The document discusses and provides examples of several defense mechanisms: projection, transference, and repression. For projection, it provides an example of a mother projecting her own fears onto her daughter. For transference, it discusses how past feelings toward parents can be transferred to teachers or other authority figures. For repression, it focuses on dissociation as a form of repression where traumatic memories or feelings are involuntarily blocked from consciousness. It concludes that while defense mechanisms can be adaptive for preserving mental health, their effects are not always consciously understood.

1. Christopher Glover
Psyc 26 940-1055
1
Defense Mechanisms
Projection- “Projection involves attributing undesirable impulses to the external world.
This provides the individual with greater control over his/her negative effect and impulses”
[Psyc 26 940-1055 handout]. I saw a perfect example of projection on TV once It was about a
mother and daughter who moved back in with the mother’s parents an the mother told her
parents she slept with her child because her daughter was afraid to sleep alone but in actuality it
was the mother that was afraid to sleep alone. Another example was that the mother is afraid of
dogs and the mothers parents bought a dog statue the statue scared the mother but she said it
actually scared the daughter.
Unconsciously the mother was afraid but her defense mechanism kicked in and so she
projected it onto her daughter because her daughter is young and its more appropriate for a 6
year old to be afraid of those things than it is for a 40 year old but also when thinking about it I
feel like this can also be a form of distortion as well as displacement because what she was
experiencing with the dog statue sounds like a form of transference as well, which leads me into
my next defense mechanism transference.
Transference-“Transference is the result of developing feelings, attitudes and defenses
toward others based on past experiences. Usually it represents a displacement of past feelings. A
good example would be the development of an unexplained negative relationship between a
student and instructor” [Psyc 26 940-1055 handout]. Everyone uses transference as a defense
mechanism we see it everyday, or at least I do. I’ve heard someone say “I don’t know why but I

2. really don’t like that person”. This is a form of repressed transference where someone has a
negative feeling about someone but cant remember the root/past experience that led to them
having these negative feelings towards said individual. A more common form of transference is
the infamous Mother/Father issue, lets say a student who has parental issues whether from
traumatization or just from having disdain towards an overbearing parental unit, now this student
has a teacher who in many ways is like said mother/father and the student cant stand this teacher
and when a friend of the student expresses concern and asks why they don’t like the teacher the
student responds that teacher reminds me of my mom/dad and I hate my mom/dad. That is an
example of transference; the student was transferring the same negative feeling he/she felt
towards their parent to the teacher. I found it difficult to find and even create and example of
someone who exhibits transference on an unconscious level of cognition so dove deep into my
many books on psychology and found an example to quote “Unconscious transference occurs
when an eyewitness to a crime misidentifies a familiar but innocent person from a police lineup.
In experiment 1, Ss watched a film of a robbery. Transference Ss saw an innocent bystander.
When asked to identify the assailant from a lineup that contained the familiar bystander without
the assailant, transference Ss were nearly 3 times more likely to misidentify the bystander than
were control Ss.” [David F. Ross, Stephen J. Ceci, David dunning, and Michael P. Toglia.
Journal of Applied Psychology 1994, Vol 79. No. 6, 918-930] Now that’s an example of
unconscious transference though it similarly reflects conscious inference but don’t let it confuse
you it is unconscious transference, also Ss was the initials of the test subjects name in the book
(had to actually blow the dust off this book its been a while). And now my final defense
mechanism called Repression.
Repression-“The most basic of defense mechanisms, in which anxiety-producing events

3. are forced from awareness into the unconscious and cannot be remembered. Repression involves
an involuntary removal of the unacceptable impulses, desires and thoughts from consciousness
in order to suppress or diver the development of affect ( to avoid painful feelings). Repression
can affect a variety of processes, including memory, perception of the present and even a
physiological functioning. Repression can be viewed as the goal of all other mechanisms. The
task is to bring into consciousness that which has been repressed into the unconsciousness”.
[Psyc 26 940-1055 handout]. Repression is one of my favorites its not fully understood till this
day by psych professionals this is considered one of the neurotic defense mechanisms and
repression itself even fans out into many sub psychosis which is why I consider this not only a
defense mechanism but from a long-term stand point this defense mechanism is also a psychosis.
The form of repression I’m going to focus on is Dissociation this type of repression
happens when someone is having a painful experience or when put into an environment the
psyche deems unsafe or detrimental, you know that term “Going into your happy place” well that
is actually a form of dissociation I like to think of this phenomena as a sort of hypnotic state,
your body is physically there but your mind is well in wonderland or someplace “safe”. An
example of repression in the form of dissociation would be a person who has experienced a
sexually traumatic situation in their past may feel uncomfortable or unsafe around people of
remind her/him of the assailant I know this kind of sounds like transference but we haven’t
gotten to the repression part just yet so bear with me. So Victim is on a train and victim was
sexually assaulted by an elderly man and elderly man sits next to victim and instead of freaking
out and going into fight or flight mode the victim instead goes into a dissociative state where the
psyche remove the person mentally from the traumatizing environment and moves them into that
hypnotic state of mind or their happy place so that the victim does not have to relive that

4. traumatizing experience over again. The psyche was repressing the traumatizing feelings and
instinctual impulses by bringing the individual into a dissociative state of mind.
Defense mechanisms aren’t always bad in fact defense mechanisms are good we use
them everyday. I myself notice when I transfer feelings or project feelings onto someone. Its our
minds way of preserving and protecting our mental health I can only imagine what it would be
like if we didn’t have these things, the world would probably be a very chaotic place in my
opinion. I’ve never written an APA form paper so I hope this is what you asked for.
Work Cited
 [Psyc 26 940-1055 handout]
 [David F. Ross, Stephen J. Ceci, David dunning, and Michael P. Toglia. Journal of
Applied Psychology 1994, Vol 79. No. 6, 918-930]