Defense Mechanisms

Macalinao, Jay Vee P.

BS Psychology 3-1

PSYC 3183

CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY
Defense Mechanisms

The ego, which is the Freudian structure of the reality, calls on a number of strategies known as
Defense Mechanism to resolve the conflict among its demand for reality, the wished of the id,
which is consist of the instincts and the individual’s reservoir of psychic energy, and the
constraint of the superego, the moral branch of personality. These defense mechanisms reduce
anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality. For example, when the ego blocks the pleasurable
pursuits of the id, a person feels anxiety, which the ego resolves by means of defense
mechanism. Listed below are the different kind of defense mechanisms and an example of each.
All of them work to protect the ego and reduce anxiety.

1. ACCEPTANCE
A person’s assent to the reality of a situation, recognizing a process or condition without
attempting to change it protest, or exit. Religions and psychological treatments often
suggest the path of acceptance when a situation is both disliked and unchangeable, or
when change may be possible only at great cost or risk.

2. ACTING OUT
Expressing an unconscious wish or impulse through action to avoid being conscious of an
accompanying effect. The unconscious fantasy is lived out impulsively in behavior,
thereby gratifying the impulse, rather than the prohibition against it.

3. ACTIVISM
Emphasize vigorous action instead of adopting practical problem-solving strategies.

4. ANIMISM
You give human qualities to non-human entities.

5. ANTICIPATION
Is realistically anticipating or planning for future inner discomfort. The mechanism is
goal-directed and implies careful planning or worrying and premature but realistic
affective anticipation of dire and potentially dreadful outcomes.

6. AFFILIATION
The individual deals with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors by turning to
others for help or support. This involves sharing problems with others but does not imply
trying to make someone else responsible for them.

7. AIM INHIBITION
The individual accepts a modified form of their original goal
8. ALTRUISM
The individual deals with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors by
mdedication to meeting the needs of others. Unlike the self-sacrifice sometimes
characteristic of reaction formation, the individual receives gratification either vicariously
or from the response of others.

9. ANALYZING
The individual deals with emotional conflict or internal or external by attempting to
explain the cause for your failure, believing that may resolve the issue.

10. ANGER AND INTIMIDATION

This is when a person deep down inside feels powerless and weak on some level and uses
emotional intensity threatens, intimidation and fear to get his/her needs met.

11. ANTICIPATION
Allows a person to experience in advance the emotion associated with a given situation.

12. APATHY
You have no particular interest in engaging in an activity.

13. APATHETIC WITHDRAWAL

The stressors are so severe that the body shuts down several functions. The individual
does not react to external stimuli. The condition is similar to a state of trance.

14. ARGUING
The individual deals with emotional conflict or internal or external by bringing up a
controversy to side track the other individual.

15. ASCETICISM
Eliminating the pleasurable effects of experiences. There is a moral element assigning
values to specific pleasure. Gratification is derived from renunciation and asceticism is
directed against all base pleasures perceived consciously.

16. AUTISTIC FANTASY

Indulging in fantasies to escape the real problem; isolates from reality by mind-
wandering rather than developing and efficient problem-resolution mechanism.

17. AVOIDANCE
A defense mechanism consisting of refusal to encounter situations, objects, or activities
because they represent unconscious sexual or aggressive impulses and/or punishment for
 those impulses; avoidance, according to the dynamic theory, is a major defense
mechanism in phobias.

18. BLAMING OR ATTACKING OTHERS

When our ego becomes threatened, we feel vulnerable and hurt, or we don’t want to
admit our own shortcomings or contributions to the problem, we try to cope with this
pain by blaming or attacking others instead.

19. BLOCKING
Is temporary or transiently inhibiting thinking. Affects and impulses may also be
involved. Blocking closely resembles repression but differs in that tension arises when
impulse, affect or thought is inhibited.

20. COMPARTMENTALIZATION
Is a lesser form of dissociation. Parts of self are separated from awareness of other parts
and behaving as if has separated set of values.

21. COMPENSATION
Psychologically counterbalancing perceived weakness by emphasizing strength in other
areas.

22. COMPLIANCE
The individual deals with emotional conflict or internal or external by giving in to the
wishes of another to avoid confrontation.

