Defense mechanisms

1. DEFENSE MECHANISMS
BY
JOHNY KUTTY JOSEPH

2. WHAT IS A DEFENSE MECHANISM?
 Defense mechanism refers to the unconscious
processes that protect a person against anxiety
by distorting reality In some way.
 Sigmund Freud constructed a model of
personality with 3 interlocking parts: the ‘id’, ‘ego’
& super ego’.
 Id is the most primitive one-biologically based
urges. To eat, drink, eliminate & especially to be
sexually stimulated. id operates through
pleasure principle without any rules, realities,
morals.
 Id is bridled & managed by ego. Ego delays
satisfying id’s motives & channels behavior in

3.  Id’s unconscious demands are instinctual,
infantile and amoral . They must be blocked by
ego and superego.
 Super ego, the conscience, prohibitions learned
from parents & authorities.
 Because of this conflict and persistence of
unsatisfied demands, anxiety and guilt are
aroused.
 Defence mechanisms resides in the
unconscious domain of ego.

4. GEORGE VALLIANT’S CLASSIFICATION
 Narcissistic Defenses : Most primitive. In
children and adults who are psychotically
disturbed.
 Immature Defenses: adolescents and some non
neurotic patients.
 Neurotic Defenses: in OCD and hysterical
patients and in adults under stress.
 Mature defenses:

5. NARCISSISTIC DEFENCES
DENIAL
DISTORTION
PROJECTION
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6. DENIAL
 Avoiding the awareness of
some painful aspect of
reality by negating sensory
data.
 It abolishes external reality.
 A person who is a
functioning alcoholic will
often simply deny they have
a drinking problem, pointing
to how well they function in
their job and relationships.
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7. DISTORTION
 Grossly reshaping external reality to suit inner
needs
 Including hallucinations, wish fulfilling
delusions, unrealistic megalomania.
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8. PROJECTION
 Mechanism by which the ego attributes its own
intolerable sexual and aggressive impulses to
the outside person or agency.
 Coping with one’s unwanted motives by shifting
them on to someone else.
 A defense mechanism in which people protect
themselves from awareness of their own
undesirable traits by attributing those traits
excessively to others.
 An insecure student may have a strong
tendency to cheat during exam, but his
conscience will not allow him to even consider
such a thing. He may then suspect that the
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9. IMMATURE DEFENCES
 ACTING OUT
 HYPOCHONDRIASIS
 PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIOUR
 REGRESSION
 SOMATIIZATION
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10. ACTING OUT
 Expressing an unconscious wish or impulse through
action to avoid being conscious of an accompanying
affect.
 Involves chronically giving in to an impulse to avoid
the tension arising from postponement of
expression.
 Instead of saying, “I’m angry with you,” a person
who acts out may throw a book at the person, or
punch a hole through a wall.
 For instance, a child’s temper tantrum is a form of
acting out when he or she doesn’t get his or her way
with a parent.
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11. HYPOCHONDRIASIS
 Exaggerating or
overemphasizing an illness
for the purpose of evasion
and regression.
 Responsibility can be
avoided, guilt can be
circumvented and
instinctual impulses are
warded off.
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12. PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIOUR
 These patients turn their anger
against themselves. This
phenomenon is called
masochism, includes
procrastination, silly or
provocative behaviour, self
demeaning ,clowning and frankly
self destructive acts.
 TURNING AGAINST SELF :
Instead of expressing hostility
against another person,
represses the hostility but
ventilates it against own self in
the form of self criticism and self 12

13. REGRESSION
 Attempting to return to an
earlier libidinal phase of
functioning to avoid the
tension and conflict evoked
at the present level of
development.
 For eg, an adolescent who
is overwhelmed with fear,
anger and growing sexual
impulses might become
clingy and start exhibiting
earlier childhood
behaviours he has long 13

14. SOMATIZATION
 Converting psychic derivatives into bodily
symptoms and tending to react with somatic
manifestations rather than with psychic
manifestations.
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15. NEUROTIC DEFENCES
 DISPLACEMENT
 INTELLECTUALIZATION
 RATIONALIZATION
 REACTION FORMATION
 REPRESSION
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16. DISPLACEMENT
 The motive remains unaltered but the person
substitutes a different goal object for the
original one. Often the motive is aggression
that for some reason, the person cannot vent
on the source of anger.
 Shifting an emotion or drive from one idea or
object to another that resembles the original in
some aspect or quality.
 Example is the man who gets angry at his
boss, but can’t express his anger to his boss
for fear of being fired. He instead comes home
and kicks the dog or starts an argument with
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17. INTELLECTUALIZATION
 To avoid intimacy with people, attention is paid
to external reality to avoid the expression of
inner feelings and stress is placed on irrelevant
details to avoid perceiving the whole.
 A defense mechanism tries to make a person
gain detachment from an emotionally
threatening situation by dealing with it in
abstract , intellectual terms.
 A person told they have cancer asks for details
on the probability of survival and the success
rates of various drugs. The doctor may join in,
using 'carcinoma' instead of 'cancer' and
'terminal' instead of 'fatal'. 17

