Mental mechanism

Definition: Mental devices essentially at a sub-conscious level, to meet people's social, cultural and emotional needs and
for the purposes of relieving anxiety and frustration.
1. Repression: Pushing distressing reality completely into the unconscious. That is unconsciously to cause oneself to
completely forget things which bring no peace of mind.
2. Denial: Unconsciously refusing to accept the full facts or magnitude of some circumstances, in order to minimise or
prevent an otherwise inevitable anxiety or similar unpleasant feeling, such as anger, guilt, shame, frustration, etc.
3. Displacement: Some offensive action (such as physical or verbal attack) or feeling (such as anger, hatred, contempt, etc.)
meant for somebody or something may become unconsciously turned instead to someone or something else, so as to avoid
unbearable anxiety or fear (over possible consequences) that would have otherwise arisen. This is known as
displacement. Thus, the action or feeling remains exactly the same, but the actual intended victim is replaced.
4. Substitution: This is nearly the same as displacement. The only difference is that here the intended action or feeling is
replaced by another which is likely to result in less anxiety. The intended victim or target may or may not be
changed. Thus, whereas the nature of the action of feeling remains the same, the way it is expressed is watered down. For
example, intended physical blow on a person may become replaced by a glaring look or by a sudden unusual enthusiastic
chopping of firewood. In the same way, watching of nude figures of the opposite sex, or wearing their dress, may be
substituted for longed-for intimate relation.
5. Transference: This is adopting, unknowingly and inappropriately, towards other people the same attitude that one was
understandably accustomed to adopting towards some important person or persons (usually parents) in ones early
childhood. Familiar examples are that men who were oversupported in childhood by their mothers are frequently
overdependent towards their wives and anyone who is in a helping relationship with them, including nurses, doctors and
other therapists. Similarly, some women who had disagreeable fathers are frequently angry and antagonistic towards all
men. (Countertransference is the term given to any counter-reaction which the particular transference provokes in the other
person during an inter-personal relationship, such as during psychotherapy or other therapeutic relationship.)
6. Projection: This is in one or other way to blame ones shortcomings on to another person or thing, so as to try to avoid
the feeling of anxiety or guilt or inferiority that would otherwise have arisen. Simple examples include blaming of failure at
examination on insufficient time allowed for the paper, bad luck, etc. More serious examples are where a shy person
decided to believe instead that people dislike or despise him or her, or a timid (easily frightened) person prefers to think that
people have a habit of dominating or terrorising them. This can include actually adopting seemingly appropriate counterattacking attitude, as is seen in paranoid psychoses.
7. Introjection: This is the very opposite of projection. It is turning on to or into oneself something that is for someone
else, as a means of achieving both reduction of some intense disagreeable emotion (e.g. anger, hatred, aggressive impulse,
frustration, etc.) and avoiding of making things worse for self. One example of this is accepting of someones (e.g.
parentss) idea or rule or standard and following it wholeheartedly as if it were ones own, in order to avoid frictions or other
unwelcome consequences that would have arisen from questioning or rejecting of such ideas or rules. Another example is
turning on to self some unpleasant action or emotion that one actually intended for another. This shows itself in the form of
excessive self-blame and self-harming behaviour of various kinds including what is seen in some children who hit their head
against a wall when they have had a stormy moment with a parent.
8. Reaction Formation: When a person harbours two opposite feelings (e.g. love and hatred) towards somebody or
something, he or she naturally experiences anxiety or guilt or other uncomfortable emotions in connection with the less
praiseworthy of the two opposite feelings. He or she may, therefore, over-exhibit the more praiseworthy feeling or attitude
as a means of drowning that opposite feeling and all the anxiety or guilt it rouses.
9. Reaction: This resembles reaction formation, but in inversion a person harbours one feeling or attitude (and not two
opposites). But the feeling or attitude causes so much anxiety or guilt, etc., that he or she adopts exactly the opposite
emotion or attitude as a means of covering up the other. E.g. a shy person may adopt proud or condescending manners.

10. Resistance: Mental mechanisms are unconscious methods of self-deception whereby the person prevents themselves
from being fully aware of uncomfortable realities. During psychotherapy the aim of the therapist is to reverse this; that is,
the therapist tries to bring to the surface the things the patient is avoiding seeing. But the realities becoming uncovered may
prove so distressing to the patient that they immediately adopt some behaviour by which to block the procedure or process
(e.g. cease to co-operate, start asking unnecessary questions, etc.). Any such behaviour is known as resistance.
11. Somatisation: Every strong unpleasant emotion (anxiety, fear, anger, guilt, etc.) is accompanied by uncomfortable
bodily feelings such as a general tension, headache, palpitation, tightness in the chest and neck and throat, butterflies in the
stomach, tiredness, sweating, etc. When a person then concentrates their whole attention on these bodily feelings, perhaps
complaining of them, it becomes somatisation (of the problem). It is less anxiety, and guilt, provoking to behave as if one is
physically unwell than to see oneself as unable or unwilling to prevent or tackle life problems.
12. Conversion: When some people have distressing, nerve-racking problems, they may seek to ease their distress by
unconsciously developing false symptoms of physical illness (such as paralysis of limbs or whole body, fainting attacks,
blindness, loss of voice, etc.) on which the whole attention is then concentrated. Conversion is of a problem of mind into
physical problem. It is not the same as somatisation, because in somatisation the bodily symptoms are not false but real,
though made too much of. Another fact about conversion is that the physical symptoms are so chosen as to go some way
towards achieving what the person sees as a solution to the underlying problem.
13. Dissociation: Involuntary prevention of the mind from operating in a direction that leads on to, or might possibly lead
on to, a source of anxiety, whilst allowing it to operate in all other areas., This is thus splitting of the field of operation of
the mind, so that all events and facts in the forbidden area are lost sight of. This inevitably results in inconsistencies
(paradoxes) in the persons thoughts and action. For example, a person may resist recalling a very painful or guilt
provoking event by not applying his or her mind to any part of their past and thus declaring that they have a loss of memory
of their entire past life. But the behaviour and conversation in the present will show no sign of inability to remember things.
14. Provocative Behaviour: When a person has an urge for an unwelcome action against another person but for which they
are worried about, feeling anxiety, guilt or regret, they may try to reduce all this by doing something which will make the
other strike first. By this they will then try to see their own actions as mere retaliation.
15. Counter Phobic Behaviour: Very timid (easily frightened) people sometimes, in order to reduce their concern over this
character trait, attempt to convince themselves that they are otherwise by engaging in some very daring act such as mountain
climbing, fire-jumping, stunt riding, etc. Or, if the person is criminally inclined, the chosen action may look blatantly
defiant, as if they have no fear or regard for the police or the law.
16. Compensation: When someone feels low (small) over some personal attribute (physical, social or other characteristic)
they may make up for it by developing some other quality or attribute which will make him more pleased with
themselves. It is something desirable.
17. Overcompensation: In spite of the similarity in the term, overcompensation has no true relationship with
compensation. Inversion was described above as feeling one way and displaying the opposite. Overcompensation in
inversion gone too far, usually to the inconvenience of others. If someone who is, in truth, timid inside puts on outward airs
of toughness, it is inversion. It it does not stop thee, but actually moves to adopting domineering or intimidating attitudes, it
is overcompensation. Such overcompensation in a timid person may not only be adopting of an exalted position but also
intimidation and keeping others down.
18. Rationalisation: When a person wants to do something but feels ashamed or embarrassed or afraid about disclosing the
true motive, their mind may instead seize upon a more commendable, though false, reason.
19. Sublimation: Suppose someone has an urge (strong desire) for something pleasurable, but whose means of achieving it
might provoke disapproval in other people, which they are not prepared to risk. Suppose they becomes driven, as a direct
result, into an alternative activity which will provoke the very opposite reaction in people (that is approval and admiration)
and at the same time provide them with enough personal satisfaction to make up for the original pleasure sought, this will
become termed as sublimation of the original desire.
20. Identification: To identify with a person, a group or an idea is not only to accept, but also to become drawn in mind to
the persons or groups ways, or to the idea. This may spring from true admiration and acceptance, through genuine
conviction. Identification becomes a mental mechanism when it merely represents a means of escapism from some
difficulty or uncomfortable situation. For example, identification with ones former enemy or someone with whom one has

had a quarrel is usually a form of safe retreat, an adopting of a submissive, complying attitude to ensure not only that the
previous hostility does not recur but also, for even greater peace of mind, that it becomes replaced by
friendliness. Similarly, someone who has low self-image or feels helpless, may try to remove the feeling of being unknown
or isolated by identifying with a popular figure such as a popstar or filmstar, or with a group or gang. Identification is not
identical with introjection. In introjection one person entirely adopts another persons idea, but without there being any
increased felling of attachment from one to the other person.)
21. Fantasy: This is imagining of events which have not taken place or circumstances which do no exist as if they are
doing, or have done, so. Fantasies become mental mechanisms when people subconsciously employ them, as a source of
pleasure and comfort, for reducing the mental tension caused by wishes that cannot be realised or other problems that cannot
be dealt with. It is a very common mental mechanism in children and in immature people (that is, people who still behave
more like children) and in schizophrenia. Any thinking which is largely dominated by fantasy (imaginations) is described as
Autistic. It conveys a picture of a person living in a completely unreal and private world of his or her own.
22. Regression: Abandoning of the behaviour and attitudes appropriate for ones age and adopting instead those
appropriate for ones much earlier stage of personality development is known as regression. When this is done
subconsciously as an easy way out of a difficulty, it stands as a mental mechanism. Regression occurs very frequently in
children themselves. On the arrival of a new baby, an older child may often become frustrated over the loss of mothers care
and may seek to recover it through regression to an earlier stage in life when mothers care and support were
imperative. Thus, the child may cry more, start again to wet the bed, soil pants, etc. having been quite capable of this for
some time.
23. Suppression: Repression has already been described as subconsciously completely forgetting something that is
unpleasant to remember. It takes hardly any effort and is how, without any effort at all, we seem to have forgotten all our
weaknesses of the past whilst our good points remain clear in our minds and will often be thought, or even talked, about.
24. Isolation: This is a very common mechanism. If a memory or a wish or other life problem is causing great distress,
there may be a strong desire to push it all out of the mind. But a particular aspect of it may be such that it is not at all easy
to so ignore. This particular aspect of it may then be selected out and left in clear awareness whilst the rest of the subject is
kept firmly away from the mind. E.g. suppose a child is so disrespectful and uncooperative towards the parents that they
naturally come to prefer their other, better behaved children; this child is likely later to start complaining bitterly about the
parents preferential treatment of the other children, but would not want to remember or discuss the full reasons for being so
less liked.
25. Restitution: When someone has done something for which they then get tortured by guilty feeling, they may become
forced to unconsciously engage in the type of act expected to serve as a sort of paying back to society, or the person/s
concerned, that which has been taken away from them, thus trying to reduce the feeling of guilt. E.g. some people who
display a particularly burning enthusiasm about helping other persons are in fact suffering seriously from guilt over having
neglected those who needed them most, such as members of their family. People who have stolen money often give it away
easily to other people in one way or another.
26. Atonement: This is another method of trying to reduce feelings of guilt and is similar to restitution but here the person
concerned does not do something for someone else as a means of making up for the wrong done. They merely cause
themselves unconsciously to receive some personal suffering, which will give them a feeling of having got adequate
punishment for the wrong they have done. This mental mechanism shows itself in numerous ways e.g. after committing
offences, some people, then make sure they are detected and punished, by not taking precautions to hide the act or
themselves. People harbouring strong feelings of guilt usually find that this becomes stronger whenever they are feeling
happy. They will often be heard to declare; Whenever Im happy, I feel guilty. Some may then develop a habit of always
making themselves suffer some discomfort (at their own hands or at the hands of others) before they can feel real
pleasure. This act of undergoing suffering as a means of experiencing pleasure is known as masochism. This is frequently
seen in connection with sexual pleasure.
27. King Davids Reaction: People feeling unhappy about themselves from any cause such as a sense of inferiority,
disability or defect, failure, short coming, misfortune, and so on, usually feel better on discovering others in a similar
state. When someone uses some other person or persons, who are rightly or wrongly taken as being in the same state as
oneself, for obtaining this type of comfort, and also at the same time treats them scornfully or contemptuously with an air of
being a much better off person, it becomes King Davids Reaction, e.g. someone who is not satisfied with himself or herself,
for any reason, would often be noticed to openly inspect another person, even a complete stranger, right down to the shoes,

in a contemptuous and unfriendly manner, as if not only to see something which justifies the contempt but also to make sure
that the other person becomes fully aware of it too.

