LMSW: Defense Mechanisms

Psychological Defense mechanisms

• helps ego cope with anxiety, frustration, and unacceptable impulses

• helps relieve tension between inner psychological reality and the demands of the external world

• Denial, reaction formation, and projection are considered primitive defenses because they are more out of touch with reality

• sublimation, undoing, rationalization, displacement, identification, and intellectualization are considered mature defenses because they represent higher levels of functioning

• each person has a unique set of psychological defenses making their personality

Rationalization

• defense process by which plausible reasons justify an action or opinion

• helps the person cope with disappointments by blaming external circumstances

Repression

• refuses to let unacceptable impulses into conscious awareness

Denial

• Distorts/refuses to accept reality (acting like whatever happened never happened)

• uncommon in very young children because they are unable to distinguish between fantasy and reality

Projection

• places unacceptable feelings from the person feeling them onto another person

• two way street

Displacement

• affect us transferred from one object to another

• involves 3 parties

Projection identification

• with the person who has been projected onto believing the projection

Intellectualization

• content is separated from repressed affect

Asceticism

• characterized by rigor and self-denial

Sublimation

• will displace unacceptable instincts for constructive and socially acceptable behaviors

Introjection / Internalization

• the internalization of outside events or characteristics of other people

Identification

• a process by which qualities of an external object are absorbed into one’s personality

• introjection / internalization can lead to this over time

Reaction Formation

• unacceptable impulses are expressed as their opposites

• helps release anxiety and guilt associated with true impulse

Undoing

a process by which we avoid being punished for undesirable thoughts or actions