DEFENSE MECHANISM

Presenter: Dr Alapati Vaniaparna (PG 1st year )

Moderator : Dr B.Anand ( Professor and HOD)
PLAN OF PRESENTATION

1.INTRODUCTION
2.DEFINITION
3.CLASSIFICATION
4.APPLIED ASPECTS
5. REFERENCES
INTRODUCTION

1.The concept of defense first appeared in Sigmund Freud’s

article “The Neuro-Psychoses of defense” (1894) and was next
discussed in “Further Remarks on the Neuro-Psychoses of
defense” (1896) and “The Aetiology of Hysteria” (1896).

2.For Freud, the concept of defense refers to the ego’s attempts

at psychic transformation in response to representations and
affects that are painful, intolerable or unacceptable.

3.He abandoned the concept of defense for a period in favor of

the concept of repression. He then reintroduced it in “Neurotic
Mechanisms in Jealousy, Paranoia and Homosexuality” (1922).
4.In an appendix to Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety
(1926), Freud reverted to the old concept of defense. He
also retained the word “repression” for special method of
defense.

5.Freud’s list of basic Defense Mechanisms includes:

Denial, Displacement, Intellectualization, Projection,
Rationalization, Reaction formation, Regression,
Repression and Sublimation.

6.The first comprehensive study of defense mechanisms

was reported by Anna Freud in her landmark work, The
Ego and the Mechanisms of defense (1937).
THE TRIPARTITE MODEL OF THE MIND

• Ego
• ID
• Superego
DEFINITION

• In Freudian psychoanalytic theory, defense mechanisms are

unconscious psychological strategies brought into play by various entities
to cope with reality and to maintain self-image.

• White and Gilliland (1975) stated that the term mechanisms of defense
refers to the various automatic, involuntary, and unconsciously instituted
psychological activities by which the human being attempts to exclude
unacceptable urges or impulses from awareness.

• According to American Psychiatric Association (1994), “defense

mechanisms are patterns of feelings, thoughts, or behaviors that are
relatively involuntary. They arise în response to perceptions of psychic
danger or conflict, to unexpected change in the internal or external
environment or in response to cognitive dissonance.”
CLASSIFICATION OF DEFENSE MECHANISMS
Classifying defense mechanisms according to some of
their properties (i.e. underlying mechanisms, similarities
or connections with personality) has been attempted.

1.Developmental by Anna Freud

2.Valliant (1971)
3.Bond et al. (1983)
4.Perry and Copper (1985)
5.American Psychiatric Association (1994)
Normally there is an orderly
sequence as the child
matures.

• Oral (0-18 months) –

narcissistic defenses
(Projection, denial, distortion)

• Anal (18months-3 years) –

Identification, undoing,
reaction formation, isolation,
regression

• Phallic / oedipal (3-6 years) –

Intellectualization

• Latency (6 years to puberty)

– Symbolization, sublimation
VAILLANT’S CLASSIFICATION

LEVEL I-PATHOLOGICAL DEFENSES

• The mechanisms on this level, when
predominating, almost always are severely
pathological. These defenses, in conjunction,
permit one to effectively rearrange external
experiences to eliminate the need to cope
with reality.

• The pathological users of these

mechanisms frequently appear irrational or
insane to others. These are the “psychotic”
defenses, common in overt psychosis.
However, they are found in dreams and
throughout childhood as well.
e.g. psychotic denial, distortion.
LEVEL II – IMMATURE DEFENSES
• These mechanisms are often present in adults and more
commonly present in adolescents.
• Lessen distress and anxiety provoked by threatening people
or by uncomfortable reality.
• People who excessively use such defenses are seen as
socially undesirable in that they are immature, difficult to deal
with and seriously out of touch with reality.
• Overuse almost always leads to serious problems in a
person’s ability to cope effectively.
These defenses are often seen in severe depression and
personality disorders.(e.g. fantasy, projection, passive
aggression, acting out, dissociation)
LEVEL III – NEUROTIC DEFENSES

These mechanisms are considered neurotic, but fairly

common in adults have short-term advantages in coping, but
can often cause long-term problems in relationships, work
and in enjoying life when used as one’s primary style of
coping with the world.
E.g. Intellectualization, reaction formation, somatization,
displacement, repression)
LEVEL IV – MATURE DEFENSES:
Commonly found among emotionally healthy adults & are
considered mature, even though many have their origins in
an immature stage of development.

