Defence mechanism

1. DEFENCE
MECHANISMS

2. Psychoanalytic Theory
DEFENCE MECHANISMS
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 Sigmund Freud constructed a model of personality
with 3 interlocking parts:the ‘id’,the ‘ego’ & the ‘super
ego’.
 Id,the most primitive one-biologically based urges
To eat,drink,eliminate & especially to be sexually
stimulated.
id operates through pleasure principle without any
rules,realities,morals.
 Id is bridled & managed by ego.Ego delays satisfying
id’s motives & channels behaviour in socially
acceptable way.

3. Involuntary coping Mechanisms
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 Id’s unconscious demands are instinctual,
infantile and amoral . They must be blocked by ego
and superego.
 Super ego, the conscience, prohibitions learned
from parents & authorities.
 Because of this conflict and persistence of
unsatisfied demands, anxiety and guilt are
aroused.
 Defence mechanisms resides in the unconscious
domain of ego.

4. DEFENCE MECHANISMS
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5. George Valliant’s Classification
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 Narcissistic Defences : Most primitive. In
children and adults who are psychotically
disturbed.
 Immature Defences: adolescents and some non
neurotic patients.
 Neurotic Defences: in OCD and hysterical
patients and in adults under stress.
 Mature defences

6. NARCISSISTIC DEFENCES
DEFENCE MECHANISMS
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DENIAL
DISTORTION
PROJECTION

7. DENIAL
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 Denial is a coping mechanism
that gives you time to adjust to
distressing situations — but
staying in denial can interfere
with treatment or your ability to
tackle challenges.
 If you're in denial, you're trying
to protect yourself by refusing to
accept the truth about something
that's happening in your life.
 Simple Denial, minimisation,
Projection

8. DISTORTION
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 Distortion (or warping) is the alteration of the original
shape (or other characteristic) of something, such as an
object, image, sound or waveform.
 Grossly reshaping external reality to suit inner needs
 Including hallucinations, wish fulfilling delusions,
unrealistic megalomania.

9. PROJECTION
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 Projection is a form of defense in which
unwanted feelings are displaced onto
another person, where they then appear
as a threat from the external world.
 Humans defend themselves against
unpleasant impulses by denying their
existence in themselves, while
attributing them to others.
 For example, a person who is rude may
constantly accuse other people of being
rude.

10. IMMATURE DEFENCES
DEFENCE MECHANISMS
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 ACTING OUT
 BLOCKING
 HYPOCHONDRIASIS
 INTROJECTION
 PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIOUR
 REGRESSION
 SOMATIIZATION
 SCHIZOID FANTASY

11. ACTING OUT
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 Expressing an unconscious wish or impulse through action
to avoid being conscious of an accompanying affect.
 Involves chronically giving in to an impulse to avoid the
tension arising from postponement of expression.
 Instead of saying, “I’m angry with you,” a person who acts
out may throw a book at the person, or punch a hole
through a wall.

12. DEFENCE MECHANISMS
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 When a person acts out, it
can act as a pressure release,
and often helps the
individual feel calmer and
peaceful once again.
 Ex. Tantrums,
 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.

13. BLOCKING
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 Temporarily or transiently inhibiting thinking

14. HYPOCHONDRIASIS
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 Exaggerating or
overemphasizing an illness
for the purpose of evasion
and regression.
 Responsibility can be
avoided , guilt can be
circumvented and
instinctual impulses are
warded off.

15. INTROJECTION
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 Reverse of projection
 (especially of a child) to incorporate ideas of othes,
or (in fantasy) of objects

16. PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIOUR
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 These patients turn their anger against themselves.
This phenomenon is called masochism, includes
procrastination, silly or provocative behaviour, self
demeaning ,clowning and frankly self destructive
acts.

17. DEFENCE MECHANISMS
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 TURNING AGAINST
SELF : Instead of
expressing hostility
against another person,
represses the hostility
but ventilates it against
own self in the form of
self criticism and self
accusation

18. REGRESSION
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 It is a defense mechanism leading to
the temporary or long-term
reversion of the ego to an earlier
stage of development rather than
handling unacceptable impulses in a
more adult way.
 The defense mechanism of
regression, in psychoanalytic
theory, occurs when an individual's
personality reverts to an earlier
stage of development, adopting
more childish mannerisms

19. DEFENCE MECHANISMS
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 Regression is normal phenomenon as well. Some
amount of regression is needed for relaxation,
sleep and orgasm in sexual intercourse.
 In the face of threat, one may retract to an earlier
pattern of adaptation, possibly a childish or
primitive one.
 For eg,an adolescent who is overwhelmed with
fear, anger and growing sexual impulses might
become clingy and start exhibiting earlier
childhood behaviors he has long since overcome,
such as bedwetting, nail bitting etc.

20. SOMATIZATION
DEFENCE MECHANISMS
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 Converting psychic derivatives into bodily
symptoms and tending to react with somatic
manifestations rather than with psychic
manifestations.

21. SCHIZOID FANTASY
DEFENCE MECHANISMS
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 Characterized by a lack of interest in social
relationships, a tendency towards a solitary lifestyle,
secretiveness, emotional coldness, and apathy.
 Affected individuals may simultaneously
demonstrate a rich, elaborate and exclusively
internal fantasy world.
 In everyday life, individuals often find their thoughts
pursue a series of fantasies concerning things they
wish they could do or wish they had done...fantasies
of control or of sovereign choice...daydreams
 Clinically seen in Schizoid & Schizotypal Personality
,Narcissistic Personality Disorders.

