoes a
forbidden unconscious impulse) and Reaction formation (development of
attitudes opposite to the impulses being defended against) accounts for
scrupulosity and other exaggerated characteristics of cleanliness.Depression :In
less severe form of depression, that is depression out of proportion to the reality
of the loss, the loss produces regression and revives the intense sense of
hopelessness and despair that a small child experiences.In extreme depression
the effect of identification with the lost object and the use of the mechanism of
turning aggression against the self.

24 Paranoid:Reliance on the defense mechanism of projection characterizes

paranoid disorders. Regression is inherent in the production of paranoid
delusions. Rationalization is constant companion to projection – ability to give
plausible and logical reasons for his irrational beliefs is
monumental.Schizophrenia :Regression- primitive characteristics of patients
thought and behavior; return to infantile modes of mental functioningProjection-
involved in the formation of delusions of persecution or influenceIsolation of
affect – is involved in the calm detached way patient thinks or speaks of
frightening things