Defense Mechanisms

Defense Mechanisms
• Memories banished to the unconscious, or unacceptable drives or urges do
not disappear.
• They continue to exert a powerful influence on behavior.
• The forces, which try to keep painful or socially undesirable thoughts and
memories out of the conscious mind, are termed defense mechanisms.
• From the onset the ego has to try to fulfill its task of acting as an
intermediary between the id and the external world in the service of the
pleasure principle, to protect the id from the dangers of the external world.
• The ego makes use of various methods of fulfilling its task, i.e. to put it in
general terms, of avoiding danger, anxiety and displeasure. We use defense
mechanisms to protect ourselves from feelings of anxiety or guilt, which
arise because we feel threatened, or because our id or superego becomes
too demanding.
 Defense Mechanisms

• We use defense mechanisms to protect ourselves from feelings of anxiety or guilt,

which arise because we feel threatened, or because our id or superego becomes
too demanding.
• They are NOT under our conscious control, and are non-voluntaristic.
• With the ego, our unconscious will use one or more to protect us when we come up
against a stressful situation in life.

• Ego-defense mechanisms are natural and normal. When they get out of
proportion, neuroses develop, such as anxiety states, phobias, obsessions, or
hysteria.
 Defense Mechanisms

Four group of defense mechanisms from least to

more mature –

• Narcissistic Defenses
• Immature Defenses
• Anxiety Defenses
• Mature Defenses
 Defense Mechanisms

Narcissistic Defenses:
• Projection
• Denial
• Splitting
 Projection
• Anxiety-arousing impulses are externalized by
placing them, or projecting them, onto others (A
person’s inner threats are attributed to those around
them)

• Attributing one's own personally unacceptable

feelings to others
• Projection works by allowing the expression of the
desire or impulse, but in a way that the ego cannot
recognize, therefore reducing anxiety.
• For example, if you have a strong dislike for someone, you
might instead believe that he or she does not like you.
 Denial
• Refusing to acknowledge anxiety-provoking stimuli
(Not usually seen in adults except in such of severe
stress or pain)

• People seem unable to face reality or admit an obvious

truth

• Addiction is one of the best-known examples of

denial.

• People who are suffering from a substance abuse problem will

often flat-out deny that their behavior is problematic. In other
cases, they might admit that they do use drugs or alcohol, but
will claim that this substance abuse is not a problem.
 Splitting

• Categorizing people or situations into

categories of either "fabulous" or "dreadful“
because of intolerance of ambiguity

• People and things in the world are perceived

as all bad or all good (God or the Devil). The
world is pictured in extreme terms rather than
a more realistic blend of good and bad
qualities.
 Defense Mechanisms

Immature Defenses:
• Blocking
• Regression
• Somatization
• Introjection (Identification)
 Blocking

• This usually transient immature defense

mechanism is similar to repression but with
associated tension.

• temporary or transient block in thinking, or an

inability to remember

• In the middle of a conversation, a woman pauses,

looks confused, and asks, "What was I just talking
about?"
 Regression
• Pushes threatening thoughts back into the unconscious
- going back to acting as a child
• When confronted by stressful events, people sometimes
abandon coping strategies and revert to patterns of
behavior used earlier in development.

• People act out behaviors from the

stage of psychosexual development in which they are
fixated:

• An individual fixated at the oral stage might begin

eating or smoking excessively, or might become
very verbally aggressive.

• A fixation at the anal stage might result in

excessive tidiness or messiness.
• A 5-year-old child who was previously toilet trained begins to wet the bed when
his mother has a new baby
• Child began to such thumb after several days spent in hospital
 Somatization

• Conflicts are represented by

physical symptoms involving
parts of the body innervated
by the sympathetic and
parasympathetic system.

• Example: a highly competitive and

aggressive person, whose life
situation requires that such
behavior be restricted, develops
hypertension.

• Stomach pain before exam

 Internalization/Intojection

• Internalization of external authority, particularly

of parents.

• Introjection is the opposite of projection.

While projection occurs when a person projects her feelings
onto another person—introjection occurs when a person
internalizes the beliefs of other people.