What is the difference between

Emotionally Disordered and
Socially Maladjusted?
First, I am not an attorney and I make no claims to offering legal advice or judgment in this discussion. I am a clinical
psychologist who has had to contend with this question for several years. I offer my own, and others, perspective on this
topic in the realization that hearings and trials occur over just this question as it relates to special education services under
the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act reauthorization of 1997 (IDEA-97), and
Public Law 94-142 as well as other state and federal laws of which I am unaware. I do know one thing, as currently
constituted many special education classes have two distinct groups represented in them: prey and predators.
Educators are charged with providing a "Free Appropriate Public Education" (FAPE) to all students. Laws at both the federal
and state level mandate the inclusion of handicapped students under FAPE. In Georgia the Department of Educations
Division of Exceptional Students regulations and procedures (1990) use the terms emotionally disturbed and behavior
disordered synonymously and emotionally disturbed is defined under Public Law 94-142 as "a condition exhibiting one or
more of the following characteristics over a long period of time and to a marked degree, which adversely affects educational
performance:

An inability to learn which cannot be explained by intellectual, sensory or health factors; (each of which is covered
by a different area under special education)

An inability to build or maintain satisfactory interpersonal relationships with peers or teachers;

Inappropriate types of behavior or feelings under normal circumstances;

A general pervasive mood of unhappiness or depression; or

A tendency to develop physical symptoms or fears associated with personal or school problems (and)
The term includes children who are schizophrenic. The term does not include children who are socially maladjusted, unless
it is determined that they are seriously emotionally disturbed (EHA Regulations, 1989, 300.5, (8))."
Many special education programs receive pressure from various sources to serve students who exhibit only social
maladjustment. However, the law specifically excludes "socially maladjusted" students from special education services
unless the student can also be shown to be emotionally disturbed. Students who are socially maladjusted (or more precisely
Oppositional Defiant or Conduct Disordered) typically display a persistent pattern of willful refusal to meet even minimum
standards of conduct. Their behavior and values are often in conflict with societys standards. They exhibit a consistent
pattern of antisocial behavior without genuine signs of guilt, remorse, or concern for the feelings of others. These students
often engage in simulations of these behaviors but typically display them only when there is an immediate consequence for
the absence of such displays. Their antisocial behavior is most frequently seen as resulting from their tendency to place their
own needs above those of all other people and the immediate gratification that such behavior brings them. These students
are not in chronic distress (one of the criteria for emotional disturbance under the law) although they can exhibit situational
anxiety, depression, or distress in response to certain isolated events - particularly facing the consequences of their own
actions. These students do not typically respond to the same treatment interventions that benefit emotionally disordered
students.
While educators must determine eligibility via a committee approach that is required to have both regular and special
education input in addition to parental participation, the differentiation between emotionally disturbed and socially
maladjusted students is best determined by a qualified and objective psychologist. The psychological evaluation should
include each of the following: Social/ Medical/Education History, intellectual and achievement testing, personality and
emotional functioning assessment, direct observation and clinical interview with the student and other stakeholders, and
potentially adaptive living and neuropsychological assessments. The psychologist can provide insight based on these and

other factors into the students ability to tell right from wrong, reality orientation, adaptive behavior, level and chronicity of
affective disturbance, presence/absence of remorse, and responsiveness to prior learning.
Assessments are more precise and reliable when conducted over an extended period of time. Often acute distress over some
specific and recent event (such as contact with law enforcement officials) can be perceived as a genuine emotional
disturbance in the absence of the perspective that only time and contact with the student can provide. As previously noted,
socially maladjusted students do not typically respond to treatment in the same way as do emotionally disturbed students.
Most frequently there is a lack of the attachment or relationship development by the socially maladjusted student when
placed into a supportive therapeutic environment that one routinely sees in the emotionally disordered student. Extended
observations also afford the staff opportunities to assess, within real circumstances, the students ability to: form appropriate
(non-exploitative) relationships, display empathy for others, alter their own behavior to conform to the standards in place,
accept personal responsibility for (some if not all of) their actions, value anothers point of view, and accept authority.
If it is determined that a student is socially maladjusted and not emotionally disturbed then the student is not eligible for
special education services. Research suggests that those programs that provide a high degree of structure, clear limits,
precise rules, and immediate, meaningful and impartial implementation of consequences present the greatest potential for
long-term change in the socially maladjusted student. Special education programs are not designed to provide this kind of
treatment. The presence of the socially maladjusted student in the emotionally disturbed classroom typically impedes the
progress of the emotionally disturbed students while failing to benefit the socially maladjusted student. Socially maladjusted
students are often seen as predators with typical emotionally disturbed students viewed as prey; placing these students in the
same classrooms is a nightmare for both the emotionally disturbed students and the staff.