Classical Psychoanalytic Model of Defense Mechanisms Flashcards
What is Mechanisms of Defense?
Procedures the ego makes for fulfilling it’s task - of avoiding danger, anxiety and unpleasure.
In what two ways does Classical psychoanalysis view defenses?
- From an intra-psychic perspective, placing conflict at the heart of psychic life.
- Conflict develops between the different agencies of the mind. Adaption is made possible by defenses.
What are defenses and where do they operate?
Behaviors, thoughts or feelings used to avoid psychodynamic conflict operating outside of the realm of consciousness.
What is the purpose of a defense?
- minimize conflict
- reduce tension
- maintain intra psychic equilibrium
- regulate self-esteem
- helps one deal with internal and external sources of anxiety.
What is the primary classical mechanism of defense?
Repression
Define Repression
The pushing back of unacceptable wishes from consciousness.
How does repression effect reality and consciousness?
Ensures that wishes which are incompatible with reality remain unconscious or disguised.
What does “return of the repressed” mean?
The tension and anxiety remains, other defenses surface to alleviate the resulting conflict, reduce tension and stabilize the personality.
What is the cost of repression?
Distorting internal reality.
Define Defense Restructioning
Identifying and giving up on phobic behavior.
Define Affect Restructuring
Helps the patient experience affect without excessive inhibition, and to express it appropriately.
Define Self and Other Restructioning
Changing the view of self and others.
What is an Affect Phobia?
A fear of feeling.
The inhibitory affects (anxieties) centering around assertion.
Internal phobias about feelings.
Develop in the process of growing up.
What are considered the basics of Short Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (STDP)?
Defense Restructuring and Affect Restructuring.
Defense Recognition
helps patients recognize their phobic avoidance of adaptive feeling.
Defense Relinquishing
Giving up the maladaptive response