23. CONVERSATION
Is the manifestation of a psychic conflict in terms of physical symptoms.

24. CONVERSION
Associated with hysteria and is a manifestation of transformation sensations in the limbs
or members, or paresis, or paralysis.

25. COPING
Active process which allows an individual to adapt to situation that is forced upon him by
accepting the problems which underlie his condition and the circumstances of his new
life.

26. CONFABULATION
You lie without knowing it, to relieve lowered self-esteem.
27. CONTROLLING
Attempting to manage or regulate events or objects in the environment to minimize
anxiety and to resolve inner conflicts.

28. COURAGE
The mental ability and willingness to confront conflicts, fear, pain, danger, uncertainty,
despair, obstacles, vicissitudes or intimidation. Physical courage extends live, while more
courage preserves the ideals of justice and fairness.

29. DEANIMATION
The person you see isn’t human, so you don’t have to worry.

30. DECOUPLING
The individual is confronted by a temporary alteration of the integration features of
consciousness.

31. DEFIANCE
The individual deals with emotional conflict or internal or external by daring others to
prove that your arguments are wrong even if you know that you are right.

32. DEFLECTION
When change the subject and focus on someone or something else, instead of speaking
about you.
33. DELUSIONAL PROJECTION
The individual attributes non reality-based thoughts, emotions and impulses to others.

34. DENIAL
People refuse to accept or acknowledge an anxiety-producing piece of information.

35. DEVALUATION
Attributing exaggerated negative qualities to self or others.

36. DIRECT ATTACK

When you use direct attack in response to a threat to your self-esteem, you attack the
source of the threat. This may take the form of “lashing out” at another person.

37. DISAVOWAL
Keeps unwanted events from the conscious mind.
38. DISPLACEMENT

The expression of an unwanted feeling or thought is redirected from a more threatening

powerful person to a weaker one.

39. DISSOCIATION
Is temporarily but drastically modifying a person’s character or one’s sense of personal
identity to avoid emotional distress. Fugue states and hysterical conversion reactions are
common manifestations of dissociation.

40. DISTRACTION
The individual deals with emotional conflict or internal or external by consciously
deciding to put off thinking or feeling distressing thoughts or feelings by temporarily
focusing your attention towards something less threatening.

41. DISTORTION
Grossly reshaping external reality to suit inner needs(including unrealistic megalomanic
beliefs, hallucinations, wish-fulfilling delusions) and using object are internalized, thus
placing the aggression under one’s own control.

42. EMOTIONAL SELF-REGULATION

The ability to respond to the ongoing demands of experience with the range of emotions
in a manner that is socially tolerable. It is the processes people use to modify the type,
intensity, duration, or expression of various emotions.

43. EMOTIONAL SELF-SUFFICIENCY

Not being dependent on the validation (approval or disapproval) of others.

44. EMPHASIZING AFFECT

It is the act of emphasizing the expression of one’s affects and using them in an excessive
manner to avoid their rational explanation and, from the beginning, their explanation.
These feeling are therefore unconsciously magnified for defensive purposes.

45. EXAGGERATION
You make too much of a deal over something.

46. EXCUSES
Coming up with a list of reasons why a particular action occurred or examples of why
action couldn’t be taken, instead of taking responsibility for behaviors and actions.
47. EXPLAINING
he individual deals with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors by explaining
the problem in minute detail, thinking that may resolve the problem.

48. EXTERNALIZATION
Tending to perceive in the external world and in external objects elements of one’s own
personality, including instinctual impulses, conflicts, moods, attitudes, and styles of
thinking.

49. FATIGUE
You feel tired, but you’re not physically ill.

50. FANTASY
When used as defense mechanism, is the channeling of unacceptable or unattainable
desires into imagination. This can protect ones self-esteem as when educational,
vocational or social expectations are not being met, one imagines success in these areas
and wards off self-condemnation.

51. FORGIVENESS
Cessation of resentment, indignation or anger as a result of a perceived offence,
disagreement, or mistake, or ceasing to demand retribution or restitution.

