Defense mechanisms are automatic psychological processes that protect individuals from anxiety and awareness of internal or external dangers. They can be adaptive in helping people lower anxiety to achieve goals, but can also be maladaptive and lead to distortions. Freud identified major defenses like suppression, altruism, humor, and sublimation that manage conflict on a relatively unconscious level. Defenses range from mature to neurotic to immature, with mature defenses being the most adaptive and psychotic defenses involving denial of reality.

1. Defense Mechanisms Coping styles Automatic psychological processes that protect the individual against anxiety and from the awareness of internal or external dangers or stressors.

2. Defense Mechanisms Can be adaptive and help people to lower anxiety to achieve goals in an acceptable way Can be maladaptive and lead to distortions in reality and self-deception

3. Freud: Properties of Defense Mechanisms Major means of managing conflict and affect Relatively unconscious Discrete from one another Often the hallmarks of major psychiatric syndromes Reversible Adaptive as well as pathological.

4. Understanding Anxiety

5. Category Defense Mature defenses Suppression Altruism Humor Sublimation

6. Suppression Definition: The conscious denial of a disturbing situation or feeling. (Only conscious defense mechanism) Example: _______________________

7. Altruism Definition: Receiving gratification either vicariously or from the response to others. Example: _______________________

8. Humor Definition: Emphasizing the amusing or ironic aspects of a conflict or stressor through laughter or jokes. Example: ______________________

9. Sublimation Definition: Substituting constructive and socially acceptable activity for strong impulses that are not acceptable in their original form. Example: Jane was a very aggressive person until she began to vent her hostility on the volleyball court. Now she is more relaxed.

10. Category Defense Neurotic (intermediate defenses) Intellectualization, isolation Repression Reaction-formation Displacement Somatization Undoing Rationalization

11. Repression Definition: The exclusion of unpleasant or unwanted experiences, emotions, or ideas from conscious awareness. Example: Chris was the only witness to a terrible fire in which several people were seriously injured. Several days later, however, Chris is unable to remember much when questioned by a reporter.

12. Reaction-Formation Definition: Keeping unacceptable feelings or behaviors are out of awareness by developing the opposite behavior or emotion. Example: Jim is attracted to other men, but tells himself that he hates all homosexuals.

13. Displacement Definition: The transfer of emotions associated with a particular person, object, or situation to another person, object, or situation that is nonthreatening. Definition: ______________________

14. Somatization Definition: Transforming anxiety on the unconscious level to a physical symptom that has no organic cause. Example: _______________________

15. Undoing Definition: Making up for an act or communication Example: _______________________

16. Rationalization Definition: Justifying illogical or unreasonable ideas, actions or feelings by developing acceptable explanations that satisfy the teller as well as the listener. Example: ______________________

17. Category Defense Immature defenses Passive aggression Acting out Dissociation Projection

18. Passive Aggression Definition: Indirectly expressing aggression towards others by giving the appearance of compliance and making resistance, resentment, and hostility. Example: ____________________________

19. Acting Out Definition: An individual deals with emotional conflicts or stressors by actions rather than reflections or feelings. Example: _______________________

20. Confabultation Definition: Filling in missing memory with information the believed to be factual Example:_______________

21. Dissociation Definition: A disruption in the usually integrated functions of consciousness, memory, identity or perceptions of the environment. Example: _______________________

22. Projection Definition: Rejects emotionally unacceptable personal features and attributes of the self to other people, objects or situations. Example: _______________________

24. Category Defense Psychotic defenses Denial (of external reality)

25. Denial Definition: Escaping unpleasant realities by ignoring their existence. Example: _______________________