EGO DEFENSE

MECHANISM AND
THE TRAIT THEORY
VE 105 HUMAN AND VALUES
DEVELOPMENT THREORIES
 Freud argued that the mind was made up of three
components:

• The id houses basic needs, impulses, and desires. Simply, the id

acts as a hedonistic pleasure center whose primary goal is to
satisfy basic needs and drives.

• The ego is responsible for how we react to, function in, and make
sense of the external world. The ego controls the demands of
impulses of the id and is home to our consciousness.

• The superego houses all the rules that we have learned throughout
our life and uses these to control the ego. The superego is also

SIGMUND home to the expectations of the ego: the way we should behave
and think.
FREUD
EGO DEFENSE MECHANISMS are
unconscious psychological responses that
protect people from feelings of anxiety,
threats to self-esteem, and things that they
don't want to think about or deal with.
 DISPLACEM
ENT
Taking feelings out on others.

COMMON
DEFENSE EXAMPLE:
MECHANISMS Being angry at your boss but
taking it out on your spouse
instead.
 denial
Client’s refusal to acknowledge certain
facts about a particular situation.
COMMON
DEFENSE
MECHANISMS EXAMPLE:
Ahmed has received various negative job
evaluations about his inability to
communicate empathetically with clients.
Since Ahmed believes he communicates
very effectively, he dismisses these negative
evaluations using several arguments.
 REPRESSI
Unconsciously keeping unpleasant
ON
information from your conscious mind.
COMMON
DEFENSE
MECHANISMS EXAMPLE:
Being abused as a child but not
remembering the abuse.
 SUPPRESSI
Consciously keeping unpleasant
ON
information from your conscious mind.
COMMON
DEFENSE
MECHANISMS EXAMPLE:
Being abused as a child but choosing
to push it out of your mind.
 Projection
Not acknowledging threatening traits
in themselves, and seeing them in
COMMON
other people instead
DEFENSE
MECHANISMS EXAMPLE:
Feeling attracted to someone other
than your spouse, then fearing that
your spouse is cheating on you.
 Intellectualization
Thinking about stressful things in a
clinical way.
COMMON
DEFENSE
MECHANISMS EXAMPLE:
Losing a close family member and
staying busy with making the
necessary arrangements instead of
feeling sad.
 Rationalization
Justifying an unacceptable feeling or
behavior with logic.
COMMON
DEFENSE
MECHANISMS EXAMPLE:
Being accepting of spouse's
cheating, because you know your
own shortcomings as his/her partner.
 regression
In response to stress or distress, clients
display age-inappropriate behavior; that is,
COMMON they regress or move back to an early
DEFENSE developmental stage and adopt immature
MECHANISMS patterns of behavior and emotions.

EXAMPLE:
Hugging a teddy bear when you're
stressed, like you did when you were
a child.
 identification
undoing
compensation
COMMON passive-aggression
DEFENSE humor splitting
MECHANISMS
avoidance isolation
fantasy dissociation
altruism acting out
aim inhibition
 • Develop greater self-awareness. Self-awareness
helps you identify when you may be using one
or more defense mechanisms too often.
2. Learn effective coping skills. If you have an
Coping With unhealthy defense mechanism, learning new coping
Unhealthy skills can help you better deal with uncomfortable
emotions. Coping skills include meditation,
Defense establishing healthy boundaries, and asking for
Mechanisms support.
3. Seek mental health therapy.
Psychoanalytic therapy can help you uncover your
unconscious defense mechanisms and find better,
healthier ways of coping with anxiety and distress.
THE TRAIT THEORY OF RAYMOND
CATTELL described 16 personality traits
that each person possesses to varying
degrees.
A TRAIT is a personality characteristic that
meets three criteria: it must be consistent,
stable, and vary from person to person. A
trait can be thought of as a relatively stable
characteristic that causes individuals to
behave in certain ways.
Trait theorist Raymond Cattell reduced the number of main
personality traits from Allport’s initial list of over 4,000 down to 171.
He did so primarily by eliminating uncommon traits and combining
common characteristics.

Next, Cattell rated a large sample of individuals for these 171

different traits. Using a statistical technique known as factor analysis,
he then identified closely related terms and eventually reduced his list
to 16 key personality traits. Among them are dominance,
perfectionism, reasoning, and self-reliance.

According to Cattell, these 16 traits are the source of all human

RAYMOND
CATTELL
personalities. He also developed one of the most widely used
personality assessments. the 16 Personality Factor Questionnaire.
• Abstractedness: Imaginative versus
practical
• Apprehension: Worried versus confident
• Dominance: Forceful versus submissive
THE 16
• Emotional stability: Calm versus high- PERSONALITY
strung TRAITS
• Liveliness: Spontaneous versus restrained
• Openness to change: Flexible versus
attached to the familiar
• Perfectionism: Controlled versus
9. Reasoning: Abstract versus concrete
10. Rule-consciousness: Conforming versus
non-conforming
11. Self-reliance: Self-sufficient versus
THE 16
dependent
PERSONALITY
12. Sensitivity: Tender-hearted versus tough- TRAITS
minded
13. Social boldness: Uninhibited versus shy
14. Tension: Inpatient versus relaxed
15. Vigilance: Suspicious versus trusting
 https://positivepsychology.com/defense-mechanisms-in-
psychology/#theory

https://www.verywellmind.com/defense-mechanisms-2795960

https://www.verywellmind.com/defense-mechanisms-2795960

REFERENCES https://www.verywellmind.com/cattells-16-personality-factors-
2795977#toc-the-trait-approach-to-personality
https://www.verywellmind.com/trait-theory-of-personality-
2795955
https://www.betterhelp.com/advice/psychologists/raymond-cattell-
and-his-theory-of-personality/
Thank You!
REPORTED BY:
CLARICE JENN R. MALTO
TEACHER II
SDO LAGUNA