defense mechanisms in psychology

1. DEFENCE
MECHANISMS
DR AJU JOSE
PG STUDENT
16-07-2014

2. Psychoanalytic Theory
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 Sigmund Freud constructed a model of personality
with 3 interlocking parts:the ‘id’,the ‘ego’ & the ‘super
ego’.
 Id,the most primitive one-biologically based urges
To eat,drink,eliminate & especially to be sexually
stimulated.
id operates through pleasure principle without any
rules,realities,morals.
 Id is bridled & managed by ego.Ego delays satisfying
id’s motives & channels behaviour in socially
acceptable way.

3. Involuntary coping Mechanisms
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 Id’s unconscious demands are instinctual,
infantile and amoral . They must be blocked by ego
and superego.
 Super ego,the conscience,prohibitions learned
from parents & authorities.
 Because of this conflict and persistence of
unsatisfied demands, anxiety and guilt are
aroused.
 Defence mechanisms resides in the unconscious
domain of ego.

4. DEFENCE MECHANISMS
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5. George Valliant’s Classification
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 Narcissistic Defences : Most primitive. In
children and adults who are psychotically
disturbed.
 Immature Defences: adolescents and some non
neurotic patients.
 Neurotic Defences: in OCD and hysterical
patients and in adults under stress.
 Mature defences

6. NARCISSISTIC DEFENCES
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DENIAL
DISTORTION
PROJECTION

7. DENIAL
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 Avoiding the awareness of some
painful aspect of reality by
negating sensory data.
 It abolishes external reality.
 A person who is a functioning
alcoholic will often simply deny
they have a drinking problem,
pointing to how well they function
in their job and relationships.
 Simple
Denial,minimisation,Projection

8. DISTORTION
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 Grossly reshaping external reality to suit inner needs
 Including hallucinations, wish fulfilling delusions,
unrealistic megalomania.

9. PROJECTION
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 Mechanism by which the ego
attributes its own intolerable sexual
and aggressive impulses to the
outside person or agency.
 Coping with one’s unwanted motives
by shifting them on to someone else.
 Anxiety arising from internal conflicts
can then be reduced and problem
dealt with as though it were in the
external world.

10. IMMATURE DEFENCES
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 ACTING OUT
 BLOCKING
 HYPOCHONDRIASIS
 INTROJECTION
 PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIOUR
 REGRESSION
 SOMATIIZATION
 SCHIZOID FANTASY

11. ACTING OUT
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 Expressing an unconscious wish or impulse through action
to avoid being conscious of an accompanying affect.
 Involves chronically giving in to an impulse to avoid the
tension arising from postponement of expression.
 Instead of saying, “I’m angry with you,” a person who acts
out may throw a book at the person, or punch a hole
through a wall.
 When a person acts out, it can act as a pressure release,
and often helps the individual feel calmer and peaceful
once again.

12. DEFENCE MECHANISMS
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 Ex. Tantrums,
 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.
 apparently motiveless
assaults, child abuse

13. BLOCKING
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 Temporarily or transiently inhibiting thinking

14. HYPOCHONDRIASIS
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 Exaggerating or
overemphasizing an illness
for the purpose of evasion
and regression.
 Responsibility can be
avoided , guilt can be
circumvented and
instinctual impulses are
warded off.

15. INTROJECTION
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 Reverse of projection
 Internalizing the qualities of an object.

16. PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIOUR
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 These patients turn their anger against themselves.
This phenomenon is called masochism, includes
procrastination, silly or provocative behaviour, self
demeaning ,clowning and frankly self destructive
acts.

17. DEFENCE MECHANISMS
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 TURNING AGAINST SELF :
Instead of expressing
hostility against another
rperson, represses the
hostility but ventilates it
against own self in the
form of self criticism and
self accusation

18. REGRESSION
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 Attempting to return to an
earlier libidinal phase of
functioning to avoid the tension
and conflict evoked at the
present level of development.
 The ego abandons the matured
path of gratification and takes
resort to pregenital or less
objectionable attitude towards
its object of gratification.

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 Regression is normal phenomenon as well. Some
amount of regression is needed for relaxation,
sleep and orgasm in sexual intercourse.
 In the face of threat, one may retract to an earlier
pattern of adaptation, possibly a childish or
primitive one.
 For eg,an adolescent who is overwhelmed with
fear, anger and growing sexual impulses might
become clingy and start exhibiting earlier
childhood behaviors he has long since overcome,
such as bedwetting,nail bitting etc.

20. SOMATIZATION
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 Converting psychic derivatives into bodily
symptoms and tending to react with somatic
manifestations rather than with psychic
manifestations.

21. SCHIZOID FANTASY
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 Indulge in Autistic retreat to resolve conflict and to
obtain gratification.
 Inter personal intimacy is avoided and eccentricity
serves to repel others.
 The person doesnot fully believe in fantasies and
doesnot insist on acting them out.
 Eg in normals striptease shows,day dreaming on
pornographic materials
 Clinically seen in Schizoid & Schizotypal Personality
,Narcissistic Personality Disorders.

22. NEUROTIC DEFENCES
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 CONTROLLING
 DISPLACEMENT
 EXTERNALIZATION
 INTELLECTUALIZATION
 ISOLATION
 RATIONALIZATION
 DISSOCIATION
 REACTION FORMATION
 REPRESSION
 SEXUALISATION

23. CONTROLLING
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Attempting to manage or regulate events or
objects in the environment to minimize
anxiety and to resolve inner conflicts.

24. DISPLACEMENT
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 The motive remains unaltered but the person substitutes a
different goal object for the original one.
 Often the motive is aggression that for some reason, the
person cannot vent on the source of anger.
 Shifting an emotion or drive from one idea or object to
another that resembles the original in some aspect or
quality.
 Example is the man who gets angry at his boss, but can’t
express his anger to his boss for fear of being fired. He
instead comes home and kicks the dog or starts an
argument with his wife.

