Ego defenses Flashcards
Acting out
Expressing unacceptable feelings and thoughts through actions.
Example: tantrums
Denial
Avoiding awareness of some painful reality.
Example: a common reaction in newly diagnosed AIDS and cancer patients
Displacement
Transferring avoided ideas and feelings to a neutral person or object (vs projection)
Example: mother yells at her child because her husband yelled at her
Dissociation
Temporary, drastic change in personality, memory, consciousness, or motor behavior to avoid emotional stress.
Example: extreme forms can result in dissociative identitiy disorder (multiple personality disorder)
Fixation
Partially remaining at a more childish level of development (vs regression).
Example: adults fixating on video games
Idealization
Expressing extremely positive thoughts of self and others while ignoring negative thoughts.
Example: a patient boasts about his physician and his accomplishments while ignoring any flaws
Identification
Modeling behavior after another person who is more powerful (though not necessarily admired).
Example: abused child later becomes a child abuser
Intellectualization
Using facts and logic to emotionally distance oneself from a stressful situation.
Example: in a therapy session, patient diagnosed with cancer focuses only on rates of survival
Isolation (of affect)
Separating feelings from ideas and events.
Example: describing murder in graphic detail with no emotional response
Passive aggression
Failing to meet the needs/expectations of other as an indirect show of opposition.
Example: disgruntled employee is repeatedly late to work
Projection
Attributing an unacceptable internal impulse to an external source (vs displacement).
Example: a man who wants to cheat on his wife accuses his wife of being unfaithful
Rationalization
Proclaiming logical reasons for actions actually performed for other reasons, usually to avoid self-blame.
Example: after getting fired, claiming that the job was not important anyway
Reaction formation
Replacing a warded-off idea or feeling by an (unconsciously derived) emphasis on its opposite (vs sublimation)
Example: a patient with libidinous thoughts enters a monastery
Regression
Involuntarily turning back the maturational clock and going back to earlier modes of dealing with the world (vs fixation).
Example: seen in children under stress such as illness, punishment, or birth of a new sibling (eg bedwetting in a previously toilet trained child when hospitalized)
Repression
Involuntarily withholding an idea or feeling from conscious awareness (vs suppression)
Example: a 20 yo does not remember going to counseling during his parents’ divorce 10 years earlier
