Defense Mechanisms

Freud proposed that people use defense mechanisms unconsciously, as a way to avoid uncomfortable feelings and emotions. The Id, ego and superego are often in conflict. The conflicts among Id, ego and superego result in the following defensive mechanisms to reduce tension caused by the conflicts:

(a) Denial
It refers to denying the anxiety outright of the person. It involves blocking external events from awareness. If some situation is just too much to handle, the person just refuses to experience it.

Example
Smokers refuse to admit to themselves that smoking is injurious to health. People living with drug or alcohol addiction often deny that they have a problem, while victims of traumatic events may deny that the event ever occurred.

(b) Repression
Repression involves avoiding thinking about something to block out painful or uncomfortable feelings, emotions, and impulses. Repression is an unconscious process — a person is unaware that they are doing it. Unsavory thoughts, painful memories, or irrational beliefs can upset you. Instead of facing them, you may unconsciously choose to hide them in hopes of forgetting about them entirely. That does not mean, however, that the memories disappear entirely. They may influence behaviors, and they may impact future relationships. You just may not realize the impact this defense mechanism is having. Repression could help explain the root of certain phobias.

Example
Some unexplained phobias may stem from traumatic childhood experiences that the person has since repressed.

(c) Reaction Formation
Reaction formation reduces anxiety by taking up the opposite feeling, impulse, or behavior. Reaction Formation is the converting of unwanted or dangerous thoughts, feelings or impulses into their opposites.

Example 1
A woman who is very angry with her boss and would like to quit her job may instead be overly kind and generous toward her boss and express a desire to keep working there forever. She is incapable of expressing the negative emotions of anger and unhappiness with her job, and instead becomes overly kind to publicly demonstrate her lack of anger and unhappiness. It is a way of protecting the mind from uncomfortable thoughts or desires.

Examples 2
A person may experience normal feelings of sadness or disappointment after a relationship breaks down. If they feel that these emotions are unacceptable, they may publicly act as if they are happy or unconcerned.
Reaction formation can be a pattern of ongoing behavior.

Example 3
A person who feels that expressing anger or frustration toward a parent is unacceptable may never react negatively to anything that their parent says or does, even when this would be a normal response.

(d) Projection
This involves individuals attributing their own unacceptable thoughts, feeling and motives to another person. For example, you might hate someone, but your superego tells you that such hatred is unacceptable. You can ‘solve’ the problem by behaving that they hate you. Projection is the misattribution of a person’s undesired thoughts, feelings or impulses onto another person who does not have those thoughts, feelings or impulses. Projection is used especially when the thoughts are considered unacceptable for the person to express, or they feel completely ill at ease with having them.

Example
A spouse may be angry at their significant other for not listening, when in fact it is the angry spouse who does not listen. Projection is often the result of a lack of insight and acknowledgement of one’s own motivations and feelings.

(e) Displacement
Displacement involves taking out our frustrations, feelings, and impulses on people or objects that are less threatening.
Displaced aggression is a common example of this defense mechanism. Displacement is transferring an emotion from its original object to a safer, more acceptable substitute.

Example
A man it criticized by his boss and feels belittled, unappreciated, and angry. Unable to express his anger at work for fear of retaliation, he comes home and takes it out on his wife, punishes his children, or kicks the dog.