Defense Mechanisms

Coping stylesAutomatic psychological processes that protect the individual against anxiety and from the awareness of internal or external dangers or stressors.

Defense Mechanisms

Can be adaptive and help people to lower anxiety to achieve goals in an acceptable wayCan be maladaptive and lead to distortions in reality and self-deception

Freud: Properties of Defense Mechanisms

Major means of managing conflict and affectRelatively unconsciousDiscrete from one anotherOften the hallmarks of major psychiatric syndromesReversibleAdaptive as well as pathological.

Understanding Anxiety

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Category Defense

Mature defenses SuppressionAltruismHumorSublimation

Suppression

Definition: The conscious denial of a disturbing situation or feeling. (Only conscious defense mechanism)

Example: _______________________

Altruism

Definition: Receiving gratification either vicariously or from the response to others.

Example: _______________________

Humor

Definition: Emphasizing the amusing or ironic aspects of a conflict or stressor through laughter or jokes.

Example: ______________________

Sublimation

Definition: Substituting constructive and socially acceptable activity for strong impulses that are not acceptable in their original form.

Example: Jane was a very aggressive person until she began to vent her hostility on the volleyball court. Now she is more relaxed.

Category Defense

Neurotic (intermediate defenses)

Intellectualization, isolationRepressionReaction-formationDisplacementSomatizationUndoingRationalization

Repression

Definition: The exclusion of unpleasant or unwanted experiences, emotions, or ideas from conscious awareness.

Example: Chris was the only witness to a terrible fire in which several people were seriously injured. Several days later, however, Chris is unable to remember much when questioned by a reporter.

Reaction-Formation

Definition: Keeping unacceptable feelings or behaviors are out of awareness by developing the opposite behavior or emotion.

Example: Jim is attracted to other men, but tells himself that he hates all homosexuals.

Displacement

Definition: The transfer of emotions associated with a particular person, object, or situation to another person, object, or situation that is nonthreatening.

Definition: ______________________

Somatization

Definition: Transforming anxiety on the unconscious level to a physical symptom that has no organic cause.

Example: _______________________

Undoing

Definition: Making up for an act or communication

Example: _______________________

Rationalization

Definition: Justifying illogical or unreasonable ideas, actions or feelings by developing acceptable explanations that satisfy the teller as well as the listener.

Example: ______________________

Category Defense

Immature defenses

Passive aggressionActing outDissociationProjection

Passive Aggression

Definition: Indirectly expressing aggression towards others by giving the appearance of compliance and making resistance, resentment, and hostility.

Example: ____________________________

Acting Out

Definition: An individual deals with emotional conflicts or stressors by actions rather than reflections or feelings.

Example: _______________________

Confabultation

Definition: Filling in missing memory with information the believed to be factual

Example:_______________

Dissociation

Definition: A disruption in the usually integrated functions of consciousness, memory, identity or perceptions of the environment.

Example: _______________________

Projection

Definition: Rejects emotionally unacceptable personal features and attributes of the self to other people, objects or situations.

Example: _______________________

Category Defense

Psychotic defenses

Denial (of external reality)

Denial

Definition: Escaping unpleasant realities by ignoring their existence.

Example: _______________________