Mechanisms Of Defense

Front 1

Mastering anxiety by identifying with a powerful aggressor (such as an abusing parent) to counteract feelings of helplessness and feel powerful oneself. Usually involves behaving like the aggressor, e.g. abusing others after one has been abused oneself.

Back 1

Identification with the Aggressor

Front 2

Unattainable or unacceptable goals, emotion; object is replaced by one more attainable or acceptable.

Back 2

Substitution

Front 3

Primitive mechanism in which psychic representation of person (or parts of person) is/are figuratively ingested.

Back 3

Incorportation

Front 4

Some mental representation stands for some other thing, class of things, or attribute. This mechanism underlies dream formation and some symptoms such as conversion reactions, obsessions, compulsions, with the link between the latent meaning of the symptom or symbol usually unconscious.

Back 4

Symbolization

Front 5

Enables one to make up for real or fancied deficiencies; e.g. a stutterer becomes a very expressive writer; a short man assumes a cocky, overbearing manner.

Back 5

Compensation

Front 6

Loss of motivation to engage in (usually pleasurable) activity avoided because it might stir up conflict over forbidden impulses, e.g. writing, learning, or work blocks or social shyness.

Back 6

Inhibition

Front 7

Something unacceptable and already done, thought, or felt is symbolically acted out in reverse (usually repetitiously) in hopes of relieving anxiety. Used in obsessive compulsiveness such as pathological hand washing.

Back 7

Undoing

Front 8

Keystone mechanism; expressed clinically by amnesia or symptomatic forgetting serving to banish unacceptable ideas, fantasies, affects or impulses from consciousness. Motivated forgetting.

Back 8

Repression

Front 9

Loved or hated external objects are symbolically absorbed within self. (Converse of projection), e.g. in severe depression, unconscious unacceptable hatred is turned towards self.

Back 9

Introjection

Front 10

Repressed urge is expressed disguised as disturbance of body function usually of sensory, voluntary nervous system as anesthesias, pain, deafness, blindness, paralysis, convulsions, tics

Back 10

Conversion

Front 11

Unacceptable impulse, idea, act is separated from its original memory source thereby removing original emotional charge. Intellectualization-stripping the emotion from the difficult memory.

Back 11

Isolation of Affect

Front 12

Primitive defense--inability to acknowledge true significance of thoughts, feelings, wishes, behavior, or external reality factors which are consciously intolerable. Blocking external events from awareness.

Back 12

Denial

Front 13

Directing an impulse, wish, or feeling toward a person or situation not its real object, thus permitting expression in a less threatening situation; e.g. a man angry at his boss kicks the dog. Symbolic substitute.

Back 13

Displacement

Front 14

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

Back 14

Turning Against Self

Front 15

Primitive defense – attributing one’s disowned attitudes, wishes, feelings, urges to some external object, e.g. believing spouse is angry at the kids when one is really angry oneself would be example of normal projection as opposed to paranoid delusions which are examples of pathological projection. Seeing your own unacceptable desires in other people.

Back 15

Projection

Front 16

Defensive mechanism of borderline personality organization which manifests as self or others being seen as ‘all good” or “all bad.” It is the process of keeping apart introjects of opposite quality, resulting in an ego weakness whereby aggression does not become neutralized. This leads to selective lack of impulse control. Serves to protect the good objects.

Back 16

Splitting

Front 17

Third line of defense-not unconscious. Giving believable explanation for irrational behavior motivated by unacceptable unconscious wishes or by defenses used to cope with such wishes.

Back 17

Rationalization

Front 18

A form of projection utilized by persons with borderline personality organization. There is a lack of differentiation between self & object so that the all-bad self projected on the all-bad object is experienced in such a way that the impulse (aggressive or sexual) is still experienced as well as the fear of that projected impulse requiring that the person with bpo attacks and controls the object before he is attacked and destroyed.

Back 18

Projective Identification

Front 19

Process which enables person to split mental functions in manner allowing him to express forbidden or unconscious impulses without responsibility for action either because he is unable to remember disowned behavior or because it is not experienced as his own, e.g. pathologically expressed as fugue states, amnesia, dissociative neurosis or normally expressed as daydreaming. Diagnostic + Defense

Back 19

Dissociation

Front 20

Person adopts affects, ideas, attitudes, behaviors which are opposites of those he harbors consciously or unconsciously, e.g. excessive moral zeal masking strong but repressed asocial impulses or being excessively sweet to mask unconscious anger. Changing unacceptable impulse into the opposite.

Back 20

Reaction Formation

Front 21

A defense mechanism frequently used by persons with narcissistic personality organization which is the corollary of omnipotence. It is the split of primitive idealization. Grandiosity.

Back 21

Devaluation

Front 22

Overestimation of admired aspect or attribute of another. May be conscious or unconscious.

Back 22

Idealization

Front 23

Partial or symbolic return to more infantile patterns of reacting or thinking. Can be in service to ego, e.g. as dependency during illness. Retreating to the last time in life when we felt safe and secure.

Back 23

Regression

Front 24

Directing an unconscious wish or impulse toward some person or object toward whom it is not really felt (e.g. anger at mother acted out by raping women) to avoid conscious awareness of real object (Overlap with displacement but used more broadly).

Back 24

Acting Out

Front 25

Instinctual drives are diverted into personally, socially acceptable adaptive channels, e.g. the sadomasochism of the surgeon

Back 25

Sublimation

Front 26

Deterioration of existing defenses.

Back 26

Decompensation

Front 27

Universal mechanism whereby person patterns self after significant other. Plays major role in personality development especially super ego development. Identification with the Love Object. Identification with the Lost Object.

Back 27

Identification.