Defense Mechanisms Flashcards
Making up for real or perceived deficiencies
Compensation
Repression of an event or feelings is physically manifested though pain, sensory loss (ex. blindness ), paralysis, tics, etc.
Conversion
Inability to acknowledge true impact of thoughts, feelings, wishes, behavior, or external reality factors that are intolerable
Denial
Momentary loss of connection to the world; feeling of being separated from self or reality
Dissociation
Transferring a negative emotion from the original object/subject to an unrelated one (ex. Child mad at their parent hits their sibling)
Displacement
Assuming the qualities of an admired individual or an individual perceived to be successful
Identification
Accepting external attitudes, beliefs, and values as one’s owns
Introjection
Screening out painful of unwanted feelings by recalling a traumatic or painful event, impulse, or idea w/o the original emotions associated w/ it
Isolation of Affect
Projecting one’s own attitudes, feelings, wishes, and urges onto someone or something else
Projection
Providing believable explanations to justify and/or explain behavior
Rationalization
Expressing the opposite of one’s inner feelings in outward behaviors; adopting affects, ideals, attitudes or behaviors that are opposite to the individual’s unconscious or conscious ones
Reaction Formation
Return to an earlier stage of development when faced w/ unacceptable, distressing, or threating thoughts; regressing to more infantile patterns of thinking or reacting
Regression
Unconscious forgetting for the purpose of banishing distressing, painful, traumatic ideas, fantasies, events, or impulses
Repression
Maladaptive feelings or behaviors are diverted to adaptive channels (ex. channeling anger into sports)
Sublimation
Using words or actions to symbolically reverse or negate unacceptable thoughts, feelings, or actions (ex. spouse showering their partner in affection to undo infidelity)
Undoing
