George Valliant classified defence mechanisms into four categories based on their level of maturity: 1) Narcissistic defences include denial, distortion, and projection which are the most primitive. 2) Immature defences used in adolescents include acting out, blocking, hypochondriasis, and regression. 3) Neurotic defences used in adults under stress include intellectualization, isolation, rationalization, and repression. 4) Mature defences seen in healthy adults are anticipation, humour, suppression, and sublimation.

1. 1
Defence mechanisms
 Psychoanalytic Theory DEFENCE MECHANISMS
 Sigmund Freud constructed a model of personality with 3 interlocking parts:the ‘id’,the ‘ego’ & the
‘super ego’
 Id,the most primitive one-biologically based urges.
o To eat,drink,eliminate & especially to be sexually stimulated.
o id operates through pleasure principle without any rules,realities,morals.
 Id is bridled & managed by ego.Ego delays satisfying id’s motives & channels behaviour in socially
acceptable way.
Involuntary coping Mechanisms
 Id’s unconscious demands are instinctual, infantile and amoral . They must be blocked by ego and
superego.
 Super ego,the conscience,prohibitions learned from parents & authorities.
 Because of this conflict and persistence of unsatisfied demands, anxiety and guilt are aroused.
 Defence mechanisms resides in the unconscious domain of ego.
George Valliant’s Classification
A. Narcissistic Defences - Most primitive. In children and adults who are psychotically disturbed.
B. Immature Defences: adolescents and some non neurotic patients.
C. Neurotic Defences: in OCD and hysterical patients and in adults under stress.
D. Mature defences
A. Narcissistic defenses
1. Denial
2. Distortion
3. Projection
1. Denial
 Avoiding the awareness of some painful aspect of reality by negating sensory data.
 It abolishes external reality.
 A person who is a functioning alcoholic will often simply deny they have a drinking problem, pointing
to how well they function in their job and relationships.
 Simple Denial,minimisation,Projection
2. Distortion
 Grossly reshaping external reality to suit inner needs
 Including hallucinations, wish fulfilling delusions, unrealistic megalomania.
3. Projection
 Mechanism by which the ego attributes its own intolerable sexual and aggressive impulses to the outside
person or agency.
 Coping with one’s unwanted motives by shifting them on to someone else.
 Anxiety arising from internal conflicts can then be reduced and problem dealt with as though it were in
the external world.
B. Immature defenses
1. Acting out
2. Blocking

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3. Hypochondriasis
4. Introjection
5. Passive aggressive behaviour
6. Regression
7. Somatiization
8. Schizoid fantasy
1. Acting out
 Expressing an unconscious wish or impulse through action to avoid being conscious of an
accompanying affect.
 Involves chronically giving in to an impulse to avoid the tension arising from postponement of
expression.
 Instead of saying, “I’m angry with you,” a person who acts out may throw a book at the person, or
punch a hole through a wall.
 When a person acts out, it can act as a pressure release, and often helps the individual feel calmer and
peaceful once again.
 Ex. Tantrums,
 For instance, a child’s temper tantrum is a form of acting out when he or she doesn’t get his or her way
with a parent.
 apparently motiveless assaults, child abuse
2. Blocking
 Temporarily or transiently inhibiting thinking
3.Hypochondriasis
 Exaggerating or overemphasizing an illness for the purpose of evasion and regression.
 Responsibility can be avoided , guilt can be circumvented and instinctual impulses are warded off.
4. Introjection
 Reverse of projection
 Internalizing the qualities of an object.
5. Passive aggressive behaviour
 These patients turn their anger against themselves. This phenomenon is called masochism, includes
procrastination, silly or provocative behaviour, self demeaning ,clowning and frankly self destructive
acts.
6. Turning against self
 Instead of expressing hostility against another rperson, represses the hostility but ventilates it against
own self in the form of self criticism and self accusation
7. Regression
 Attempting to return to an earlier libidinal phase of functioning to avoid the tension and conflict evoked
at the present level of development.
 The ego abandons the matured path of gratification and takes resort to pregenital or less objectionable
attitude towards its object of gratification.
 Regression is normal phenomenon as well. Some amount of regression is needed for relaxation, sleep
and orgasm in sexual intercourse.

3. 3
 In the face of threat, one may retract to an earlier pattern of adaptation, possibly a childish or primitive
one.
 For eg,an adolescent who is overwhelmed with fear, anger and growing sexual impulses might become
clingy and start exhibiting earlier childhood behaviors he has long since overcome, such as
bedwetting,nail bitting etc.
8. Somatization
 Converting psychic derivatives into bodily symptoms and tending to react with somatic manifestations
rather than with psychic manifestations.
9. Schizoid fantasy
 Indulge in Autistic retreat to resolve conflict and to obtain gratification.
 Inter personal intimacy is avoided and eccentricity serves to repel others.
 The person doesnot fully believe in fantasies and doesnot insist on acting them out.  Eg in normals
striptease shows,day dreaming on pornographic materials
 Clinically seen in Schizoid & Schizotypal Personality ,Narcissistic Personality Disorders.
C. Neurotic defences
1. Controlling
2. Displacement
3. Externalization
4. intellectualization
5. Isolation
6. rationalization
7. dissociation
8. reaction formation
9. Repression
10. Sexualisation
1. Controlling defence mechanisms
 Attempting to manage or regulate events or objects in the environment to minimize anxiety and to
resolve inner conflicts.
2. Displacement
 The motive remains unaltered but the person substitutes a different goal object for the original one.
 Often the motive is aggression that for some reason, the person cannot vent on the source of anger.
 Shifting an emotion or drive from one idea or object to another that resembles the original in some
aspect or quality.
 Example is the man who gets angry at his boss, but can’t express his anger to his boss for fear of being
fired. He instead comes home and kicks the dog or starts an argument with his wife.
3. 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.
 For example, a patient who is overly argumentative might instead perceive others as argumentative and
himself as blameless
4. Intellectualization
 Excessively using intellectual process to avoid affective expression or experience.

