The document defines different ego defense mechanisms and classifies them as pathological, immature, neurotic, or mature. It provides examples of defenses such as denial, distortion, projection, and repression. It also profiles some of the key thinkers in defense mechanism development, including Sigmund Freud, Anna Freud, and George Valliant. Defenses help protect the ego from anxiety but can also influence behaviors and perceptions in unhealthy ways depending on their maturity level.

1. Defence Mechanisms
(Supporting material for
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by Jonathan Gabay)
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2. DEFINITION
Ego Defense Mechanisms protect the
mind/self/ego from anxiety or provide a
retreat from a difficult situation.
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3. Key figures in Defence Mechanism development
• Sigmund Freud
• Founder of psychoanalysis.
• Theory of Psychosexual
Development. The Id, Ego,
and Superego
• Dream interpretation. Free
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association.
Anna Freud
• Child psychoanalysis
• Clear explanations of
defense mechanism
• Concept of signal anxiety.
Otto F. Kernberg
-theory of borderline
personality organization
,based on ego psychological
object relations theory.
Robert Plutchik
- defenses as derivatives of
basic emotions.
George Eman
Valliant -a continuum related
to psychoanalytical
developmental levels.

4. Pathological/Narcissistic Defenses
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Denial
Distortion
Projection
Regression

5. IMMATURE DEFENCES
• Acting out
• Hypochondriasis
• Introjections
• Passive aggressive behavior
• Regression
• Schizoid fantasy
• Somatization
Commonly present in adolescents.
Such defenses can be viewed as immature, difficult to deal with.
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6. NEUROTIC DEFENCES
Considered neurotic – fairly common in adults
• Rationalization.
• Sexualization.
• Compensation.
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• Splitting.
• Inhibition.
• Isolation.
• Displacement.
• Repression.
• Externalization.
• Intellectualization.
• Reaction Formation.
• Dissociation.

7. MATURE DEFENCES
Commonly found among emotionally healthy adults
• Altruism
• Anticipation
• Asceticism
• Humor
• Sublimation
• Suppression
• These defenses enhance pleasure and sense of control.
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8. DENIAL
• Involuntary exclusion of unpleasant or painful
reality from conscious awareness.
– Postulated by Sigmund Freud
• Simple denial
• - deny the reality of unpleasant facts.
• Minimization
• - Recognize the fact, but deny its seriousness.
• Projection
– - admit both fact and seriousness but deny
responsibility.
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9. Death and loss denial
1. Denial and Isolation
• Buffers shock.
• Supports through first wave of
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pain.
2. Anger
• Powerful emotion deflected
and redirected as anger.
• Anger may be aimed at
inanimate objects, strangers,
or dying/ deceased.
• Rationally, the person is not to
be blamed.
• Emotionally, the person is
resented for causing pain.
3. Bargaining
A need to regain control –
If only the doctors were
called earlier …
If only I had tried to be a
better person …
Deals struck with a higher
power to postpone
inevitable and protect from
painful reality.
4. Depression
5. Acceptance

10. TYPES OF DENIAL
• Denial of fact
– Avoids a fact by lying.
– lying can be an outright falsehood (commission),
– leaving out certain details to tailor a story
(omission),
– falsely agreeing to something
– (also referred to as "yessing" behaviour).
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11. Denial of responsibility
– Avoiding personal responsibility.
– Blaming
– A direct statement shifting blame; may overlap with
denial of fact
– Minimizing
– Attempt to make the consequences of an action
appear less harmful.
– Justifying –
– Having made a choice, tries to make it appear look
acceptable (due to a perception of what is "right”).
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12. • Denial of impact
• Avoids thinking about or understanding the
harms a behaviour (i.e. denial of consequences).
• Avoids a sense of guilt.
• Prevent remorse or empathy of others.
• Denial of awareness
• Avoids pain and harm by stating they were in a
different state of awareness (such as alcohol or
drug intoxication).
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13. • Denial of cycle
• “It just happened."
• Denial of denial
• Involves thoughts, actions and behaviours
• Example:
• Overt consumerism - bolsters belief that
personal behaviour need not change.
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14. DISTORTION
• Totally redesigning external reality to suit
inner needs.
• Delusions - especially grandiose.
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15. PROJECTION
• Perceiving and reacting to unacceptable inner impulses
and derivatives as though they emanated from outside
the self.
• Freudian Projection
– Projective identification
– connection of the self with that projected impulse
continues.
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Examples:
– Blaming
– Clinical-Delusions
– Paranoid personality.

