Defense Mechanisms Flashcards
Repression
Painful feelings are conscious initially and then forgotten, but return occasionally. Repression can range from momentary memory lapses to forgetting the details of a catastrophic event, such as a murder or an earthquake.
Denial
Unpleasant reality is ignored, and a realistic interpretation of potentially threatening events are replaced by benign but inaccurate ones
Suppression
Unpleasant feelings are suppressed through a conscious effort to ignore them. Suppression differs from repression and denial in that the undesirable feelings are available but deliberately ignored. Suppression is more mature.
Projection
In projection, the undesirable feelings are attributed to another person or persons.
Displacement
Object displacement, anger or another emotion is initially felt toward a person against whom it is unsafe to express it (in children, for example, toward a parent)
Reaction Formation
Involves behavior that is diametrically opposed (completely different) to the impulses or feelings that one is repressing.
Regression
When confronted by stressful events, people sometimes abandon coping strategies and revert to patterns of behavior used earlier in development.
Fixation
People with an oral fixation have problems with drinking, smoking, and nail biting when they are experiencing stressful events.
Identification
Taking on the characteristics of someone else.
Rationalization
Is an attempt to deny one’s true motives by using a reason that is more logical or socially acceptable than one’s own reasons.
Isolation
It involves compartmentalizing one’s experience so that an event becomes separated from the feelings that associated with it, allowing it to be part of your conscious mind without the threat of painful feelings.
Sublimation
Involves rechanneling the energy connected with an unacceptable impulse into one that is more socially acceptable.
Compensation
Devoting unusual efforts to achievement in order to overcome feelings of inferiority.