4. 4
 To avoid intimacy with people, attention is paid to external reality to avoid the expression of inner
feelings and stress is placed on irrelevant details to avoid percieving the whole.
 Professionals who deal with troubled people may intellectualize in order to remain helpful without
being overwhelmed by sympathetic involvement.
5. Isolation
 Characteristic of the orderly, controlled persons who are labelled as Obsessive compulsive personalities.
 Splitting or separation of an idea from the affect that accompanies it but is repressed.
 In splitting, persons towards whom patients feelings are, or have been, ambivalent are divided into good
and bad.
 Ex. In a ward, a patient may idealize some staff members and uniformly disparage others.
6. Rationalization
 Offering rational explanations in an attempt to justify attitudes, beliefs or behaviour that may otherwise
be unacceptable.  It is a method to support an attitude with false reasons  Substituting an acceptable
conscious motive for an unacceptable unconscious one.
 Rationalization is very common among medical professionals in covering up medical errors
 “Why disclose the error?,the patient wass going to die anyway”
 “Telling the family about the error will make them feel worse”
 “It was patient’s fault,if he wasn’t so obese,sick etc. this error woudn’t have caused so much harm”
 “Well we did our best,these things happen.”
7. Dissociation
 Polly anna(subconscious bias towards the positive) like replacement of unpleasant affects with pleasant
ones.
 Persons who often dissociate are seen as dramatizing and emotionally shallow.
 Temporarily but drastically modifying a persons character or one’s own sense of personal identity to
avoid emotional distress.
 Multiple Personality Disorder,PTSD,Somnambulism.
8. Reaction formation
 Transforming an unacceptable impulse into its opposite
 Characteristic of obsessional neurosis
 If this mechanism is frequently used at any early stage of ego development it can become a permanent
character trait, as in obsessional character.
 Thus love may cover up unconscious hate, shyness serves as defence against exhibitionism.
 Ex : when a 2nd child is born in a family the first child may show extraordinary concern for the welfare
of the Newborn. This way his unconscious hate and aggression for his little brother is covered up.
9. Repression
 Repression is the unconscious blocking of unacceptable thoughts, feelings and impulses.
 Ego excludes from the consciousness all the psychological contents which it cannot fit in harmoniously.
 Primary Repression: Curbing of ideas and feelings before they have attained consciousness.
 Secondary repression : Excluding from awareness what was once experienced at the conscious level.
 Repressed feelings do not cease to exist by mere expulsion from the consciousness. Ego takes further
steps to deal with these pent up impulses : a) Further reinforcement of repression b) Finding out
substitute channels for outlet of impulse

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 Ex. When a child finds out about the birth of a 2nd baby, he may feel his love is divided. He feels
jealousy and rivalry towards his little brother. He represses his aggression for fear of punishment or
further loss of love. But may channelize his aggression through some other activity, ex. By breaking his
brothers toys.
10. Sexualisation
 Endowing an object or function with a sexual significance that it did not previously have or possessed to
a smaller degree, to ward off anxieties associated with prohibited impulses or their derivatives.
11. Inhibition
 Involuntary decrease or loss of motivation to engage in some goal directed activity to prevent anxiety
arising out of conflicts with unacceptable impulses.
 Eg in Normals: Social Shyness.
 Clinically in OCDs & Phobias.
D. Mature defences
1. Altruism
2. Anticipation
3. Humour
4. Suppression
5. Sublimation
1. Altruism
 Involves an individual getting pleasure from giving to others what the individual would have liked to
receive.
 Ex. Using Altruism a former alcoholic serves as an Alcohol Anonymous sponsor to a new member,
achieving transformation process that may be life saving.
2. Anticipation
 Realistically planning or anticipating future inner discomfort.
 Involves careful planning or worrying and premature, but realistic anticipation of dire and potentially
dreadful outcomes.
 Ex. Moderate amount of anxiety before surgery promotes post surgical adaptation
3. Humour
 Using comedy to overtly express feelings and thoughts without personal discomfort and without
producing an unpleasant effect on the others.
 Freud suggested that “Humour can be regarded as the highest of these defensive processes”
 Mature humour allows individuals to look directly at what is painful.
4. Suppression
 Consciously or semi consciously postponing attention to a conscious impulse or conflict.
 Issues may be deliberately cut off but they are not avoided.
5. Sublimation
 For Freud, sublimation was the highest level of ego defence
 Consists of redirection of sexual impulses to socially valued activities and goals.
 He believed that much of our cultural heritage is the product of sublimation.
 Ex. A writer may divert his libido to creation of poem/ novel. Thus indirectly satisfying drives.

6. 6
 Rejection by lover may induce one to divert hi energy to human welfare or artistic and literary
activities.
Chandni
28.7.2020