22. NEUROTIC DEFENCES
DEFENCE MECHANISMS
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 CONTROLLING
 DISPLACEMENT
 EXTERNALIZATION
 INTELLECTUALIZATION
 ISOLATION
 RATIONALIZATION
 DISSOCIATION
 REACTION FORMATION
 REPRESSION
 SEXUALISATION

23. CONTROLLING
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Attempting to manage or regulate events or
objects in the environment to minimize
anxiety and to resolve inner conflicts.

24. DISPLACEMENT
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 The motive remains unaltered but the person substitutes a
different goal object for the original one.
 Often the motive is aggression that for some reason, the
person cannot vent on the source of anger.
 Shifting an emotion or drive from one idea or object to
another that resembles the original in some aspect or
quality.

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Example is the man who gets angry at his boss, but
can’t express his anger to his boss for fear of being
fired. He instead comes home and kicks the dog or
starts an argument with his wife.

26. EXTERNALIZATION
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 Tending to perceive in the external world and in
external objects, elements of one’s own personality,
including instinctual impulses, conflicts, moods,
attitudes and styles of thinking.
 For example, a patient who is overly argumentative
might instead perceive others as argumentative
and himself as blameless

27. Intellectualization
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 Excessively using intellectual process to avoid
affective expression or experience.
 To avoid intimacy with people, attention is
paid to external reality to avoid the expression
of inner feelings and stress is placed on
irrelevant details to avoid perceiving the whole.
 Professionals who deal with troubled people
may intellectualize in order to remain helpful
without being overwhelmed by sympathetic
involvement.

28. Isolation
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 It is characterized as a mental process involving the
creation of a gap between an unpleasant or
threatening cognition, and other thoughts and
feelings.
 By minimizing associative connections with other
thoughts, the threatening cognition is remembered
less often and is less likely to affect self-esteem or
the self concept.
 Ex. In a ward, a patient may idealize some staff
members and uniformly disparage others.

29. Rationalization
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 Offering rational explanations
in an attempt to justify
attitudes, beliefs or behaviour
that may otherwise be
unacceptable.
 It is a method to support an
attitude with false reasons
 Substituting an acceptable
conscious motive for an
unacceptable unconscious one.

30. DEFENCE MECHANISMS
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Rationalization is very common among medical
professionals in covering up medical errors
 “Why disclose the error?, the patient was going to die
anyway”
 “Telling the family about the error will make them
feel worse”
 “It was patient’s fault, if he wasn’t so obese, sick etc.
this error woudn’t have caused so much harm”
 “Well we did our best, these things happen.”

31. Dissociation
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 The term dissociation describes a wide array of
experiences from mild detachment from immediate
surroundings to more severe detachment from
physical and emotional experience.
 The major characteristic of all
dissociative phenomena involves
a detachment from reality, rather
than a loss of reality as in psychosis.

32. Reaction formation
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 Transforming an unacceptable impulse into its
opposite
 Characteristic of obsessional neurosis
 If this mechanism is frequently used at any early stage
of ego development it can become a permanent
character trait, as in obsessional character.
 Thus love may cover up unconscious hate, shyness
serves as defence against exhibitionism.
 Ex : when a 2nd child is born in a family the first child
may show extraordinary concern for the welfare of the
Newborn. This way his unconscious hate and
aggression for his little brother is covered up.

33. Repression
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 Repression, is the psychological attempt made by
an individual to repel one's own desires and
impulses toward pleasurable instincts by excluding
the desire from one's consciousness and holding or
subduing it in the unconscious.
 Repression plays a major role in many mental
illnesses, and in the psyche of the average person

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 Ex. When a child finds out about
the birth of a 2nd baby, he may feel
his love is divided. He feels jealousy
and rivalry towards his little
brother. He represses his
aggression for fear of punishment
or further loss of love. But may
channelize his aggression through
some other activity, ex. By breaking
his brothers toys.

35. Sexualisation
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 Is is to make something sexual in
character or quality, or to become
aware of sexuality, especially in relation
to men and women.
 Sexualization is linked to sexual
objectification.

36. INHIBITION
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 Involuntary decrease or loss of motivation to
engage in some goal directed activity to
prevent anxiety arising out of conflicts with
unacceptable impulses.
 Eg in Normals: Social Shyness.
 Clinically in OCDs & Phobias.

37. Mature defences
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 Altruism
 Anticipation
 Humour
 Suppression
 Sublimation

38. ALTRUISM
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 Involves an individual getting
pleasure from giving to others
what the individual would have
liked to receive.
 Ex. Using Altruism a former
alcoholic serves as an
Alcohol Anonymous sponsor
to a new member, achieving
transformation process that
may be life saving.

39. Anticipation
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 Realistically planning or anticipating future
inner discomfort.
 Ex. Moderate amount of anxiety before
surgery promotes post surgical adaptation

40. Humour
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 Using comedy to overtly express feelings and
thoughts without personal discomfort and without
producing an unpleasant effect on the others.
 Freud suggested that “Humour can be regarded as
the highest of these defensive processes”
 Mature humour allows individuals to look directly
at what is painful.

41. Suppression
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 Consciously or semi consciously postponing
attention to a conscious impulse or conflict.
 Issues may be deliberately cut off but they
are not avoided.

42. Sublimation
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 For Freud, sublimation was the highest level of ego
defence
 Consists of redirection of sexual impulses to
socially valued activities and goals.
 He believed that much of our cultural heritage is
the product of sublimation.
 Ex. A writer may divert his libido to creation of
poem/ novel. Thus indirectly satisfying drives.
 Rejection by lover may induce one to divert his
energy to human welfare or artistic and literary
activities.

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