Introduction to the Psychology of Defense Mechanisms
A - Z List of Defense Mechanisms
By Geoffrey W. Sutton, PhD 2023
The concept of psychological defense mechanisms was developed
in the writings of Sigmund Freud and Anna Freud. The idea of a defense
mechanism is that people protect themselves from distressing levels of anxiety or
conflicts by responding with a pattern of cognitions, emotions, or behavior.
The response pattern is often with limited awareness.
In Freudian psychoanalysis, the ego unconsciously defends
itself against anxiety and the attendant psychic conflict. Defenses have
appeared by different names and clear descriptions varied in early writings. Sigmund
Freud referred to many defenses in his works. Later, Anna Freud offered
clarifications in her 1936 work, The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense
(Clark, 1998). The defense mechanisms represent levels of developmental
maturity determined by the degree of distorting reality.
In current thinking, we may think of these defense mechanisms
as ways people mentally cope with stressful experiences. Positive coping refers
to ways that are healthy, which means the person experiences some degree of
success in managing or adapting to a problem situation. Negative coping refers
to strategies that do more harm than good. Some defenses, negative coping
strategies, are so dysfunctional that a person may have severe difficulties
functioning in one or more aspects of their life. Defensive responses can
change how people perceive themselves (the self as subject), another person or
organization (object), a cognition (thought, idea), or an emotion (Vaillant,
2000).
In some forms of psychotherapy, clinicians identify
their patients’ defenses, determine how well they are functioning, and make
decisions on the best way to help their patients deal with the attendant
anxieties or conflicts.
The study of defense mechanisms can be challenging
because in more than a century of writing, different terms are used for these
constructs and there are variations in the features (characteristics, properties)
of a particular defense mechanism. In recent decades, researchers in psychology
and psychiatry have focused on clarifying recognizable features of a limited
set of defense mechanisms.
In this post, I present one list. Readers may find
other lists elsewhere. One way to be more definitive is to focus on identifying
defenses that have some degree of empirical support as derived from operational
definitions found in recent measures like the Defense Mechanisms Rating Scales-SR-30 (e.g., Di Giuseppe et al., 2020) and a Q-Sort technique (Di Giuseppe et al.,
2014).
The information in this post and blog is for
educational purposes only. Readers interested in diagnoses and treatment recommendations
should consult a licensed mental healthcare provider.
An A – Z List of
Psychological Defense Mechanisms
Follow
the links to learn more details about these defense mechanisms.
Acting out
Acting out refers to a socially unacceptable or even
harmful behavioral reaction to distress rather than a more peaceful processing
of the painful thoughts and feelings associated with an event like divorce,
natural disaster, or an accident.
Affiliation
Affiliation is a generally adaptive defensive strategy
of finding support from others to cope with distress.
Altruism
Altruism is a generally adaptive strategy for meeting
one’s own needs by fulfilling the needs of others.
Anticipation
Anticipation is a generally adaptive strategy for
dealing with expected distress or conflict in the future by planning their
reaction.
Avoidance
Avoidance is a strategy to protect oneself from real
or perceived painful experiences associated with particular people or places.
Conversion
Conversion is a defense against dealing with distress,
which results in impaired physical functioning or physical symptoms that are
not explained by known biological causes.
Compartmentalization
Compartmentalization is a strategy to segment our
lives in order to limit the distressing effects in one area of life.
Compensation
Compensation is a strategy of dealing with negative
feelings of inadequacy by investing energy elsewhere.
Denial
Denial is the refusal to accept the facts about a
highly distressing event.
Devaluation
Devaluation is an excessively negative appraisal of
oneself or another person when faced with stressors or conflicts.
Displacement
Transferring a perceived conflict with one source to a
different source.
Dissociation
Dissociation is an extreme distancing of oneself from
a troubling context.
Distraction
Distraction is a strategy of avoiding distress by
engaging in other activities such as shopping, talking with friends, or
scrolling on social media sights.
Fantasy (Autistic or Schizoid)
Fantasy is the excessive and unproductive use of
daydreaming to deal with stressors and conflicts instead of attempting to solve
a problem, take constructive action to deal with a conflict or source of
distress, or interacting with others to deal with conflicts or distress.
Help-rejecting complaining
Help-rejecting complaining is a term that replaces an
older term known as hypochondriasis.
Humor
Humor can be an adaptive defense against distress.
