Defense Mechanisms

Front 1

Repression

Back 1

Key mechanism
Expressed by amnesia or forgetting serving to rid unacceptable fantasies, affects or impulses from consciousness

Hint 1

Amnesia
Forgetting

Front 2

Compensation

Back 2

Enables one to make up for real or imagined deficits.

Hint 2

Napolean complex, person who stutters becomes expressive writer

Front 3

Conversion

Back 3

repressed urge is expressed as a disturbance of body fxn (usually sensory, voluntary nervous system).

Hint 3

pain, deaf, blind, paralysis, convulsions, tics

Front 4

Denial

Back 4

Primitive Defense.
Inability to acknowledge true significance of thoughts, feelings, wishes, behavior, or external reality factors that are consciously intolerable.

Hint 4

Adult survivors of abuse deny it happened

Front 5

Displacement

Back 5

Directing an impulse, wish or feeling toward a person/situation that is not its real object b/c it's safer.

Hint 5

you are mad at your boss, but kick your dog

Front 6

Dissociation

Back 6

When a person splits mental fxns in a manner that allows expression of forbidden/unconsious impulses w/o taking responsibility for the axn. He doesn't remember or it is not seen as their own experience.

Hint 6

fugue states, amnesia, dissociative neurosis, or normally expressed as daydreams.

Front 7

Idealization

Back 7

overestimation of an admired aspect of attribute of another. Conscious or unconscious

Hint 7

A child thinking parents are flawless

Front 8

Identification

Back 8

Universal mechanism where a person patterns himself after a significant other. Plays major role in personality development, esp super ego

Hint 8

Feel you are like your idealized parent

Front 9

Identification w/ the Aggressor

Back 9

Mastering anxiety by identifying w/ a powerful aggressor (i.e. abusive parent) to counteract feelings of helplessness and to feel powerful oneself.

Hint 9

Abused person abusing someone else.

Front 10

Incorporation

Back 10

Primitive mechanism
Psychic representation of a person is figuratively ingested.

Front 11

Inhibition

Back 11

loss of motivation to engage in activity avoided b/c it might stir up conflict over forbidden impulses

Hint 11

ex. writing, learning, work blocks, social shyness

Front 12

Introjection

Back 12

loved or hated external objects are symbolically absorbed within self (opposite of projection)

Hint 12

ex. in severe depression, unconscious unacceptable hatred is turned towards self.
ex. picking up traits from others, copying them

Front 13

Isolation of Affect

Back 13

unacceptable impulse, idea, act is separated from its original memory source, thus removing emotion associated with it

Front 14

Projection

Back 14

primitive defense
attributiing one's one disowned attitudes, wishes, feelings, urges to some external object

Hint 14

thinking your spouse is angry at the kids when you really are

Front 15

Rationalization

Back 15

third line of defense
not unconscious
giving believable explanation for irriational behaviors

Front 16

Rxn formation

Back 16

person acts opposite of what they really think/feel

Hint 16

excessive moral zeal masks asocial impulses.
excessively nice to mask anger

Front 17

Regression

Back 17

partial or symbolic return to more infantile patterns

Front 18

Sublimation

Back 18

potentially maladaptive feelings or behaviors are diverted into socially acceptable, adaptive channels

Hint 18

using sports to channel anger

Front 19

Substitution

Back 19

unattainable/unacceptable goal, emotion or object is replaced by one acceptable/attainable

Front 20

Symbolization

Back 20

mental representation stands for something else. basis for dream formation, conversion rxns, obsessions, compulsions.

Front 21

Undoing

Back 21

person uses words or axns to symbolically reverse or negate unacceptable thoughts, feelings or axns

Hint 21

compulsive handwashing to deal w/ obsessive thoughts

Front 22

Turning Against Self

Back 22

defense to deflect hostile aggression or other unacceptable impulses from another to self

Front 23

Splitting

Back 23

Associated with borderline PD.
All "good" or all "bad." leads to selective lack of impulse control.

Hint 23

person cannot integrate good and bad in people.

Front 24

Projective Identification

Back 24

form of projection in borderline PD.

Hint 24

Unconsciously perceiving other's behaviors as a reflection of one's own identity.

Front 25

Devaluation

Back 25

seen in borderline PD
Person attributes exaggerated (-) qualities to self or anther

Hint 25

split of idealization

Front 26

Acting Out

Back 26

emotional conflict is dealt w/ through axns rather than feelings

Hint 26

ex. instead of talking about feeling neglected, a person will get into trouble to get attention

Front 27

Decompensation

Back 27

Deterioration of existing defenses.

Front 28

Suppression

Back 28

conscious way of repressing. a psuedo defense mech.

Front 29

Intellectualization

Back 29

helps reduce anxiety by focusing on unwanted events or feelings in a cold, clinical and emotionless way.