Defense

Mechanisms
Presented By
DR M AMIN KHAN
What are Defense
Mechanisms?
Defense mechanisms are psychological strategies that
are unconsciously used to protect a person from
anxiety arising from unacceptable thoughts or feelings.
Why do we use defense mechanisms?

Defense mechanisms are behaviors people use to separate

themselves from unpleasant events, actions, or thoughts. These
psychological strategies may help people put distance between
themselves and threats or unwanted feelings, such as guilt or
shame.
Why do we need Ego
Defences?

We use defense mechanisms to protect ourselves from

feelings of anxiety or guilt, which arise because we feel
threatened, or because our id or superego becomes too
demanding.
Defense mechanisms operate at an unconscious
level and help ward off unpleasant feelings (i.e.,
Anxiety) or make good things feel better for the
individual. Helps to protect ego from shame and pain.
Ego-defense mechanisms are natural and normal.
When they get out of proportion (i.e., used with
frequency), neuroses develop, such as anxiety states,
phobias, obsessions, or hysteria.
Repression
Repression, in psychoanalytic theory, the exclusion of distressing
memories, thoughts, or feelings from the conscious mind. Often
involving sexual or aggressive urges or painful childhood memories,
these unwanted mental contents are pushed into the unconscious
mind
Examples
Child suffers abuse by a parent, represses the memories, and becomes
completely unaware of them as a young adult. The repressed memories of
abuse may still affect this person’s behavior by causing difficulty in
forming relationships.

An adult suffers a nasty spider bite as a child and develops an intense
phobia of spiders later in life without any recollection of the experience as
a child. Because the memory of the spider bite is repressed, he or she
may not understand where the phobia originates.
Unpleasant thoughts, painful memories, or irrational beliefs can upset
you. Instead of facing them, you may unconsciously choose to hide
them in hopes of forgetting about them entirely.

That does not mean, however, that the memories disappear entirely.
They may influence behaviors, and they may impact future
relationships. You just may not realize the impact this defense
mechanism is having
• Thoughts that are often repressed are those that would result in
feelings of guilt from the superego.
 This is not a very successful defense in the long term since it
involves forcing disturbing wishes, ideas or memories into the
unconscious, where, although hidden, they will create anxiety.

 Repressed memories may appear through subconscious means

and in altered forms, such as dreams or slips of the tongue
('Freudian slips').
Denial
Denial involves a refusal to accept reality, thus blocking external
events from awareness.

If a situation is just too much to handle, the person may respond by

refusing to perceive it or by denying that it exist.

As you might imagine, this is a primitive and dangerous defense - no

one disregards reality and gets away with it for long!
Regression
Regression is returning to an earlier time in your life when you were
not so threatened with becoming negative self-concepts. You return
to thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of an earlier developmental
stage to identify yourself as you used to back then.
Example
When we are troubled or frightened, our behaviors often become
more childish or primitive.

A child may begin to suck their thumb again or wet the bed when
they need to spend some time in the hospital. Teenagers may giggle
uncontrollably when introduced into a social situation involving the
opposite sex.
Projection
Projection is a psychological defense mechanism proposed by Anna
Freud in which an individual attributes unwanted thoughts, feelings
and motives onto another person.

Thoughts most commonly projected onto another are the ones that
would cause guilt such as aggressive and sexual fantasies or
thoughts.
Example
You might hate someone, but your superego tells you that such
hatred is unacceptable. You can 'solve' the problem by believing that
they hate you.

You are mad at your spouse and subconsciously damning them, but
you instead think or claim that they are mad at you and damning you
in their mind.
Displacement
Displacement is the redirection of an impulse (usually aggression)
onto a powerless substitute target. The target can be a person or
an object that can serve as a symbolic substitute.
Displacement occurs when the Id wants to do something of
which the Super ego does not permit. The Ego thus finds some
other way of releasing the psychic energy of the Id. Thus there is
a transfer of energy from a repressed object to a more
acceptable object.
Example
Generally, alternate targets are targets that cannot object or fight
back as opposed to actual targets that might object and fight back.
For example, the father comes home from work angry at his boss, so
he verbally abuses his wife and children.
Reaction Formation
Reaction formation is the process of developing conscious
positive self-concepts to cover and hide opposite, negative self-
concepts. It is the making up for negative self-concepts by
showing off their reverse.
• Conscious behaviors are adopted to overcompensate for the
anxiety a person feels regarding their socially unacceptable
unconscious thoughts or emotions.
• Usually, a reaction formation is marked by exaggerated
behavior, such as showiness and compulsiveness.
Example
You may hate your parents; but, instead of showing that, you go out
of your way to show care and concern for them so that you can be
judged to be a loving child.
Sublimation
Sublimation is similar to displacement, but takes place when we
manage to displace our unacceptable emotions into socially
acceptable behaviors, rather than destructive/inappropriate
activities.
Example
Many great artists and musicians have had unhappy lives and have
used the medium of art of music to express themselves. Sport is
another example of putting our emotions (e.g., aggression) into
something constructive.
Rationalization
Rationalization is an attempt to logically justify immoral, deviant, or
generally unacceptable behavior.

 According to Freud when people are not able to deal with the
reasons they behave in particular ways, they protect themselves by
creating self-justifying explanations for their behaviors.
Examples
 If I flunk out of school because I didn't study properly it might be so hard for
me to deal with that I rationalize my behaviors by saying that I simply didn't
have enough time to study because I have a full-time job, a baby at home, and
so many other demands on my time.

 An abusive partner who justifies behavior based on the abused partner’s

failure to meet demands or by claiming the partner was otherwise
uncooperative is engaging in pathological rationalization.
 Rationalizing an event may help individuals maintain self-respect or
avoid guilt over something they have done wrong. In many cases,
rationalization is not harmful, but continuous self-deception, when
a person consistently makes excuses for destructive behavior, can
become dangerous.
No. DEFENSES DESCRIPTION
1. Denial Refuse to face a negative behavior

2. Displacement Take it out on someone else

3. Projection See your faults and foibles in others

4. Rationalization Excuse and justify mistakes

5. Reaction formation Pretend you are different

6. Regression Act much younger to feel better

7. Repression Putting things into unconscious mind

8. Sublimation Divert negative into acceptable