52. FRANKNESS
You’re honest and blunt, but this covers up your actual thoughts and feelings.

53. GENERALIZATION
To not hate someone, you see him as part of an evil group.

54. GRATITUDE
A feeling of thankfulness or appreciation involving appreciation of a wide range of
people and events.

55. HALLUCINATION
You see or hear what you are trying not to think about – wishes, comments, fantasies or
criticism – with no reality testing.

56. HELP-REJECTING COMPLAINING

Involves dealing with stress by complaining and making repeated requests for help that
disguise hidden feelings of hostility toward others, which is then expressed by rejecting
 the suggestions, advice, or help that others offer. The complaints may involve physical or
psychological symptoms or life problems.

57. HOSTILE AGRESSION

You get into fights to hide unpleasant feelings.

58. HUMILITY
A mechanism by which a person, considering their own defects, has a humble self-
opinion. It is intelligent self-respect which keeps one from thinking too highly or too
meanly of oneself.

59. HYPOCHONDRIASIS
Exaggerating or overemphasizing an illness for the purpose of evasion and regression.
Reproach arising from bereavement, loneliness or unacceptable aggressive impulses
toward others is transformed into self-reproach and complaints of pain, somatic illness
and neurasthenia.

60. HUMOR
Using comedy to overtly express feelings and thoughts without personal discomfort or
immobilization and without producing an unpleasant effect on others. It allows the person
to tolerate and yet focus on what is too terrible to be borne; it is different from with, a
form of displacement that involves distraction from the affective issue.

61. IDEALIZATION
Overestimation of the desirable qualities and underestimation of the limitations of a
desired object.

62. IDENTIFICATION
Is similar to, but of less intensity and completeness. The unconscious modeling of one’s
self upon other person. One may also identify with values and attitudes of a group.

63. IDENTIFICATION WITH FANTASY

You act like your favorite hero or heroine.

64. IDENTIFICATION WITH PARENTS’ UNCONSCIOUS OR CONSCIOUS

WISHES/FANTASIES
You do as your parents forbid, act out their corrupt wisher, and get punished.
65. IDENTIFICATION WITH THE AGGRESSOR
You act abusive to a person because someone has acted abusive to you. This protects you
from feeling angry.

66. ILLUSION FORMATION OR DAYDREAMING

You consciously visualize a scene that is upsetting or pleasant and know it’s a fantasy.

67. INCORPORATION
The individual deals with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors by taking
parts of another into you. This may include defining or redefining yourself according to
someone else’s values, preferences, attitude

68. INHIBITION
Consciously limiting or renouncing some ego functions, alone or in combination, to
evade anxiety arising out of conflict with instinctual impulses, the superego, or
environmental forces or figures.

69. INTELLECTUALIZATION
Excessively using intellectual processes to avoid affective expression or experiences.
Undue emphasis is focused on the inanimate in order to avoid the expression of their
inner feelings, and stress is excessively placed on irrelevant details to avoid perceiving
the whole.

70. INTROJECTION
Identifying with another so strongly that one absorbs that aspect into his/her own
personality. This often is observed in children as they introject aspects of the parent into
themselves.

71. ISOLATION OF EFFECT

Attempting to avoid a painful thought or feeling by objectifying and emotionally
detaching oneself, from the feeling.

72. JUDGMENTALISM
The individual deals with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors by placing
others on a lower spiritual level to cover one’s own spiritual inadequacies.

73. JUSTIFYING
The individual deals with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors by trying to
balance your wrong with wrong of others.
74. LIBIDINAL REGRESSION
You are afraid of sex and assertiveness, so you become dependent or stubborn instead.

75. LYING
The individual deals with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors by making
blatant lies to cover one’s back.
76. MANIA
Maniac episodes of wild, frenetic activity are unconsciously employed by some
individuals as a distraction from unpleasant situations as a means to ward of feelings of
depression.

77. MANIPULATION
The individual deals with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors by trying to
indirectly blame someone else for your difficulty. Then trying to get the other person to
straighten up so that you can.

78. MENTAL INHIBITION

Threatening thoughts, emotions, desires or fears are blocked out of the conscious mind.

79. MERCY
Compassionate behavior on the part of those in power.

80. MINDFULNESS
Adopting a particular orientation toward one’s experiences in the present moment, an
orientation that is characterized by curiosity, openness, and acceptance.

81. MINIMIZATION
Not acknowledging the significance of one’s behavior.

82. MODERATION
Process of eliminating or lessening extremes and staying within reasonable limits. It
necessitates self-restraint which is imposed by oneself on one’s own feelings, desires etc.

83. NEGATIVISM
You refuse to cooperate, and treat other people condescendingly.

84. OMNIPOTENCE
The individual deals with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors by feeling or
acting as if he or she possesses special powers or abilities and is superior to others.
85. PASSIVE AGGRESSION

Expressing aggression toward others indirectly through passivity, masochism, behavior

and turning against the self. Manifestation of passive aggressive behavior includes
failure, procrastination and illnesses that affect others more than oneself.

86. PATIENCE
Level of endurance under difficult circumstances (delay, provocation, criticism, attack
etc.) one can take before negativity. Patience is recognized virtue in many religions.

87. PHOTOPHOBIA
You avoid the light to avoid your voyeuristic impulses.

88. PLAYING THE VICTIM

To avoid dealing with problem or feeling responsible for the situation, the victim finds it
easier to make other people the bad guy and believes that everything happens to them.
They have difficulty taking any ownership for problems and are unable to acknowledge
they have choices and can take action.

89. POLARIZATION
The individual tends to meet to in or to the others as completely good or bad without
managing to integrate the positive and negative qualities of each one.

90. POSTPONEMENT OF AFFECT

A defense mechanism which may be used against a variety of feelings or emotions such a
temporal displacement, resulting simply in a later appearance of the affect reaction and in
thus preventing the recognition of the motivation connection, is most frequently used
against the effects of rage (or annoyance) and grief.

91. PREVARICATION
You lie on purpose, for a reason.

92. PROJECTION
is the denial of one’s unacceptable feelings and desire and finding them in another
person.

93. PROJECTIVE BLAMING

You unfairly blame somebody else for your problem.
94. PROJECTIVE IDENTIFICATION
Similar to "Projection" above, but here the recipient identifies with the mental content
being projected. For example, the recipient begins to feel sad and depressed.

95. PSYCHOTIC DENIAL

A more severe form of denial, with no or little contact with reality.

96. PSYCHOTIC DISTORTION

Is perceiving reality differently than others. Individuals using this defense transform
reality in order to deal with the pain.

97. QUESTIONING
The individual deals with emotion conflict or internal or external stressors by firing
questions at the potential intruder to keep him from bringing up threatening issue in your
own life.

98. RATIONALIZATION
Creating an acceptable reason for a behavior that is actually performed for a less
acceptable reason.

99. REACTION FORMATION

Replacing an anxiety-provoking idea with its opposite.

100. RECONSTRUCTION OF REALITY

You reinvent a situation after denying the reality.\

101. REGRESSION
People behave as if they we’re at the earlier stage of development.

102. REPRESSION
Is the mind’s active attempt to prevent memories of traumatic experiences from reaching
conscious awareness.

103. RESILIENCE
Having bad past but grow up having good traits.

104. RESISTANCE
This defense mechanism produces a deep-seated opposition to the bringing of repressed
(unconscious) data to awareness. Through its operation, the individual seeks to avoid
memories or insights which would arouse anxiety.
105. RESPECT
Willingness to show consideration or appreciation.

106. RESTITUTION
Is the mechanism of relieving the mind of a load of guilt by making up or reparation
(paying up with interest).

107. REVERSAL
This defense, as well as turning against the self, was considered to come into play quite
early in life. It refers mainly to turning love into hate and hate into love for defensive
purposes.

108. RITUALIZATION
Could potentially lead to an OCD. It means establishing a routine.

109. SCHIZOID FANTASY

Indulging in autistic retreat in order to resolve conflict and to obtain gratification.
Interpersonal intimacy is avoided, and eccentricity serves to repel others. The person does
not fully believe in the fantasies and does not insist on acting them out.

