Lesson No: 3

Defense Mechanisms," or ways that we protect ourselves from things that we don't want to think about or deal with

The primary functions of these mechanisms are:

1. to minimize anxiety

2. to protect the ego

3. to maintain repression

Repression is useful to the individual since:

1. it prevents discomfort

2. it leads to some economy of time and effort

§ Denial: Refusal to accept external reality because it is too threatening; arguing against an anxiety-provoking stimulus by stating it doesn't exist;

§ Distortion: A gross reshaping of external reality to meet internal needs.

§ Splitting: A primitive defense. Negative and positive impulses are split off and unintegrated.

§ Extreme projection: The blatant denial of a moral or psychological deficiency, which is perceived as a deficiency in another individual or group.

§ Acting out: Direct expression of an unconscious wish or impulse in action, without conscious awareness of the emotion that drives that expressive behavior.

§ Fantasy: Tendency to retreat into fantasy in order to resolve inner and outer conflicts.

§ Idealization: Unconsciously choosing to perceive another individual as having more positive qualities than he or she may actually have.

§ Passive aggression: Aggression towards others expressed indirectly or passively such as using procrastination. (procrastination refers to the act of replacing high-priority actions with tasks of low-priority, and thus putting off important tasks to a later time.)

§ Projection: reduces anxiety by allowing the expression of the undesirable impulses or desires without becoming consciously aware of them; attributing one's own unacknowledged unacceptable/unwanted thoughts and emotions to another;

§ Projective identification: The object of projection invokes in that person precisely the thoughts, feelings or behaviors projected.

§ Somatization: The transformation of negative feelings towards others into negative feelings toward self, pain, illness, and anxiety.

§ Displacement: Defense mechanism that shifts sexual or aggressive impulses to a more acceptable or less threatening target; separation of emotion from its real object and redirection of the intense emotion toward someone or something that is less offensive or threatening in order to avoid dealing directly with what is frightening or threatening.

§ Dissociation: Temporary drastic modification of one's personal identity or character to avoid emotional distress; separation or postponement of a feeling that normally would accompany a situation or thought.

§ Hypochondriasis: An excessive preoccupation or worry about having a serious illness.

Intellectualization: A form of isolation; concentrating on the intellectual components of a situation so as to distance oneself from the associated anxiety-provoking emotions; separation of emotion from ideas; thinking about wishes in formal, affectively bland terms and not acting on them; avoiding unacceptable emotions by focusing on the intellectual aspects Isolation: