Defense Mechanisms: Our In-built Coping Strategies By Ms. Paulomi Pandit

Defense Mechanisms

Our Inbuilt Coping Strategies

By

PAULOMI PANDIT

PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY

Personality consists of 3 elements

-Id-Superego-Ego

ID

• Pleasure principle• Important in early stages of life• Seeks instant gratification• Disregards consequences• Irrational and not based on reality

If needs and desires are not fulfilled then it creates tension and anxiety.

SUPEREGO

• Plays moralizing roles• Ideal you• Contains traditions of family and society • Violation of the superego’s standards results

in feelings of guilt or anxiety

EGO• Reality Principle

• Balances between id and super ego

What happens when ego cannot deal with id and super ego?

•ANXIETY

• The ego then employs a defense mechanism to help reduce these feelings of anxiety

Freud identified 3 types of Anxiety

DEFENSE MECHANISMS have two properties

Denial

• In many cases, individuals may deny reality completely.

• Many a times, people reduce the intensity by admitting to the fact but denying its seriousness.

• E.g. A chain smoker may admit that she is addicted to smoking but argues that nothing will happen to her

• Different from lying• It is an unconscious refusal to

admit or to recognize something that has occurred or is currently occurring.

• e.g. terminal illness diagnosis-check and recheck

Subtypes

Intellectualization

• Intellectualization means separating/avoiding from the stressful, emotional content and focusing on the facts or the intellectual component of a situation.

• E.g. terminal illness Focus on clinical data (no sadness/grief)

RationalizationMaking logical excuses for ones mistakes

When confronted by success or failure, people tend to attribute achievement to their own qualities and skills while failures are blamed on other people or outside forces.

2 types:1.Silver lining e.g. dint want this job anyway2.Sour grapes phenomenon

Undoing

• Taking back something that is unacceptable or hurtful

Damage Control

e.g. insulting a friend then praising them for an hour

Suppression• We choose to push

unwanted information out of our awareness consciously

• Impulse is inappropriate for the situation e.g. cant fight with my wife, guests are around

Repression• Unconsciously

forgetting unpleasant thoughts, feelings or impulses.

• E.g. no recollection of abuse in childhood

• Different from routine forgetting-(no recall)

Sublimation

• To transform conflicted emotions into productive outlets

• It channels our energy away from destructive acts and into something that is socially acceptable and/or creatively effective.

• e.g. Aggression-Gym

Reaction Formation

Reaction formation means expressing the opposite of your true inner feelings in your outward behaviour. Unconsciously hide true feelings

E.g. dislike someone but behave in an overfriendly mannerLustful feelings towards someone become hatred

DisplacementDisplacement occurs when we shift our emotions and actions from the actual desired target to a substitute target

Even dreams can be interpreted as the displacement of stored tensions into other forms (dreams are often highly metaphoric) e.g. a mouse hitting a dragon with a hockey stick.

Isolation

Compensation• Counterbalancing weakness by focusing on

strength areas

• E.g. I’m good at football not studies, so I focus too much on football

Regression

Reverting to age inappropriate behaviourPrevious developmental stage (childhood) can be safer-moving there eases people outE.g. adolescent engages in bedwetting due to fear/anxietyafter getting a deadline for multiple assignments, employee curls up in the bed after coming from work.

Projection

Introjection is the opposite of projection - subconsciously "takes in" to self an imprint (or recording) of another person including all their attitudes, messages, prejudices, expressions, even the sound of their voice, etc.

Taking our own unacceptable qualities or feelings and ascribing them to other people e.g. she has a problemThe result is we can then be hurt or angry with them for their audacity of having these thoughts or feelings about us

Some other defense mechanisms

THANK YOU!