110. SARCASM
People who have a great deal of hostility toward themselves, another person, or a
particular group, often---manifest their hostility to others by making side jokes about
themselves and others.

111. SELF-ASSERTION
Involves dealing with stress by expressing your feelings and thoughts directly in a way
that is not aggressive, coercive, or manipulative.

112. SELF-DEPRECIATION
Devaluing one’s self.

113. SELF OBSERVATION

Involves dealing with stress by reflecting on your own thoughts, feelings, motivation, and
behavior, and then responding appropriately.
114. SEXUALIZATION
Endowing an object or function with sexual significance that it did not previously have or
possessed to a smaller degree in order to ward off anxieties associated with prohibited
impulses or their derivatives.

115. SILENCE
Using silence to protect you from talking about the problem. This is often the case with
men in marriage. When confronted with the issue, the individual may just walk away or
stand there to say nothing.

116. SIMPLE DENIAL

The individual deals with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors by treating
unpleasant facts, emotions, or events as if they are not real or don’t exist.

117. SHOUTING
The individual deals with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors by using
loud voice to try to control the situation.

118. SPLITTING OF SELF IMAGE OR OTHERS

Is the inability to see gray areas. A person who uses splitting sees things as all good or all
bad. This often is seen in borderline personality disorder.

119. SOMATIZATION
Converting psychic derivatives into bodily symptoms and tending to react with somatic
manifestations, rather than psychic manifestations.

120. STOCKHOLM SYNDROME

The victim identifies with the aggressor.

121. SUBLIMATION
Channeling psychic energy from an unacceptable drive into a more acceptable one.

122. SUBSTITUTION
Through this defense mechanism, the individual secures alternative or substitutive
gratification comparable to those that would have been employed had frustration not
occurred.
123. SUPPRESSION
Is consciously or semiconsciously postponing attention to a conscious impulse or
conflict. Issues may be deliberately cut off, but they are not avoided. Discomfort is
acknowledged but minimized.

124. SYMBOLIZATION
An object or act represents a complex group of objects and acts, some of which may be
confliction or unacceptable to the ego; objects or acts stand for a repressed desire.

125. TEMPORAL DISPLACEMENT TO THE FUTURE

You imagine “if only…” or “someday…”

126. TEMPORAL REGRESSION

You focus on earlier times to not think about current conflict.

127. THOUGHT SUPPRESSION

Consciously deciding to delay addressing negative situations and emotions.

128. THREATENING
Using aggression to avoid facing in issue.

129. TOLERANCE
The practice of deliberately allowing or permitting a thing of which one disapproves.

130. TOPOGRAPHIC REGRESSION

You dream to avoid painful reality

131. TRANSFERENCE
You shift memories of past situations and relationships onto a current person. You then
use old defenses to forget the past or to master it by living it again symbolically or
changing the ending.

132. TURNING ON THE SELF

You’re angry at someone but attack/kill yourself instead.

133. TURNING SELF-CRITICISM ONTO THE OBJECT

You criticize somebody else instead of berating yourself.
134. UNDOING
Involves dealing with stress by using words or behaviors designed to negate or make
amends symbolically for unacceptable thoughts, feelings, or actions.

135. UPWARD AND DOWNWARD SOCIAL COMPARISONS

Used as a means of self-evaluation. Individuals will look to another individual or
comparison group who are considered to be worse off in order to dissociate themselves
from perceived similarities and to make they feel better about themselves or their
personal situation.

136. WISHFUL THINKING

Making decisions according to what might be pleasing to imagine instead of by appealing
to evidence, rationality, or reality.

137. WITHDRAWAL
The individual is faced with the emotional conflicts intentionally avoiding thinking about
problems, desires, feelings that cause you discomfort.
There are two main points about defense mechanism. First, they are unconscious; we are
not aware that we are calling on them. Second, when used in moderation or on a
temporary basis, defense mechanisms are not necessarily unhealthy. For example, the
defense mechanism of denial can help a person cope with impending death. For the most
part, though, we should not let defense mechanisms dominate our behavior and prevent
us from facing life’s demand.