• They have been adapted through the years in order to

optimize success in life and relationships. The use of these
defenses enhances pleasure and feelings of control.

• These defenses help us integrate conflicting emotions and

thoughts, while still remaining effective. Those who use these
mechanisms are usually considered virtuous.
E.g. Humor, sublimation, suppression, altruism, anticipation.
BOND ET AL. (1983)

Maladaptive action defense style: Inability to deal with

impulses by taking constructive action (withdrawal, acting
out, regression, inhibition, passive aggression, and
projection).
Image-distorting defense style: Split the image of self and
others into good & bad, strong & weak (splitting, primitive
idealization, and omnipotence with devaluation).
Self-sacrificing defense style: perceive one self as kind and
helpful to others (reaction formation and pseudo-altruism).
• Adaptive defense style: Constructive type of mastery over
conflicts (humor, suppression, and sublimation).
PERRY AND COPPER (1985)

• Disavowal: disavow experiences, affects or impulses;

projection, denial, rationalization.
• Action: releases feelings and impulses through actions; acting
out, passive aggression.
• Borderline: distort self & others images; splitting and
projective identification.
• Narcissistic: serves to regulate self-esteem and mood;
omnipotence, primitive idealization, devaluation.
• Obsessional :neutralize affect without distorting external
reality; isolation, intellectualization.
• Mature: mastery over conflicts; humor, suppression,
AMERICAN PSYCHIATRIC ASSOCIATION (1994)
• Defensive deregulation: failure of defensive regulation-
leading to pronounced break with objective reality .
Delusional projection
Psychotic denial
Psychotic distortion
• Action: deals with stressors by action or withdrawal
Acting out
Passive aggression
Help-rejecting complaining
• Major image-distorting: Gross distortion of image of self or
others
Autistic fantasy
• Disavowal: keeping stressors out of awareness with or without
a misattribution of these to external cause
Denial
Projection
Rationalization

• Minor image-distorting: distortions in the image of the self or

others
Devaluation
Idealization
Omnipotence
Mental inhibitions: Keeps potentially threatening ideas or
feelings out of awareness
Displacement
Reaction formation
Repression
Undoing

High-adaptive: optimal adaptation in handling stressors

Anticipation
Altruism
Humor
Sublimation
DENIAL
• Denial is simply refusing to acknowledge that an event has
occurred.
• Denial is one of Freud’s original defense mechanisms. It is
considered one of the most primitive of the defense
mechanisms because it is characteristic of early childhood
development. It is a form of repression, where stressful
thoughts are banned from memory.
• Many people use denial in their everyday lives to avoid
dealing with painful feelings or areas of their life they don’t
wish to admit.

Example: 1) Patient denies that his physician’s diagnosis of

cancer is correct and seeks a second opinion.
DISPLACEMENT

• Displacement is the shifting of actions from a desired target to

a substitute target when there is some reason why the first
target is not permitted or not available.
• Where possible the second target will resemble the original
target in some way.
• It occurs when the Id wants to do something of which the
Super ego does not permit. The Ego thus finds some other way
• Thus there is a transfer of energy from a repressed object to a
more acceptable object.
INTELLECTUALIZATION

• Intellectualization is a ‘flight into reason’, where the person avoids

uncomfortable emotions by focusing on facts and logic. The situation
is treated as an interesting problem that engages the person on a
rational basis, whilst the emotional aspects are completely ignored
as being irrelevant.

• Example: A person who is in heavily debt builds a complex

spreadsheet of how long it would take to repay using different
payment options and interest rates.

