Appendix 9-1:

UNDERSTANDING DEFENSE MECHANISMS NAME OF DEFENSE MECHANISM DEFINITION EXAMPLE

Compensation Conversion Denial Displacement Dissociation

Attempting to make up for or offset deficiencies, either real or imagined by concentrating or developing other abilities Symbolic expression of intrapsychic conflict expressed in physical symptoms Blocking out, or disowning painful thoughts or feelings Feelings arc transferred, redirected, or discharged from the appropriate person or object to a less threatening person or object Separating and detaching an idea, situation, or relationship from its emotional significance; helps individual put aside painful feelings and often leads to a temporary alteration of consciousness or identity Attempting to pattern or resemble the personality of an admired, idealized person Acceptance of another's values and opinions as one's own Attributing one's own unacceptable feelings and thoughts to others Attempting to justify or modify unacceptable needs and feelings to the ego, in an effort to maintain self-respect and prevent guilt feelings Assuming altitudes and behaviors that one consciously rejects Retreating to an earlier, more comfortable level of adjustment An involuntary, automatic submerging of painful, unpleasant thoughts and feelings into the unconscious Diversion of unacceptable instinctual drives into personally and socially acceptable areas to help channel forbidden impulses into constructive activities Intentional exclusion of forbidden ideas and anxiety producing situations from the conscious level; a voluntary forgetting and postponing mechanism Actually or symbolically attempting to erase a previous consciously intolerable experience or action; an attempt to repair feelings and actions that have created guilt and anxiety

An unattractive girl emphasizes and cultivates intellectual abilities and is on the A honor roll at
school.

A man develops blindness after watching his friend get seriously injured in a race car accident. An young mother with a newborn who has cleft lip tells her friends that everything is okay with her baby. A man gets reprimanded by his boss. Later, he yells at his wife when dinner is not ready. A young adolescent has amnesia surrounding a traumatic air plane crash in which she was a survivor. A young man chooses to become a professional football player like his father. A man who likes the country type style of living assumes the cosmopolitan A young business woman who thinks all me women in her office want to take over her job. A man cheats on his wife and tells himself is okay because his friends cheat on their wives. A man who is extremely polite and courteous to his mother-in-law, whom he intensely dislikes. A young preschool child begins to suck his thumb and wet the bed shortly after the birth of a sibling. A woman being unable to remember a suicide attempt. A man who has strong competitive or aggressive drives channels his energy into building a successful business. A young man is thinking so much about his date that it is interfering with his work. He decides to put it out of his rnind till he leaves the office. A mother who has just punished her child unjustly decides to bake the child's favorite cookies.

Identification Introjection Projection Rationalization Reaction Formation Regression Repression Sublimation

Suppression

Undoing