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defense mechanism


n.
  1. Biology. A physiological reaction of an organism used in self-protection, as against infection.
  2. Psychology. Any of various usually unconscious mental processes, including denial, projection, rationalization, and repression, that protect the ego from shame, anxiety, conflict, loss of self-esteem, or other unacceptable feelings or thoughts.

 
 
Dental Dictionary: defense mechanism

n

An unconscious, intrapsychic reaction that offers protection to the self from threatening or stressful situations. Defense mechanisms may be useful to diminish anxiety and facilitate coping behaviors, or may be harmful because of denying, displacing, isolating, or repressing anxiety and preventing useful coping responses.

 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: defense mechanism

In psychoanalytic theory, an often unconscious mental process (such as repression) that makes possible compromise solutions to personal problems or conflicts. The compromise generally involves concealing from oneself internal drives or feelings that threaten to lower self-esteem or provoke anxiety. The term was first used by Sigmund Freud in 1894. The major defense mechanisms are repression, the process by which unacceptable desires or impulses are excluded from consciousness; reaction formation, a mental or emotional response that represents the opposite of what one really feels; projection, the attribution of one's own ideas, feelings, or attitudes (especially blame, guilt, or sense of responsibility) to others; regression, reversion to an earlier mental or behavioral level; denial, the refusal to accept the existence of a painful fact; rationalization, the substitution of rational and creditable motives for the true (but threatening) ones; and sublimation, the diversion of an instinctual desire or impulse from its primitive form to a more socially or culturally acceptable form. See also ego; neurosis; psychoanalysis.

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Columbia Encyclopedia: defense mechanism,
in psychoanalysis, any of a variety of unconscious personality reactions which the ego uses to protect the conscious mind from threatening feelings and perceptions. Sigmund Freud first used defense as a psychoanalytic term (1894), but he did not break the notion into categories, viewing it as a singular phenomenon of repression. His daughter, Anna Freud, expanded on his theories in the 1930s, distinguishing some of the major defense mechanisms recognized today. Primary defense mechanisms include repression and denial, which serve to prevent unacceptable ideas or impulses from entering the conscience. Secondary defense mechanisms—generally appearing as an outgrowth of the primary defense mechanisms—include projection, reaction formation, displacement, sublimation, and isolation.

 
Psychoanalysis: Defense Mechanisms

Defense mechanisms are psychic processes that are generally attributed to the organized ego. They organize and maintain optimal psychic conditions in a way that helps the subject's ego both to confront and avoid anxiety and psychic disturbance. They are therefore among the attempts to work through psychic conflict but if they are deployed in an excessive or inappropriate way they can compromise psychic growth.

There is no clear distinction in Sigmund Freud's work between a defense and a defense mechanism, (the latter referring to the unconscious processes by which the defense operates). The concept of defense first appeared in his article "The Neuro-Psychoses of Defence" (1894a) and was next discussed in "Further Remarks on the Neuro-Psychoses of Defence" (1896b) and "The Aetiology of Hysteria" (1896c). Finally, in the text entitled "Instincts and their Vicissitudes" (1915c), turning against the self and reversal into the opposite were identified as defense mechanisms, in addition to repression and sublimation.

For Freud, the concept of defense refers to the ego's attempts at psychic transformation in response to representations and affects that are painful, intolerable, or unacceptable.

He abandoned the concept of defense for a period in favor of the concept of repression. He then reintroduced it in "Neurotic Mechanisms in Jealousy, Paranoia and Homosexuality" (1922b [1921]). Freud ascribed a defensive significance to introjection (or identification) and projection by terming them all "neurotic mechanisms." Then in an addendum to Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety (1926d [1925]), he reconsidered this concept in relation to that of repression, suggesting that: "It will be an undoubted advantage, I think, to revert to the old concept of 'defence,' provided we employ it explicitly as a general designation for all the techniques which the ego makes use of in conflicts which may lead to a neurosis, while we retain the word 'repression' for the special method of defense which the line of approach taken by our investigations made us better acquainted with in the first instance" (p. 163). Freud added that: "further investigations may show that there is an intimate connection between special forms of defense and particular illnesses, as, for instance, between repression and hysteria" (p. 164). By this he meant, more specifically, that the ego protects itself against the tendency towards conflict by means of a counter-cathexis. It was this counter-cathexis that came to represent the supreme essence of the defense mechanisms.