• Intellectualization protects against anxiety by repressing the

emotions connected with an event. It is also known as ‘Isolation of
affect’ as the affective elements are removed from the situation.
PROJECTION

• When a person has uncomfortable thoughts or feelings, they

may project these onto other people, assigning the thoughts or
feelings that they need to repress to a convenient alternative
target.

• Neurotic projection is perceiving others as operating in ways

one unconsciously finds objectionable in oneself.

• Complementary projection is assuming that others do, think

and feel in the same way as you.
It turns neurotic or moral anxiety into reality anxiety, which is
easier to deal with.
RATIONALIZATION

• When something happens that we find difficult to accept,

then we will make up a logical reason why it has happened.

• When a person does something of which the moral super

ego disapproves, then the ego seeks to defend itself by
adding reasons that make the action acceptable to the super
ego. Thus we are able to do something that is outside our
values and get away with it without feeling too guilty.
REACTION FORMATION

• Reaction Formation occurs when a person feels an urge to do or

say something and then actually does or says something that is
effectively the opposite of what they really want. It also appears
as a defense against a feared social punishment.
• A common pattern in Reaction Formation is for the person to
show ‘excessive behavior’.
• In defense against the threatening impulse, express the
opposite impulse.
• Psychoanalysts believe that extreme patterns of Reaction
Formation are found in paranoia and obsessive-compulsive
disorder (OCD), where the person becomes trapped in a cycle of
repeating a behavior that they know (at least at a deep level) is
somehow wrong.
REGRESSION

• Regression involves taking the position of a child in some

problematic situation, rather than acting in a more adult
way(Return to earlier and more comfortable developmental
level)
• This is usually in response to stressful situations, with
greater levels of stress potentially leading to more overt
regressive acts.
• Can be simple and harmless, such as a person who is
sucking a pen (as a Freudian regression to oral fixation) may
be more dysfunctional, such as crying or using petulant
arguments.
REPRESSION
• Repression involves placing uncomfortable thoughts in relatively
inaccessible areas of the subconscious mind. Thus when things
occur that we are unable to cope with now, we push them away,
either planning to deal with them at another time or hoping that
they will fade away on their own accord.

• The level of ‘forgetting’ in repression can vary from a temporary

abolition of uncomfortable thoughts to a high level of amnesia,
where events that caused the anxiety are buried very deep.

• A high level of repression can cause a high level of anxiety or

dysfunction, although this may also be caused by the repression
of one particularly traumatic incident.
ACTING OUT

• Performing an extreme behavior in order to express thoughts

or feelings the person feels incapable of otherwise expressing.
E.g. Instead of saying, “I’m angry with you,” a person who acts
out may instead throw a book at the person, or punch a hole
through a wall.
• When a person acts out, it can act as a pressure release, and
often helps the individual feel calmer and peaceful once again.
• 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.
• Self-injury may also be a form of acting-out, expressing in
physical pain what one cannot stand to feel emotionally.
DISSOCIATION

• Dissociation is when a person loses track of time and/or

person and instead finds another representation of their self
in order to continue in the moment.
• People who have a history of any kind of childhood abuse
often suffer from some form of dissociation.In extreme
cases, dissociation can lead to a person believing they have
multiple selves (“multiple personality disorder”).
• People who use dissociation often have a disconnected
view of themselves in their world. Time and their own self-
image may not flow continuously, as it does for most
people.
UNDOING

• Undoing is the attempt to take back an unconscious

behaviour or thought that is unacceptable or hurtful.

• A person tries to ‘undo’ an unhealthy, destructive or

otherwise threatening thought by engaging in contrary
behavior.

