EGO DEFENSE MECHANISM

Excusing own behavior to avoid responsibility, conflict, anxiety, or loss of self-respect.

Rationalization

Acting the opposite of what one thinks or feels.

Reaction Formation

Moving back to previous developmental stage in order to feel safe or have needs met.

Regression

Excluding emotionally painful or anxiety-provoking thoughts and feelings. Unconscious forgetting.

Repression

Intentional exclusion of forbidden ideas and anxiety-producing situations from the conscious level. Conscious forgetting.

Suppression

Ventilation of intense feelings toward persons less threatening than the one who aroused those feelings.

Displacement

Overachievement in one area to offset real or perceived deficiencies in another area.

Compensation

Expression of an emotional conflict through the development of a physical symptom usually sensorimotor in nature.

Conversion

Failure to acknowledge an unbearable condition or admit the reality of a situation. Blocking out or disowning painful thoughts or feelings.

Denial

Actually or symbolically attempting to erase a previous consciously intolerable experience or action; an attempt to repair feelings and actions that have created guilt and anxiety.

Undoing

Diversion of unacceptable instinctual drives into personally and socially acceptable areas.

Sublimation

Attributing one's own unacceptable feelings and thoughts to others.

Projection

Acceptance of another's values and opinions as one's own.

Introjection

Attempting to pattern or resemble the personality of an admired, idealized person.

Identification

Separating and detaching an idea, situation or relationship from its emotional significance.

Dissociation