DEFENSE MECHANISMS

BY
JOHNY KUTTY JOSEPH
 WHAT IS A DEFENSE MECHANISM?
 Defense mechanism refers to the unconscious
processes that protect a person against anxiety by
distorting reality In some way.
 Sigmund Freud constructed a model of personality
with 3 interlocking parts: the ‘id’, ‘ego’ & super ego’.
 Id is 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 behavior in socially
acceptable way.
 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.
 GEORGE VALLIANT’S CLASSIFICATION
 Narcissistic Defenses : Most primitive. In
children and adults who are psychotically
disturbed.
 Immature Defenses: adolescents and some non
neurotic patients.
 Neurotic Defenses: in OCD and hysterical
patients and in adults under stress.
 Mature defenses:
 NARCISSISTIC DEFENCES
DENIAL

DISTORTION

PROJECTION

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DENIAL
 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.

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

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PROJECTION
 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.
 A defense mechanism in which people protect
themselves from awareness of their own undesirable
traits by attributing those traits excessively to others.
 An insecure student may have a strong tendency to
cheat during exam, but his conscience will not allow
him to even consider such a thing. He may then
suspect that the other students are trying to cheat
when they may not be cheating.
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IMMATURE DEFENCES
 ACTING OUT
 HYPOCHONDRIASIS
 PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIOUR
 REGRESSION
 SOMATIIZATION

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ACTING OUT
 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.
 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.
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HYPOCHONDRIASIS
 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.

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PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIOUR
 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.
 TURNING AGAINST SELF : Instead
of expressing hostility against another
person, represses the hostility but
ventilates it against own self in the form
of self criticism and self accusation

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 REGRESSION
 Attempting to return to an
earlier libidinal phase of
functioning to avoid the
tension and conflict evoked at
the present level of
development.
 For eg, an adolescent who is
overwhelmed with fear, anger
and growing sexual impulses
might become clingy and start
exhibiting earlier childhood
behaviours he has long since
overcome, such as bed-wetting, 13
SOMATIZATION
 Converting psychic derivatives into bodily symptoms
and tending to react with somatic manifestations
rather than with psychic manifestations.

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NEUROTIC DEFENCES
 DISPLACEMENT
 INTELLECTUALIZATION
 RATIONALIZATION
 REACTION FORMATION
 REPRESSION

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DISPLACEMENT
 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.
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INTELLECTUALIZATION
 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 perceiving the whole.
 A defense mechanism tries to make a person gain
detachment from an emotionally threatening
situation by dealing with it in abstract , intellectual
terms.
 A person told they have cancer asks for details on the
probability of survival and the success rates of
various drugs. The doctor may join in, using
'carcinoma' instead of 'cancer' and 'terminal' instead
of 'fatal'. 17
RATIONALIZATION
 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
 A defense mechanism in which
self-esteem is maintained by
assigning reasonable and
acceptable reasons for conduct
entered on impulsively or for
less acceptable reason. 18
RATIONALIZATION
Rationalization is very common among medical
professionals in covering up medical errors.
 “Why disclose the error?, the patient was
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 wouldn't have caused so
much harm” “Well we did our best, these
things happen.”
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REACTION FORMATION
 A defense mechanism in which a person denies a
disapproved motive through giving strong
expression to its opposite.
 If this mechanism is frequently used at any early
stage of ego development it can become a permanent
character trait, as in obsessional character.
 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.
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REPRESSION
 This is a denial of an impulse or memory that might
provoke feelings of guilt by its disappearance from
awareness. This denial is a defense against internal
threats.
 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.
 A child who is abused by a parent later has no
recollection of the events, but has trouble forming
relationships. 21
 DEFENCE MECHANISMS

MATURE DEFENCES

These defence mechanisms are used

consciously most of time in conscious mind.
 Altruism

 Humour

 Suppression

 Sublimation

 Compensation

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ALTRUISM

 Involves an individual getting

pleasure from giving to others
what the individual would have
liked to receive.
 behaviour of an animal that
benefits another at its own
expense.
 Acting with an unselfish regard
for others
 Eg. Mother rearing children.
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HUMOUR
 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.

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SUPPRESSION
 This is where the person consciously and deliberately
pushes down any thoughts that leads to feelings of
anxiety.
 This approach is also used to suppress desires and
urges that the person considers to be unworthy of
them.
 This may range from sexual desires to feelings
of anger towards other people for whatever reason.
 An older man has sexual feelings towards a teenager
and quickly suppresses the thought.

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SUBLIMATION
 It is a defense mechanism that allows us to act out
unacceptable impulses by converting these behaviors
into a more acceptable form.
 Consists of redirection of sexual impulses to socially
valued activities and goals.
 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.
 For example, a person experiencing extreme anger
might take up kick-boxing as a means of venting26
COMPENSATION
 This defense mechanism allows the individual to
counterbalance his feelings of inadequacy by doing
well in another activity. Ex. A crippled individual
could develop his physique through body-building
exercise or excelling in sports. This is a positive
compensatory act.
 Negative compensation are found in people who
pretend to be superior than others to cover up their
feelings of inadequacy; in the student who distracts
attention of classmates or making “show offs”
because they believe that nobody notices them or is
in need of recognition.
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COMPENSATION
 Overcompensation: This is also a type of
compensation for a weakness by exerting too much
effort to overcome it. Ex. Ludwig Van Beethoven
suffered from deafness, yet became one of the
world’s renowned musicians

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