Ego denfense

Question 1

Countertransference

Answer 1

Doctor projecting feelings about formative or other important persons onto patient.

Question 2

Ego defense: acting out

Answer 2

through action

Example: tantrum

Question 3

Ego defense: dissociation

Answer 3

temporary drastic change in personality, memory, consciousness, motor behavior to avoid emotional stress

Extreme form can result in dissociative identity disorder
(multiple personality disorder)

Question 4

Ego defense: denial

Answer 4

Avoidance of awareness of some painful reality

Newly diagnosed AIDS and cancer patients

Question 5

Ego defense: displacement

Answer 5

Avoided feelings are transferred to some neutral person or objects (vs. projection).

Mother yells at her child, because her husband yelled at her

Question 6

Ego defense: fixation

Answer 6

Partially remaining at a more childish level of development (vs. regression)

Men fixating on sports games.

Question 7

Ego defense: identification

Answer 7

modeling behavior after another person who is more powerful (though not necessarily admirable)

Abused child identifies himself/herself with an abuser

Question 8

Ego defense: isolation (of affect)

Answer 8

separating feelings from ideas and events

Describing murder in graphic detail with no emotional response.

Question 9

Ego defense: projection

Answer 9

Unacceptable internal impulse is attributed to an external source (vs. displacement)

Man who wants another woman things the wife is cheating on him.

Question 10

Ego defense: rationalization

Answer 10

proclaiming logical reasons for actions actually performed for other reasons, usually to avoid self-blame

After getting fired, claiming that the job was not important anyway

Question 11

Ego defense: reaction formation

Answer 11

a warded off idea or feeling is replace by an (unconsciously derived) emphasis on its opposite (vs. sublimation)

A patient with dirty thoughts enter priesthood

Question 12

Ego defense: regression

Answer 12

turning back the maturational clock and going back to earlier modes of dealing with the world (vs. fixation)

Seen in children under stress such as illness, punishment or birth of a new sibling (bedwetting in a previously toilet-trained child when hospitalized)

Question 13

Ego defense: splitting

Answer 13

Belief that people are either all good or all bad at different times due to intolerance of ambiguity Seen in borderline personality disorder

A patient says that all nurses are cold but doctors are warm.

Question 14

Mature ego defense: altruism

Answer 14

Guilty feelings alleviated by unsolicited generosity toward others.

Mafia boss makes large donation to charity

Question 15

Mature ego defense: humor

Answer 15

Associating the amusing nature of an anxiety provoking or adverse situation

Nervous med students make jokes about the board

Question 16

Mature ego defense: sublimation

Answer 16

One replaces an unacceptable wish with a course of action that is similar to the wish that does not conflict with one’s value of system (vs. reaction formation)

Teenager’s aggression toward his father is directed to perform well in sports

Question 17

Mature ego defense: suppression

Answer 17

Voluntary withholding of an idea or feeling from conscious awareness (vs. repression)

Choosing not to think about the USMLE until the week of the exam.