Defense Mechanisms Flashcards
This is thought to safeguard the mind against feelings and thoughts that are too difficult for the conscious mind to cope with.
Defense mechanisms
This works to reduce anxiety by thinking about events in a cold, clinical way. For example, a person who has just been diagnosed with a terminal illness might focus on learning everything about the disease in order to avoid distress and remain distant from the reality of the situation.
Intellectualization
This involves taking out our frustrations, feelings, and impulses on people or objects that are less threatening.
Displacement
This is an outright refusal to admit or recognize that something has occurred or is currently occurring. People living with drug or alcohol addiction often deny that they have a problem, while victims of traumatic events may deny that the event ever occurred.
Denial
This acts to keep information out of conscious awareness. However, these memories don’t just disappear; they continue to influence our behavior. For example, a person who has repressed memories of abuse suffered as a child may later have difficulty forming relationships. Sometimes we do this consciously by forcing the unwanted information out of our awareness, which is known as suppression. In most cases, however, this removal of anxiety-provoking memories from our awareness is believed to occur unconsciously
Repression
A defense mechanism that allows us to act out unacceptable impulses by converting these behaviors into a more acceptable form. For example, a person experiencing extreme anger might take up kick-boxing as a means of venting frustration.
Sublimation
A defense mechanism that involves taking our own unacceptable qualities or feelings and ascribing them to other people. For example, if you have a strong dislike for someone, you might instead believe that they do not like you. Projection works by allowing the expression of the desire or impulse, but in a way that the ego cannot recognize, therefore reducing anxiety.
Projection
A defense mechanism that involves explaining an unacceptable behavior or feeling in a rational or logical manner, avoiding the true reasons for the behavior. For example, a person who is turned down for a date might rationalize the situation by saying they were not attracted to the other person anyway. A student might blame a poor exam score on the instructor rather than their own lack of preparation.
Rationalization
When confronted by stressful events, people sometimes abandon coping strategies and revert to patterns of behavior used earlier in development. Anna Freud called this defense mechanism regression, suggesting that people act out behaviors from the stage of psychosexual development in which they are fixated. For example, an individual fixated at an earlier developmental stage might cry or sulk upon hearing unpleasant news.
Regression
This reduces anxiety by taking up the opposite feeling, impulse, or behavior. An example of this would be treating someone you strongly dislike in an excessively friendly manner in order to hide your true feelings. Why do people behave this way? According to Freud, they are using reaction formation as a defense mechanism to hide their true feelings by behaving in the exact opposite manner.
Reaction Formation
Eliminates pleasurable effects of experiences. Uses morals to assign values to specific pleasures. Derives gratification from renunciation of all consciously-perceived base pleasures. Projection- Perceives and reacts to inner qualities as though outside the self.
Asceticism
is the defense mechanism by which individuals avoid conscious awareness of disturbing impulses by thinking or acting in a way intended to revert (“make un-happen”) those impulses, even if only at a symbolic level.
Undoing
This is defined as to make something a part of how you feel or think, or as part of your knowledge. When you absorb information and the knowledge changes your attitude, this is an example of a time when you do this to the information.
Internalized
