Classic defence mechanisms. Learn more: Brand Psychology by Jonathan Gabay ISBN-10: 0749471735 ISBN-13: 978-0749471736

1. Defence Mechanisms
(Supporting material for
Brand Psychology book
by Jonathan Gabay)
Brand Psychology book by Jonathan Gabay

2. DEFINITION
Ego Defense Mechanisms protect the
mind/self/ego from anxiety or provide a
retreat from a difficult situation.
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3. Key figures in Defence Mechanism development
• Sigmund Freud
• Founder of psychoanalysis.
• Theory of Psychosexual
Development. The Id, Ego,
and Superego
• Dream interpretation. Free
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association.
Anna Freud
• Child psychoanalysis
• Clear explanations of
defense mechanism
• Concept of signal anxiety.
Otto F. Kernberg
-theory of borderline
personality organization
,based on ego psychological
object relations theory.
Robert Plutchik
- defenses as derivatives of
basic emotions.
George Eman
Valliant -a continuum related
to psychoanalytical
developmental levels.

4. Pathological/Narcissistic Defenses
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Denial
Distortion
Projection
Regression

5. IMMATURE DEFENCES
• Acting out
• Hypochondriasis
• Introjections
• Passive aggressive behavior
• Regression
• Schizoid fantasy
• Somatization
Commonly present in adolescents.
Such defenses can be viewed as immature, difficult to deal with.
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6. NEUROTIC DEFENCES
Considered neurotic – fairly common in adults
• Rationalization.
• Sexualization.
• Compensation.
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• Splitting.
• Inhibition.
• Isolation.
• Displacement.
• Repression.
• Externalization.
• Intellectualization.
• Reaction Formation.
• Dissociation.

7. MATURE DEFENCES
Commonly found among emotionally healthy adults
• Altruism
• Anticipation
• Asceticism
• Humor
• Sublimation
• Suppression
• These defenses enhance pleasure and sense of control.
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8. DENIAL
• Involuntary exclusion of unpleasant or painful
reality from conscious awareness.
– Postulated by Sigmund Freud
• Simple denial
• - deny the reality of unpleasant facts.
• Minimization
• - Recognize the fact, but deny its seriousness.
• Projection
– - admit both fact and seriousness but deny
responsibility.
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9. Death and loss denial
1. Denial and Isolation
• Buffers shock.
• Supports through first wave of
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pain.
2. Anger
• Powerful emotion deflected
and redirected as anger.
• Anger may be aimed at
inanimate objects, strangers,
or dying/ deceased.
• Rationally, the person is not to
be blamed.
• Emotionally, the person is
resented for causing pain.
3. Bargaining
A need to regain control –
If only the doctors were
called earlier …
If only I had tried to be a
better person …
Deals struck with a higher
power to postpone
inevitable and protect from
painful reality.
4. Depression
5. Acceptance

10. TYPES OF DENIAL
• Denial of fact
– Avoids a fact by lying.
– lying can be an outright falsehood (commission),
– leaving out certain details to tailor a story
(omission),
– falsely agreeing to something
– (also referred to as "yessing" behaviour).
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11. Denial of responsibility
– Avoiding personal responsibility.
– Blaming
– A direct statement shifting blame; may overlap with
denial of fact
– Minimizing
– Attempt to make the consequences of an action
appear less harmful.
– Justifying –
– Having made a choice, tries to make it appear look
acceptable (due to a perception of what is "right”).
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12. • Denial of impact
• Avoids thinking about or understanding the
harms a behaviour (i.e. denial of consequences).
• Avoids a sense of guilt.
• Prevent remorse or empathy of others.
• Denial of awareness
• Avoids pain and harm by stating they were in a
different state of awareness (such as alcohol or
drug intoxication).
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13. • Denial of cycle
• “It just happened."
• Denial of denial
• Involves thoughts, actions and behaviours
• Example:
• Overt consumerism - bolsters belief that
personal behaviour need not change.
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14. DISTORTION
• Totally redesigning external reality to suit
inner needs.
• Delusions - especially grandiose.
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15. PROJECTION
• Perceiving and reacting to unacceptable inner impulses
and derivatives as though they emanated from outside
the self.
• Freudian Projection
– Projective identification
– connection of the self with that projected impulse
continues.
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Examples:
– Blaming
– Clinical-Delusions
– Paranoid personality.

