Defensive Mechanisms Flashcards
Compensation
Enables one to make up for real or fancied deficiencies. A person who stutters becomes a very expressive writer.
Ex: A short man assumes a cocky, overbearing manner.
Conversion
Repressed urge is expressed disguised as a disturbance of body function, usually of the sensory, voluntary nervous system (as pain, deafness, blindness, paralysis, convulsions, tics).
Decompensation
Deterioration of existing defenses.
Devaluation
A defense mechanism frequently used by persons with borderline personality organization in which a person attributes exaggerated negative qualities to self or another. It is the split of primitive idealization.
Dissociation
A process that enables a person to split mental functions in a manner that allows him or her to express forbidden or unconscious impulses without taking responsibility for the action, either because he or she is unable to remember the disowned behavior, or because it is not experienced as his or her own; that is, it is pathologically expressed as fugue states, amnesia, or dissociative neurosis, or normally expressed as daydreaming.
Displacement
Directing an impulse, wish or feeling toward a person or situation that is not its real object, thus permitting expression in a less threatening situation;
Ex: A man angry at his boss kicks his dog.
Denial
Inability to acknowledge true significance of thoughts, feelings, wishes, behavior or external reality factors that are consciously intolerable.
Acting out
Emotional conflict is dealt with through actions rather than feelings; Instead of talking about feeling neglected, a person will get into trouble to get attention.
Idealization
Overestimation of an admired aspect or attribute of another.
Identification
Universal mechanism whereby a person patterns himself or herself after a significant other. It plays a major role in personality development, especially superego development.
Identification with the aggressor
Mastering anxiety by identifying with a powerful aggressor (such as an abusing parent) to counteract feelings of helplessness and to feel powerful oneself. Usually involves behaving like the aggressor.
Ex: Abusing others after one has been abused oneself.
Incorporation
Primitive mechanism in which psychic representation of a person (or parts of a person) is/are figuratively ingested.
Introjection
Loved or hated external objects are symbolically absorbed within self (converse of projection). In severe depression, unconscious unacceptable hatred is turned toward self.
Inhibition
Loss of motivation to engage in (usually pleasurable) activity because it might stir up conflict over forbidden impulses; Writing, learning or work blocks or social shyness.
Intellectualization
Where the person avoids uncomfortable emotions by focusing on facts and logic. Emotional aspects are completely ignored as being irrelevant. Jargon is often used as a device of intellectualization. By using complex terminology, the focus becomes on the words rather than the emotions.
Insolation of affect
Unacceptable impulse, idea, act is separated from its original memory source, thereby removing the original emotional charge associated with it.
Projection
Primitive defense, attributing one’s disowned attitudes, wishes, feelings and urges to some external object or person. Ex: Someone cheater accuses their partner of also cheating.
Projective Identification
A form of projection utilized by persons with Borderline Personality Disorder. Unconsciously perceiving other’s behavior as a reflection of one’s own identity.
Rationalization
Third line of defense; not unconscious. Giving believable explanation for irrational behavior motivated by unacceptable unconscious wishes or by defenses used to cope with such wishes.
Reaction Formation
Person adopts affects, ideas, attitudes or behaviors that are opposites of those he or she harbors consciously or unconsciously. Excessive moral zeal masking strong, but repressed, asocial impulses or being excessively sweet to mask unconscious anger.
Regression
Partial or symbolic return to more infantile patterns of reacting or thinking. Can be in service to ego. Ex: Dependency during illness.
Repression
Key mechanism. Expressed clinically by amnesia or symptomatic forgetting serving to banish unacceptable ideas, fantasies, affects or impulses from consciousness.
Splitting
Defensive mechanism associated with Borderline Personality Disorder in which a person perceives self and others as “all good” or “all bad.” Splitting services to protect the good objects. A person cannot integrate the good and the bad in people.
Sublimation
Potentially maladaptive feelings or behaviors are diverted into socially acceptable, adaptive channels;
Ex: A person who has angry feelings channels them into athletics.
Substitution
Unattainable or unacceptable goal, emotion or object is replaced by one more that is more attainable or acceptable.
Symbolization
A mental representation stands for some other thing, class of things, or attribute. This mechanism underlies dream formation and some other symptoms (such as conversion reactions, obsessions, compulsions) with a link between the latent meaning of the symptom and the symbol; usually unconscious.
Turning against self
Defense to deflect hostile aggression or other unacceptable impulses from another to self.
Undoing
A person uses words or actions to symbolically reverse or negate unacceptable thoughts, feelings or actions; Ex: A person compulsively washing hands to deal with obsessive thoughts.