Idealization
Idealization is the process of coping with stressors
or conflicts by attributing exaggerated positive qualities to oneself or
someone else.
Identification
Identification is the process of taking upon oneself
the attributes of another person based on an association fantasy.
Intellectualization
Intellectualization is a cognitive defense strategy of
avoiding distressing feelings by analyzing events as if there were no emotions
involved.
Introjection
Introjection is a way of dealing with conflicts and
stressors by accepting the messages of others as true of oneself. In the
language of defense mechanisms, these messages are introjects.
Isolation of Affects
Isolation of Affects is a defense against distressful
emotions by attending only to the cognitive aspects of a distressing experience.
Omnipotence
Omnipotence defends against stressors and conflicts by
acting superior to others in terms of power, status, or ability.
Passive aggression
Passive-aggressive strategies appear to help people
avoid the perceived effect of an outright conflict that might ensue if they
were to be blunt or forthright in expressing their hostility or true feelings.
Projection
Attributing a negative quality about oneself to
someone else. A person who is unhappy with their appearance is highly critical
of the appearance of others.
Projective Identification
Projective Identification misattributes unacceptable
feelings or impulses to someone else. People who deploy projective identification
confuse their actual role as causal agent of the projected content.
Rationalization
Rationalization is the use of reasoning to justify
behavior considered unacceptable according to one’s personal moral code or the
norms of their group
Reaction Formation
Reaction Formation is a strategy of replacing a
response to anxiety producing thoughts and feelings with their opposite.
Repression
Repression is an unconscious blocking of distressing
memories from awareness.
Regression
Regression is a strategy of dealing with a distressful
experience by reacting similarly to the way they responded during childhood.
Self-assertion
Self-assertion is a generally adaptive strategy of
expressing emotional conflicts rather than keeping quiet.
Self-observation
Self-observation is a generally adaptive strategy for
managing internal conflicts or coping with external sources of distress by assessing
the effectiveness of their behaviour and making modifications to better adapt
to a situation.
Splitting
Splitting refers to splitting one’s self-image or that
of others into all good or all bad images, which avoid a realistic appraisal of
positive and negative images
Sublimation
Sublimation is a generally adaptive strategy of
managing potentially harmful urges into safe and acceptable activities.
Suppression
Suppression is an active process of avoiding
distressful memories, thoughts, and feelings. Suppression is a generally
adaptive strategy of regulating one’s thoughts and feelings
Undoing
Undoing is a strategy of performing some act to take
care of one feelings of guilt.
Resources
Defense Mechanisms Rating Scales
Form Self-Report 30
Q-Sort
REFERENCE BOOKS
Clark, A. J. (1998). Defense mechanisms in the counseling process in groups. SAGE Publications, Inc., https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781452204901 AMAZON
Cramer, P. (2006). Protecting the self. Guilford. AMAZON
Freud, A. (1992). The ego and the mechanisms of defence. Routledge. AMAZON
Select References
Cramer, P. (2002). The study of defense mechanisms:
Gender implications. In The psychodynamics of gender and gender role. (pp.
81–127). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/10450-003
Cooper, S. H. (1992). The empirical study of defensive
processes: A review. In Interface of psychoanalysis and psychology. (pp.
327–346). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/10118-014
Di
Giuseppe, M., Perry, J. C., Lucchesi, M., Michelini, M., Vitiello, S., Piantanida,
A., Fabiani, M., Maffei, S., & Conversano, C. (2020). Preliminary validity
and reliability of the novel self-report based on the Defense Mechanisms Rating
Scales (DMRS-SR-30). Frontiers in Psychiatry, 11, 870.
https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2020.00870
Di Giuseppe, M., Perry, J. C., Petraglia,
J., Janzen, J., & Lingiardi, V.(2014). Development of a Q-Sort version of
the Defense Mechanism Rating Scales (DMRS-Q) for clinical use. Journal of
Clinical Psychology, 70(5), 452–465. https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.22089
Vaillant, G. E. (2000). Defense mechanisms. In Encyclopedia
of psychology, Vol. 2. (pp. 454–457). Oxford University Press.
https://doi.org/10.1037/10517-166
Vaillant,G. E. (2011). Involuntary coping mechanisms:
A psychodynamic perspective. Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience, 13,
366–370.
Geoffrey W. Sutton, PhD is Emeritus Professor of Psychology. He
retired from a clinical practice and was credentialed in clinical
neuropsychology and psychopharmacology. His website is www.suttong.com
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