16. Acting out
• Expression of an unconscious impulses; gratifying impulses rather
than prohibiting them.
• Designed (often unconsciously or semi-consciously) to gain
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attention.
• Can be destructive to self or others, and may inhibit the
development of more constructive responses to the feelings.
• Examples:
– Temper tantrums
– Rebellious behaviours

17. INTROJECTION
• Unconscious internalization of the qualities of
an object or person.
Example:
Identification with the aggressor.
• Stockholm syndrome.
• Depression.
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18. Hypochondriasis
Exaggerating for the purpose of evasion and
regression.
Passive aggression
• Indirect aggression towards others through
passivity, masochism and turning against the
self.
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19. REGRESSION
• Effort to return to an earlier libidinal phase, so
avoid tension and conflict of the current
phase.
– A person may revert to immature behavior to
ventilate feelings of frustration.
– Becomes a problem when used frequently to
avoid adult situations.
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20. SCHIZOID FANTASY
• Withdrawal in self to resolve conflict and
gratify frustrated wishes.
• Something which is not or cannot be real.
• Examples:
– Adolescence wish to fulfilling sexual daydreams.
– Middle-aged wish to be youthful, virile and
alluring.
– Narcissistic personality disorder.
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21. Somatization
• Converting psychic derivatives into bodily
symptoms.
• Reacting with somatic rather than psychic
appearances.
• Unconscious rechanneling of repressed
emotions into somatic symptoms.
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22. REACTION FORMATION
• Converting an unacceptable impulse into
its opposite.
– The original, rejected impulse doesn’t disappear.
– Persists, unconscious, in its original infantile form.
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23. REPRESSION
• Expelling or withholding an idea or feeling from consciousness
• Primary repression
• Refers to the curbing of ideas and feelings before they have attained
consciousness.
• Secondary repression
• Excludes from awareness what was once experienced at a conscious level.
Examples:
• Forgetfulness.
• Slip of tongue.
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24. RATIONALIZATION
• Ernest jones-contributed the term
"rationalization" to psychoanalysis.
• Offering rational explanations to justify
attitudes, beliefs, or unacceptable behaviour.
– Providing logical explanations for irrational
behaviour motivated by unacceptable wishes.
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25. DISPLACEMENT
• Involves taking out frustrations, feelings, and
impulses on people or objects that are less
threatening.
• Punching cushions in anger.
• Bosses ‘snapping’ for no reason at employees.
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26. DISSOCIATION
• Involuntary splitting or suppression of mental
function from rest of the personality.
• Allows expression of forbidden unconscious
impulses without any accompanying sense of
responsibility for actions.
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27. INTELLECTUALIZATION
• One of Freud's original defence mechanisms
– Employing intellectual processes to avoid
affective expressions or experiences.
• Intellectualization may accompany, but differs from
rationalization, which is validation of irrational
behaviour through clichés, stories, and simplified
explanation.
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28. UNDOING
• Unconsciously motivated actions which
symbolically counteract unacceptable
thoughts ,impulses or actions.
– Example :
• “Sorry for bumping into you.”
• Compulsive OCD.
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29. SEXUALIZATION
• Endowing an object or function with sexual
significance that it didn’t previously possess.
• Can also refer to warding off anxieties
associated with prohibited impulses or
derivatives.
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30. EXTERNALIZATION
• Perceiving one’s personality, including
impulses, conflicts, moods and attitudes in the
external world.
• More general than ‘projection’.
• Example:
• A belligerent person perceives others as
argumentative whilst believing him/her self to
be blameless.
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31. INHIBITION
• conscious or unconscious constraint or curtailment of a
process or behaviour, especially of impulses or desires.
• Conscious inhibition is commonly present whenever
whenever two desires are in conflict.
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• Examples:
• Writing blocks
• Eating delicious cakes, whilst dieting.

32. COMPENSATION
• Unconscious tendency to deal with a fear or
conflict by excessive effort in the opposite
direction.
• Example:
• Excessive preoccupation with body building to
counter inferiority.
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33. SPLITTING
• Viewing of self or others as either good or bad
without considering the entire range of
qualities in between.
• Example:
• Seeing all brands as greedy.
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34. SUPPRESSION
Deliberately trying to stop thinking about certain
thoughts.
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35. ASCETICISM
• Eliminating the enjoyment of experiences by
assigning moral values to specific pleasures.
• Gratification is derived from renunciation.
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36. Brand Psychology
Available 2015
Brand Psychology book by Jonathan Gabay