Defense Mechanisms

Question 1

devaluation

Answer 1

used by persons with narcissistic personality organization which is consequence of dictatorship

Once a narcissist has hooked their victim, they start showing their true self. This is where the insults and put-downs start slipping into what they say. By pretending they can still be loving, the narcissist makes their victim believe the insults are their own fault.

Question 2

dissociation

Answer 2

process which enables a person to split mental functions in a manner allowing him to express forbidden or unconscious impulses without responsibility for action either because he is unable to remember disowned behavior because it is not experienced as his own (day dreaming, amnesia, and so forth)

Question 3

conversion

Answer 3

repressed urge is disguised as disturbance of body function usually of sensory, voluntary nervous system as anesthesia, deafness, blindness, paralysis, and convulsions.

Question 4

decomposition

Answer 4

decline of existing defenses

Question 5

displacement

Answer 5

directing an impulse, wish, or feeling toward a person or situation not its real object, thus permitting expression in a less threatening way (e.g, man angry at boss and kicks his dog)

Question 6

idealization

Answer 6

overestimation of admired aspect or attribute of another (e.g., talk of dead wife but may be harder to new wives)

Question 7

identification

Answer 7

universal mechanism whereby person patterns self after significant other, plays major role in personality development

Question 8

what are the 3 parts of identification?

Answer 8

identification with aggressor, with lost object, and with love object

Question 9

identification with the aggressor

Answer 9

mastering anxiety by identifying with a powerful aggressor, such as an abusing parent, to prevent feelings of helplessness and feel powerful oneself (e.g., abusing others after one has been abused)

Question 10

identification with the lost object

Answer 10

mastering anxiety by identifying with the primary love object, usually a parental figure, that has been lost to either to death, divorce, or some other circumstance, the identification is to prevent feelings of intense sadness and helplessness

Question 11

identification with love object

Answer 11

mastering anxiety by identifying with the primary love object, usually a parental figure; to prevent feelings of helplessness and feel capable and in control

Question 12

incorporation

Answer 12

primitive mechanism in which psychic representation of person is/ are figuratively ingested

Question 13

inhibition

Answer 13

loss of motivation to engage in usually pleasurable activity because it might stir up conflict over forbidden impulses (e.g., writing, learning, or work blocks or social shyness)

Question 14

introjection

Answer 14

loved or hated external objects are symbolically absorbed within self; converse of projection (e.g., severe depression an unconscious, unacceptable hatred is turned towards self)

Question 15

projective identification

Answer 15

form of projection by persons with borderline personality disorder; everything is good or everything is bad

there is a lack of difference between self and object so that the all-bad-self projected on the all-bad object is experienced in such a way that the impulse is still experienced as well as the fear of the projected impulse requiring that the person with BPD organization attacks and controls the object before he is attacked and destroyed

Question 16

rationalization

Answer 16

not unconscious, giving believable explanation for irrational behavior motivated by unacceptable conscious wishes or defenses used to cope with such wishes

Question 17

reaction formula

Answer 17

person adopts affects, ideas, attitudes, behaviors which are opposites of those he harbors consciously or unconsciously (e.g., excessive moral zeal masking strong but repressed asocial impulses)?

In which a person goes beyond denial and behaves in the opposite way to which he or she thinks or feels.

Question 18

regression

Answer 18

partial or symbolic return to more infantile patterns of reacting or thinking; can be in service to ego (e.g., dependency during illness)

Question 19

splitting

Answer 19

normally used from people with BPD; manifests as self or others being seen as all-good or all-bad

A person employing splitting may idealize someone at one time (seeing the person as “all good”) and devalue them the next (seeing the person as “all bad”).

Question 20

sublimation

Answer 20

instinctual drives are diverted into personally socially accepted adaptive channels; this mechanism of defense is conscious rather than unconscious

Some other examples of sublimation in the real world: You feel an urge to be unfaithful to your partner. Rather than act on these unacceptable urges, you channel your feelings into doing projects around the yard.

Question 21

substitution

Answer 21

unattainable or unacceptable goals, emotions, object is replaced by one more attainable or acceptable.

For example, a business man who has been angry over certain events of the day may redirect his energies into games, gardening or any other manual work.

Question 22

symbolization

Answer 22

an unconscious defense mechanism in which one idea or object comes to represent another because of similarity or association between them.

A soldier explains his decision to join the army as ‘defending the flag’.?

Question 23

undoing

Answer 23

something unacceptable and already done, thought, or felt is symbolically acted out in reverse in hopes of relieving anxiety; used in obsessive compulsive disorder (e.g., compulsive hand washing to counter feelings of inadequacy)