Ego Defenses

24 flashcards

Repression: Generally regarded as a more advanced or high level defense. It involves keeping unwanted thoughts or feelings out of awareness, or unconscious. What is repressed once may have been conscious (secondary repression) or may have never reached awareness (primary repression). Repression may involve loss of memory for specific incidents, especially traumatic ones or ones associated with painful emotions.
Reaction Formation: Like repression, involves keeping certain impulses out of awareness. The way of ensuring this, however, is through replacing the impulse in consciousness with its opposite. A husband who is angry = acts loving towards wife when irritated.
Projection: When an individual attributes to others unacceptable thoughts and feelings that he himself has but that are not conscious. Strong sexual feeling towards men = believing all men want you sexually. Considered a lower level defense and diminishes reality testing. Delusions may involve projections.
Isolation: Also called isolation of affect. There is a repression of the feelings associated with particular content or of the ideas connected with certain affects. Often this is accompanied by experiencing the feelings in relationship to a different situation. Not talking about father's death = crying when male dies in movie
Undoing: Involves nullifying or voiding symbolically an unacceptable or guilt-provoking act, thought, or feeling. Man in love with secretary -> buys gift for wife. Child steals from mom -> offers to do errands for her.
Regression: Returning to an earlier developmental phase, level of functioning, or type of behavior to avoid the anxieties of the present. Behavior that has been given up recurs. Child who is toilet trained -> losing bladder control after birth of sibling. Fantasizing about an ex when current partner jilts you.
Introjection: Involves taking another person into the self in order to avoid the direct expression of powerful emotions such as love and hate. When the object of the intense feelings is introjected, the feelings are experienced towards the self, which has now become associated with or substituted for the object. Important for depressive reactions, when hostility towards external object are redirected towards the internalized object.
Identification: Modeling of oneself after another. One takes on the values, feelings, attitudes, and characterisitics of a loved, admired, feared, or hated person. Crucial to normal personality development, esp. with an admired person. Boy takes on aggressive characteristic of violent father in order to deal with anxiety.
Internalization: Different from identification. Involves "taking in" rather than "taking on." Can be part of normal development, like taking in the values of parents. Can also be for warding off anxiety, like if one's views differ from parents.
Turning against the self: The turning of unacceptable impulses towards other against the self. The reverse of projection. If one has hostility towards another, hostility gets turned towards the self. "I hate him" replaced with "I hate myself"
Reversal: Involves the alteration of a feeling, attitude, trait, relation, or direction into its opposite. Difficult to distinguish from reaction formation (reversal of feelings). Reversal encompasses a greater range of behaviors.
Sublimation: Considered to be the highest level defense. It involves converting an impulse from a socially objectionable aim to a socially acceptable one while still retaining the original goal of the impulse. Painting nudes -> channeling sexual preoccupation. Contact sports -> aggression.
Intellectualization: The warding off of unacceptable affects or impulses by thinking about them rather than experiencing them. People can speak at lengths about great emotional topics without ever experiencing the emotions they describe.
Rationalization: The use of convincing reasons to justify certain ideas, feelings, or actions so as to avoid recognizing their true underlying motive, which is unacceptable. Mother with little money says new TV is for kids, since she doesn't want to admit it is for her.
Displacement: Shifting feelings or conflicts about one person or situation onto another is called displacement. Irritated about husband being late -> rude to gas station attendant who is keeping her waiting.
Denial: Involves a negation or nonacceptance of important aspect of reality or of one's own experience that one may actually perceive. A person may deny the significance of an impending loss because it is too painful to contemplate.
Somatization: Intolerable impulses or conflicts are converted to physical symptoms. The person may become preoccupied with physical symptoms, which become a substitution for unacceptable feelings or conflicts
Idealization: The overvaluing of another person, place, family, or activity beyond what is realistic. When used defensively, it protects the individual from anxiety associated with aggressive or competitive feelings towards a loved or feared person. Idealized objects are not percieved as what they are, which leads to frustration and disappointment.
Compensation: Someone tries to make up for what they perceive as a deficit or deficiency. Man who is short takes up mountain climbing or car racing.
Asceticism: The moral renunciation of certain pleasures to avoid the anxiety of impulse gratification. Common in adolescents.
Altruism: One obtains satisfaction through self sacrificing service to other or through participation in causes. It is defensive when it used to deal with conflicts and anxiety, and is often seen in adolescents.
Splitting: Keeps apart two conscious, contradictory feeling states, such as love and anger or admiration and disappointment. An individual who is viewed as all "good" is seen as all "bad." Protects "good" internal and external objects and the self from aggression. Selected personality traits become associated with goodness or badness.
Projective Identification: Person continues to have an impulse, typically angry, that is simultaneously projected onto another person. That person is feared as an enemy who must be controlled.
Omnipotent Control and Devaluation: Individual shows an unrealistic, highly inflated sense of self and an exaggerated, depreciated views of others and attempts to control others totally.