Defense Mechanisms

Question 1

What are defense mechanisms?

Answer 1

are unconscious or conscious psychological strategies brought into play by various entities to cope with reality and to maintain self-image.

Question 2

Compensation

Answer 2

increase capabilities in one area to make up for deficiencies in another.
Eg: A non-athletic student joins the debate team.

Question 3

Denial

Answer 3

Ego unable to accept painful reality, may assume false cheerfulness
Eg: Person fails to seek medical help after weeks of bloody stools.

Question 4

Displacement

Answer 4

Directing anger toward less threatening substitute.

Eg: Patient throws a telephone after being diagnosed with cancer.

Question 5

Intellectualization

Answer 5

The situation is dealt with cognitive, not emotional.

Eg: Patient discusses all test result but avoids focusing on fears/feelings.

Question 6

Projection

Answer 6

Attaching to others’ feelings unacceptable to self

Eg: Preoperative patient says to wife, “don’t be scared.”

Question 7

Rationalization

Answer 7

Attempt to logically justify or excuse unacceptable behaviours.
Eg: Mother of a latchkey 10 year-old says “He needs to be self-sufficient”

Question 8

Reaction Formation

Answer 8

Inflated reaction opposite on the way one really feels.

Eg: A person doesnt like a neighbour but is overly demonstrative and polite.

Question 9

Regression

Answer 9

Retreat to an earlier, more comfortable developmental age.

Eg: Adolescent has a temper tantrum when the mother says he cannot go out.

Question 10

Repression

Answer 10

Unconscious blocking of unacceptable thoughts from the conscious mind.
Eg: A woman has no recollection of her father’s sexual abuse.

Question 11

Suppression

Answer 11

Conscious blocking of unnacceptable thoughts from the conscious mind.
Eg: I’ll worry about that after my test tomorrow.”

Question 12

Undoing/Restitution

Answer 12

Action/words cancel previous action/words to decrease guilt.
Eg: Husband gives wife a gift after abusing her.

Question 13

Splitting

Answer 13

A primitive defense. Negative and positive impulse are split off and unintegrated.
Eg: An individual views other people as either good or innately evil, rather than whole continuous being.

Question 14

Dissociation

Answer 14

Separation or postponement of a feeling that normally would accompany a situation or thought.
Eg: A man is brought to the accident and emergency department by the police and is unable to explain who he is and where he lives or works.

Question 15

Isolation

Answer 15

Separation of feelings from ideas and events.

Eg: Describing a murder with graphic details with no emotional response.

Question 16

Identification

Answer 16

The unconscious modeling of one’s self upon another person’s character and behavior.
Eg: J.C age thirteen combs her hair like her teacher whom she admires.

Question 17

Introjection

Answer 17

Identifying with some idea, quality, or object so deeply that it becomes a part of that person.
Eg: A business leader sets high moral standards within the company. Many others follow her lead.