Displacement Theory Paper

The client notices that her daughters are now ‘daddy’s little girls’ similar to how she once was with her father. This brings discomfort to the client because she might be remembering repressed memories of her own past as a daughter of a hardworking man. These repressed memories do not allow her to make sense of how she feels; thus, it manifests as feelings of anger and guilt.
Another example of a defense mechanism that the client is experiencing is displacement. Displacement is defined as “unacceptable sexual and aggressive wishes are directed away from one person and redirected towards another. Displacement is also the mechanism that takes place in transference and countertransference” (Berzoff, Flanagan, and Hertz, 2016, p. 84-85). The client displaces her own feelings of self-worth towards her …show more content…
Kohut defined idealization as an “internal, sometimes unconscious, object representation of idealized other, usually from the early history of the individual” (Berzoff, Flanagan, and Hertz, 2016, p. 180). The client idealized Dr. Williams as being caring and attentive towards her. The scheduling conflict might have caused the client to be upset with Dr. Williams because he was no longer this attentive and caring man. Furthermore, Kohut explained, “individuals need to have someone strong, calm, and wonderful to idealize and merge with in order to feel safe and complete with in the self” (Berzoff, Flanagan, and Hertz, 2016, p. 180). Idealizing Dr. Williams as calm, attentive, supportive, and responsive to her concerns helped the client feel complete with herself. The client sensed that Dr. Williams was an excellent therapist who put her needs before anything else. However, her idealized view of Dr. Williams was disrupted when the client realized that he had made a scheduling error. Dr. Williams was no longer viewed as a perfect attentive individual to the