25. EXTERNALIZATION
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 Tending to perceive in the external world and in
external objects, elements of one’s own personality,
including instinctual impulses, conflicts, moods,
attitudes and styles of thinking.
 For example, a patient who is overly argumentative
might instead perceive others as argumentative
and himself as blameless

26. Intellectualization
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 Excessively using intellectual process to avoid
affective expression or experience.
 To avoid intimacy with people, attention is
paid to external reality to avoid the expression
of inner feelings and stress is placed on
irrelevant details to avoid percieving the whole.
 Professionals who deal with troubled people
may intellectualize in order to remain helpful
without being overwhelmed by sympathetic
involvement.

27. Isolation
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 Characteristic of the orderly, controlled persons
who are labelled as Obsessive compulsive
personalities.
 Splitting or separation of an idea from the affect
that accompanies it but is repressed.
 In splitting, persons towards whom patients feelings
are, or have been, ambivalent are divided into good
and bad.
 Ex. In a ward, a patient may idealize some staff
members and uniformly disparage others.

28. Rationalization
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 Offering rational explanations
in an attempt to justify
attitudes, beliefs or behaviour
that may otherwise be
unacceptable.
 It is a method to support an
attitude with false reasons
 Substituting an acceptable
conscious motive for an
unacceptable unconscious one.

29. DEFENCE MECHANISMS
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Rationalization is very common among medical
professionals in covering up medical errors
 “Why disclose the error?,the patient wass going to
die anyway”
 “Telling the family about the error will make them
feel worse”
 “It was patient’s fault,if he wasn’t so obese,sick etc.
this error woudn’t have caused so much harm”
 “Well we did our best,these things happen.”

30. Dissociation
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 Polly anna(subconscious bias towards the
positive) like replacement of unpleasant affects
with pleasant ones.
 Persons who often dissociate are seen as
dramatizing and emotionally shallow.
 Temporarily but drastically modifying a persons
character or one’s own sense of personal identity
to avoid emotional distress.
 Multiple Personality
Disorder,PTSD,Somnambulism.

31. Reaction formation
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 Transforming an unacceptable impulse into its
opposite
 Characteristic of obsessional neurosis
 If this mechanism is frequently used at any early stage
of ego development it can become a permanent
character trait, as in obsessional character.
 Thus love may cover up unconscious hate, shyness
serves as defence against exhibitionism.
 Ex : when a 2nd child is born in a family the first child
may show extraordinary concern for the welfare of the
Newborn. This way his unconscious hate and
aggression for his little brother is covered up.

32. Repression
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 Repression is the unconscious blocking of
unacceptable thoughts, feelings and impulses.
 Ego excludes from the consciousness all the
psychological contents which it cannot fit in
harmoniously.
 Primary Repression: Curbing of ideas and feelings
before they have attained consciousness.
 Secondary repression : Excluding from awareness
what was once experienced at the conscious level.

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 Repressed feelings do not cease to
exist by mere expulsion from the
consciousness.
Ego takes further steps to deal
with these pent up impulses :
a) Further reinforcement of
repression
b) Finding out substitute
channels for outlet of impulse

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 Ex. When a child finds out about
the birth of a 2nd baby, he may feel
his love is divided. He feels jealousy
and rivalry towards his little
brother. He represses his
aggression for fear of punishment
or further loss of love. But may
channelize his aggression through
some other activity, ex. By breaking
his brothers toys.

35. Sexualisation
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 Endowing an object or function with a
sexual significance that it did not
previously have or possessed to a
smaller degree, to ward off anxieties
associated with prohibited impulses or
their derivatives.

36. INHIBITION
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 Involuntary decrease or loss of motivation to
engage in some goal directed activity to
prevent anxiety arising out of conflicts with
unacceptable impulses.
 Eg in Normals: Social Shyness.
 Clinically in OCDs & Phobias.

37. Mature defences
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 Altruism
 Anticipation
 Humour
 Suppression
 Sublimation

38. ALTRUISM
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 Involves an individual getting
pleasure from giving to others
what the individual would have
liked to receive.
 Ex. Using Altruism a former
alcoholic serves as an
Alcohol Anonymous sponsor
to a new member, achieving
transformation process that
may be life saving.

39. Anticipation
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 Realistically planning or anticipating future
inner discomfort.
 Involves careful planning or worrying and
premature, but realistic anticipation of dire and
potentially dreadful outcomes.
 Ex. Moderate amount of anxiety before
surgery promotes post surgical adaptation

40. Humour
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 Using comedy to overtly express feelings and
thoughts without personal discomfort and without
producing an unpleasant effect on the others.
 Freud suggested that “Humour can be regarded as
the highest of these defensive processes”
 Mature humour allows individuals to look directly
at what is painful.

41. Suppression
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 Consciously or semi consciously postponing
attention to a conscious impulse or conflict.
 Issues may be deliberately cut off but they
are not avoided.

42. Sublimation
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 For Freud, sublimation was the highest level of ego
defence
 Consists of redirection of sexual impulses to
socially valued activities and goals.
 He believed that much of our cultural heritage is
the product of sublimation.
 Ex. A writer may divert his libido to creation of
poem/ novel. Thus indirectly satisfying drives.
 Rejection by lover may induce one to divert hi
energy to human welfare or artistic and literary
activities.

43. Reference
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 Kaplan and Sadock, Synopsis of Psychiatry, 9th edition
 Kaplan and Sadock, Comprehensive textbook of Psychiatry, 10th
edition
 Morgan and King, 2004, Introduction to Psychology, 7th edition
 Internet

44. THANK YOU
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