16. Acting out
• Expression of an unconscious impulses; gratifying impulses rather
than prohibiting them.
• Designed (often unconsciously or semi-consciously) to gain
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attention.
• Can be destructive to self or others, and may inhibit the
development of more constructive responses to the feelings.
• Examples:
– Temper tantrums
– Rebellious behaviours

17. INTROJECTION
• Unconscious internalization of the qualities of
an object or person.
Example:
Identification with the aggressor.
• Stockholm syndrome.
• Depression.
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18. Hypochondriasis
Exaggerating for the purpose of evasion and
regression.
Passive aggression
• Indirect aggression towards others through
passivity, masochism and turning against the
self.
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19. REGRESSION
• Effort to return to an earlier libidinal phase, so
avoid tension and conflict of the current
phase.
– A person may revert to immature behavior to
ventilate feelings of frustration.
– Becomes a problem when used frequently to
avoid adult situations.
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20. SCHIZOID FANTASY
• Withdrawal in self to resolve conflict and
gratify frustrated wishes.
• Something which is not or cannot be real.
• Examples:
– Adolescence wish to fulfilling sexual daydreams.
– Middle-aged wish to be youthful, virile and
alluring.
– Narcissistic personality disorder.
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21. Somatization
• Converting psychic derivatives into bodily
symptoms.
• Reacting with somatic rather than psychic
appearances.
• Unconscious rechanneling of repressed
emotions into somatic symptoms.
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22. REACTION FORMATION
• Converting an unacceptable impulse into
its opposite.
– The original, rejected impulse doesn’t disappear.
– Persists, unconscious, in its original infantile form.
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23. REPRESSION
• Expelling or withholding an idea or feeling from consciousness
• Primary repression
• Refers to the curbing of ideas and feelings before they have attained
consciousness.
• Secondary repression
• Excludes from awareness what was once experienced at a conscious level.
Examples:
• Forgetfulness.
• Slip of tongue.
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24. RATIONALIZATION
• Ernest jones-contributed the term
"rationalization" to psychoanalysis.
• Offering rational explanations to justify
attitudes, beliefs, or unacceptable behaviour.
– Providing logical explanations for irrational
behaviour motivated by unacceptable wishes.
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25. DISPLACEMENT
• Involves taking out frustrations, feelings, and
impulses on people or objects that are less
threatening.
• Punching cushions in anger.
• Bosses ‘snapping’ for no reason at employees.
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26. DISSOCIATION
• Involuntary splitting or suppression of mental
function from rest of the personality.
• Allows expression of forbidden unconscious
impulses without any accompanying sense of
responsibility for actions.
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27. INTELLECTUALIZATION
• One of Freud's original defence mechanisms
– Employing intellectual processes to avoid
affective expressions or experiences.
• Intellectualization may accompany, but differs from
rationalization, which is validation of irrational
behaviour through clichés, stories, and simplified
explanation.
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28. UNDOING
• Unconsciously motivated actions which
symbolically counteract unacceptable
thoughts ,impulses or actions.
– Example :
• “Sorry for bumping into you.”
• Compulsive OCD.
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29. SEXUALIZATION
• Endowing an object or function with sexual
significance that it didn’t previously possess.
• Can also refer to warding off anxieties
associated with prohibited impulses or
derivatives.
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30. EXTERNALIZATION
• Perceiving one’s personality, including
impulses, conflicts, moods and attitudes in the
external world.
• More general than ‘projection’.
• Example:
• A belligerent person perceives others as
argumentative whilst believing him/her self to
be blameless.
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31. INHIBITION
• conscious or unconscious constraint or curtailment of a
process or behaviour, especially of impulses or desires.
• Conscious inhibition is commonly present whenever
whenever two desires are in conflict.
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• Examples:
• Writing blocks
• Eating delicious cakes, whilst dieting.

32. COMPENSATION
• Unconscious tendency to deal with a fear or
conflict by excessive effort in the opposite
direction.
• Example:
• Excessive preoccupation with body building to
counter inferiority.
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33. SPLITTING
• Viewing of self or others as either good or bad
without considering the entire range of
qualities in between.
• Example:
• Seeing all brands as greedy.
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34. SUPPRESSION
Deliberately trying to stop thinking about certain
thoughts.
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35. ASCETICISM
• Eliminating the enjoyment of experiences by
assigning moral values to specific pleasures.
• Gratification is derived from renunciation.
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36. Brand Psychology
Available 2015
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