18. RATIONALIZATION
 Offering rational
explanations in an attempt to
justify attitudes, beliefs or
behaviour that may
otherwise be unacceptable.
 It is a method to support an
attitude with false reasons
 A defense mechanism in
which self-esteem is
maintained by assigning
reasonable and acceptable
reasons for conduct entered
on impulsively or for less 18

19. Rationalization is very common among
medical professionals in covering up
medical errors.
 “Why disclose the error?, the patient
was going to die anyway”
 “Telling the family about the error will
make them feel worse”
 “It was patient’s fault, if he wasn’t so
obese, sick etc. this error wouldn't have
caused so much harm” “Well we did our
best, these things happen.”
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RATIONALIZATION

20. REACTION FORMATION
 A defense mechanism in which a person
denies a disapproved motive through giving
strong expression to its opposite.
 If this mechanism is frequently used at any
early stage of ego development it can become
a permanent character trait, as in obsessional
character.
 Ex : when a 2nd child is born in a family the first
child may show extraordinary concern for the
welfare of the Newborn. This way his
unconscious hate and aggression for his little
brother is covered up.
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21. REPRESSION
 This is a denial of an impulse or memory that
might provoke feelings of guilt by its
disappearance from awareness. This denial is a
defense against internal threats.
 Repression is the unconscious blocking of
unacceptable thoughts, feelings and impulses.
 Ego excludes from the consciousness all the
psychological contents which it cannot fit in
harmoniously.
 A child who is abused by a parent later has no
recollection of the events, but has trouble
forming relationships. 21

22. MATURE DEFENCES
These defence mechanisms are
used consciously most of time in
conscious mind.
 Altruism
 Humour
 Suppression
 Sublimation
 Compensation
DEFENCE MECHANISMS
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23. ALTRUISM
 Involves an individual
getting pleasure from giving
to others what the individual
would have liked to receive.
 behaviour of an animal that
benefits another at its own
expense.
 Acting with an unselfish
regard for others
 Eg. Mother rearing children.
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24. HUMOUR
 Using comedy to overtly express feelings and
thoughts without personal discomfort and
without producing an unpleasant effect on the
others.
 Freud suggested that “Humour can be regarded
as the highest of these defensive processes”
 Mature humour allows individuals to look
directly at what is painful.
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25. SUPPRESSION
 This is where the person consciously and
deliberately pushes down any thoughts that
leads to feelings of anxiety.
 This approach is also used to suppress desires
and urges that the person considers to be
unworthy of them.
 This may range from sexual desires to feelings
of anger towards other people for whatever
reason.
 An older man has sexual feelings towards a
teenager and quickly suppresses the thought.
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26. SUBLIMATION
 It is a defense mechanism that allows us to act
out unacceptable impulses by converting
these behaviors into a more acceptable form.
 Consists of redirection of sexual impulses to
socially valued activities and goals.
 Ex. A writer may divert his libido to creation of
poem/ novel. Thus indirectly satisfying drives.
 Rejection by lover may induce one to divert hi
energy to human welfare or artistic and literary
activities.
 For example, a person experiencing extreme
anger might take up kick-boxing as a means of26

27. COMPENSATION
 This defense mechanism allows the individual
to counterbalance his feelings of inadequacy
by doing well in another activity. Ex. A
crippled individual could develop his physique
through body-building exercise or excelling in
sports. This is a positive compensatory act.
 Negative compensation are found in people
who pretend to be superior than others to
cover up their feelings of inadequacy; in the
student who distracts attention of classmates
or making “show offs” because they believe
that nobody notices them or is in need of
recognition. 27

28. COMPENSATION
 Overcompensation: This is also a type of
compensation for a weakness by exerting too
much effort to overcome it. Ex. Ludwig Van
Beethoven suffered from deafness, yet became
one of the world’s renowned musicians
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