DEFENCE MECHANISM

DEFENSE MECHANISM 

Defense mechanisms are psychological strategies that are unconsciously used to protect a person from anxiety arising from unacceptable thoughts or feelings.

There are different types of defence mechanism:- 

Repression: Unconscious andinvoluntary forgetting of painful ideas, events and conflicts. 

Ex. Forgetting a loved ones both day after a fight. 

Denial: Unconscious refusal to admit an unacceptable idea or behavior. 

Displacement: Unconsciouslydischarging pent-up feelings to a less threatening object. 

Ex. A husband comes home after a bad day at work and yells at his wife. 

Reaction formation: Replacing unacceptable feelings with their exact opposites. 

Reaction formation: Replacing unacceptable feelings with their exact opposites. 

Rationalization: It is a processin which an individual justifies his failures and socially unacceptable behavior by giving socially approved reasons. 

Ex. A student who fails in the examination may complain that the hostel atmosphere is not favourable and has resulted in his failure. 

Sublimation: Consciously or unconsciously channeling instinctual drives into acceptable activities

Ex. Aggressive might be transformed into competitiveness in business or sports. 

Compensation: Consciously covering up for a weakness by over emphasizing or making up a desirable trait

Ex. A student who fails in his studies may compensate by becoming the college champion in athletics. 

Projection: Unconsciously (or consciously) blaming someone else for one's difficulties. 

Ex. a spouse angry at significant other for not listening, when in fact, it is he who is not listening.

Intellectualization: Undue emphasis is focused on the inanimate in order to avoid intimacy with people, atten tion is paid to external reality to avoid the expression of inner feelings and stress is excessively placed on irrel evant details to avoid perceiving the whole. 

Ex. Person shows no emotional expression when discussing a serious car accident. 

Undoing: Trying to reverse or 'undo' a thought or feeling by performing an action that signifies an opposite feel ing than original thought or feeling. 

Ex: a husband who showers his wife with roses and chocolates on Valentine's Day may be unconsciously seeking to undo a year of neglect.

Regression: Reverting to an older, less mature way of handling stresses and feelings. 

Ex. For a young child it means going back to an earlier stage of development.

Dissociation: The unconscious separation of painful feelings and emotions from an unacceptable idea, situation or object. 

Ex. Amnesia that prevents recalls of previous days auto accident. 

Adult remembers nothing of childhood sexual abuse. 

Conversion: The unconscious expression of intrapsychic conflict symbolically through physical symptoms. 

Ex. A student awakens with a migraine headache the morning of a final examination and feels too ill to take the test. 

Suppression: Voluntary rejection of unacceptable thoughts or feelings from conscious awareness. 

Ex: Thinking about all those sweets in the staff lounge and wanting to eat them while on a diet.

Substitution: Unconscious replacement of unacceptable impulses, attitudes, needs or emotions with those that are more acceptable. 

Ex. A student nurse decides to work in teaching side, because she is unable to master clinical experiences. 

Isolation: Attempting to avoid a painful thought or feeling by objectifying and emotionally detaching oneself from the feeling. 

Ex. Acting aloof and indifferent towards someone when you really dislike that person.