• By “undoing” the previous action, the person is attempting

to counteract the damage done done by the original comment,
hoping the two will balance one another out.
HYPOCHONDRIASIS

• Exaggerating and overemphasizing an illness for the

purpose of evasion and regression. In hypochondriasis,
responsibility can be avoided, guilt can be circumvented,
and instinctual impulses are warded off. Because
hypochondriacial impulse are ego-alien, the afflicated
person experiences dysphoria and a sense of affliction.
IDEALIZATION
Valuing something more than it is worth/ attributing
exaggerated positive qualities to self or others
FANTASY
PASSIVE AGGRESSION
• Aggression towards others expressed indirectly or
passively.
SOMATIZATION
• The transformation of negative feelings towards others
into negative feelings toward self, pain, illness, and
anxiety.
SPLITTING

• A primitive defense,
Negative and positive
impulses are split off and
not integrated
Example: An individual
views other people as
either innately good or
innately evil, rather than a
whole continuous being.
• It can even be splitting of
the ego when the patient is
existentially insecure.
SUBLIMATION
• Transformation of unwanted
impulses into something less
harmful.
• This can simply be a
distracting release or may be a
constructive and valuable
piece of work.
• Sublimation is probably the
most useful and constructive of
the defense mechanisms as it
takes the energy of something
that is potentially harmful and
turns it to doing something
good and useful.
ANTICIPATION
• Dealing with stressors by anticipating the
consequences and feelings associated with possible
future events and considering realistic solutions.
ALTRUISM
• Constructive service to others that brings pleasure and
personal satisfaction.
HUMOR

• Overt expression of ideas and feelings (especially those

that are unpleasant to focus on or too terrible to talk
about) that gives pleasure to others.

• The thoughts retain a portion of their innate distress,

but they are “skirted round” by witticism.
SUPPRESSION

Conscious decision to postpone attention to an impulse or conflict.

Conscious set-up and unconscious follow through. The suppressed
content temporarily resides in the unconscious.

• Distortion: A gross reshaping of external reality to meet internal

needs(including unrealistic megalomania beliefs, hallucinations, wish-
fulfilling delusions)and using sustained feelings of delusional
superiority and entitlement.

• Isolation: Separation of feelings from ideas and event.

E.g. Describing a murder with graphic details with no emotional

response.
• Identification: The unconscious modeling of one’s self
upon another person’s character and behavior.

E.g. An insecure young man joins a fraternity to boost his

self- esteem.

• Introjection: Identifying with some idea or object so

deeply that it becomes a part of that person.
DEFENSE MECHANISMS AND MAJOR CLINICAL SYNDROMES
• Anxiety: When repression proves to be inadequate,
previously contained primitive instinctual urges threaten to
come to expression and this threat creates the sense of
apprehension characteristics of anxiety.

• Phobia: Through the mechanism of displacement a phobia

replaces anxiety. Regression is inherent as phobia involves
return to primitive mode of thought through which child
copes with his own threatening impulses.

• Mania: Denial is the defense mechanism characteristic of

mania. When denial is threatened patient may then resort to
Projection – attributing his own anger to others. Characteristic
of a small child. Regression-return to the magical thinking
OCD:
Isolation of affect is responsible for the symptom of obsessional
thoughts, Undoing creates compulsive acts (a ritual which
magically undoes a forbidden unconscious impulse) and
Reaction formation (development of attitudes opposite to the
impulses being defended against) accounts for scrupulosity and
other exaggerated characteristics of cleanliness.

Depression:
In less severe form of depression, that is depression out of
proportion to the reality of the loss, the loss produces regression
and revives the intense sense of hopelessness and despair that
a small child experiences.
In extreme depression the effect of identification with the lost
• Paranoid:
Reliance on the defense mechanism of projection characterizes
paranoid disorders. Regression is inherent in the production of
paranoid delusions. Rationalization is constant companion to
projection – ability to give plausible and logical reasons for his
irrational beliefs is monumental.

• Schizophrenia:
Regression- primitive characteristics of patients thought and
behavior; return to infantile modes of mental functioning
Projection-involved in the formation of delusions of persecution
or influence
Isolation of affect – is involved in the calm detached way patient
thinks or speaks of frightening things
REFERENCES

• CTP, 10th Edition

• Introduction to Psychology, Morgan and King
• Ego Defense Mechanism, George E Vaillant
THANK YOU