• It must be differentiated from "imitation“ - when

identifying with others is done consciously

• Introjection is why children act like their parents

once they become parents !!!
 Defense Mechanisms
Anxiety Defenses:
• Displacement
• Repression
• Isolation of affect
• Intellectualization
• Acting out
• Rationalization
• Reaction formation
• Undoing
• Passive-aggressive
• Dissociation
 Displacement
• Displacement involves taking out our
frustrations, feelings, and impulses on
people or objects that are less
threatening. Displaced aggression is a
common example of this defense
mechanism.

• changing the target of an emotion or

drive, while the person having the feeling
remains the same

• A married man who is sexually aroused by a

woman he meets goes home and makes love
to his wife.
 Repression

• Repression is another well-known defense

mechanism.

• You forget, and then forget that you forgot 

•
• Repression acts to keep information out of
conscious awareness. However, these memories
don't just disappear; they continue to influence
our behavior.

• For example, a person who has repressed memories of

abuse suffered as a child may later have difficulty
forming relationships.
 Isolation of affect

• Reality is accepted, but without the expected

human emotional response to that reality.
Separation of an idea from the affect that
accompanies it

• Facts without feelings

• Without showing any emotion, a woman tells her

family the results of tests that indicate her lung cancer
has metastasized
 Intellectualization

• to avoid thinking about the stressful,

emotional aspect of the situation and instead
focus only on the intellectual component.

• For example, a person who has just been diagnosed

with a terminal illness might focus on learning
everything about the disease in order to avoid
distress and remain distant from the reality of the
situation.
 Acting out
• Acting out describes a common teen
pattern of exhibiting inappropriate
behavior that is covering up deeper
feelings or issues.

• Teens are well known for demonstrating

how they feel through their misbehavior.

• Strong action or emotions to cover up

unacceptable emotions.

• "Whistling in the dark" hides the real

underlying fear.
 Rationalization

• Rational explanations are used to justify attitudes,

beliefs, or behaviors that are unacceptable.

• This is not a reasoned action, but a search for

reasons to allow an unacceptable action already
selected.

• student might blame a poor exam score on the

instructor rather than his or her lack of preparation.
• A young single woman tells herself that engaging in
oral sex with a married man is not the same thing as
having a "sexual relationship" with him.
 Reaction formation
• Process of pushing threatening impulses by
overemphasizing the opposite in one’s
thoughts and actions - overacting in the
opposite way to the fear

• Reaction formation reduces anxiety by taking

up the opposite feeling, impulse or behavior.
An example of reaction formation would be
treating someone you strongly dislike in an
excessively friendly manner in order to hide
your true feelings.

- A professor who goes out of her way to be friendly with a

certain colleague actually harbors an intense dislike for her
fellow academic.
 Undoing

• Person tries to 'undo' an unhealthy,

destructive or otherwise threatening
thought or action by engaging in
contrary behavior.

• For example, after thinking about being

violent with someone, one would then
be overly nice or accommodating to
them.
 Passive-aggressive

• nonperformance or poor performance after

setting up the expectation of performance.
Regarded as a passive (indirect) expression
of hostility

• A student agrees to share class notes but goes home

without sharing them.

• A physician ignores and does not answer the direct

questions of a patient whom he finds annoying.
 Dissociation

• separates self from one's experience.

Third-person rather than first- person
experience. The facts of the events are
accepted, but the self is protected
from the full impact of the experience.

• A child who was sexually abused recalls

only the bad man who came to her in her
dreams.
 Defense Mechanisms

Mature Defenses:
• Humor
• Sublimation
• Suppression
• Altruism
 Humor

• permits the overt expression of feelings

and thoughts without personal discomfort

• We laugh the easiest at the things that

make us most anxious

• A terminally ill cancer patient makes fun of his

condition.
 Sublimation

• impulse-gratification is achieved by
channeling the unacceptable or
unattainable impulse into a socially
acceptable direction.

• Lots of artists are creating art by the

sublimation

• A patient with exhibitionist fantasies becomes

a stripper.
 Altruism
• Assisting others to
avoid negative
personal feelings

• A man with a poor self-image,

who is a social worker during the
week, donates every other
weekend to charity work. "I'm a
recovering alcoholic and every day
is a small struggle to remain sober.
I help myself stay in control by
being a sponsor for other
Alcoholics who are less stable in
their sobriety than myself".
 Suppression

• conscious decision to postpone attention to an

impulse or conflict.

• Today you have lots of work! Think about it

tomorrow 

• Unlike repression - Forget, but remember that

you forgot!!!