This idea was taken up by Heinz Hartmann (1950) in the context of his theory of the autonomous functions of the ego. He argued that once the energy of the counter-cathexis had been withdrawn from the tendency that caused the conflict, it was neutralized. For him, the autonomous processes (organization, cathexis, delay) can be the precursors of defense mechanisms. In general, neurotic defense mechanisms constitute an exaggeration or a distortion of regulating and adaptive mechanisms.

With strong support from the ego-psychology movement in her studies on ego functions, Anna Freud listed and described the ego's defense mechanisms. For her, "every vicissitude to which the instincts are liable has its origin in some ego-activity. Were it not for the intervention of the ego or of those external forces which the ego represents, every instinct would know only one fate—that of gratification" (1937, p. 47). To the nine defense mechanisms that she identified: "regression, repression, reaction-formation, isolation, undoing, projection, introjection, turning against the self and reversal," she suggested that, "we must add a tenth, which pertains rather to the study of the normal than to that of neurosis: sublimation, or displacement of instinctual aims" (p. 47).

Finally, for adherents of the Kleinian school, the defense mechanisms take a different form in a structured ego from the one they assume in a primitive, unstructured ego (or an undifferentiated id-ego). The defenses become modes of mental functioning. For Susan Isaacs (1948), all mental mechanisms are linked to fantasies, such as devouring, absorbing, or rejecting. Melanie Klein herself (1952, 1958) principally identified the following primitive defenses: splitting, idealization, projective identification and manic defenses.

The terms "defense" and "defense mechanism" are still used interchangeably today, which suggests a degree of confusion between a descriptive approach to the concept of defense and an approach based on the analysis of psychic adaptations from an economic viewpoint.

Bibliography

Benassy, Maurice. (1969). Le moi et ses mécanismes de défense:Étude théorique. In La théorie psychanalytique. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Freud, Anna. (1936). The ego and the mechanisms of defence. New York: International Universities Press.

Freud, Sigmund. (1926d [1925]). Inhibitions, symptoms and anxiety. SE, 20: 75-172.

Hartmann, Heinz. (1950). Comments on the psychoanalytic theory of the ego. Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 5, 74-96.

Isaacs, Susan. (1952). On the nature and function of phantasy. In M. Klein, P. Heimann, S. Isaacs and J. Riviere (Eds.), Developments in psycho-analysis (p. 67-121). (Reprinted from International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 29 (1948), 73-97.)

Klein, Melanie. (1952). Some theoretical conclusions regarding the emotional life of the infant. In Envy and gratitude and other works, 1946-1963 (pp. 61-93). London: Hogarth, 1975.

——. (1958). On the development of mental functioning. In Envy and gratitude and other works, 1946-1963. (pp. 236-246). London: Hogarth, 1975.

—ELSA SCHMID-KITSIKIS

 
Science Dictionary: defense mechanism

In psychology, a Freudian term referring to an unconscious avoidance of something that produces anxiety or some other unpleasant emotion. For example, someone who blots out the memory of a terrible accident is using a defense mechanism. Regression and sublimation are common defense mechanisms.

 
Wikipedia: defence mechanism
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In Freudian psychoanalytic theory, defense mechanisms are unconscious resources used by the ego to reduce conflict between the id and superego and thereby anxiety. For that reason they are more accurately referred to as ego defence mechanisms. They can thus be categorized as occurring due to the following scenarios:

  • When the id impulses are in conflict with each other;
  • When the id impulses conflict with superego values and beliefs;
  • When an external threat is posed to the ego.

The term "defence mechanism" is often thought to refer to a definitive singular term for personality traits which arise due to loss or traumatic experiences, but more accurately refers to several types of reactions which were identified during and after daughter Anna Freud's time.

Structural model: The id, ego, and superego

The concept of id impulses comes from Sigmund Freud’s structural model. According to this theory, id impulses are based on the pleasure principle: instant gratification of one’s own desires and needs. Sigmund Freud believed that the id represents biological instinctual impulses in ourselves, which are aggression (Thanatos or the Death instinct) and sexuality (Eros or the Life instinct). For example, when the id impulses (e.g. desire to have sexual relations with a stranger) conflict with the superego (e.g. belief in societal conventions of not having sex with unknown persons), the feelings of anxiety come to the surface. To reduce these negative feelings, the ego might use defence mechanisms.

Freud also believed that conflicts between these two structures resulted in conflicts associated with psychosexual stages.

The iceberg metaphor is often used to explain the psyche's parts in relation to one another.
Enlarge
The iceberg metaphor is often used to explain the psyche's parts in relation to one another.

Definitions of individual psyche structures

Freud proposed three structures of the psyche or personality:

  • Id: a selfish, primitive, childish, pleasure-oriented part of the personality with no ability to delay gratification.
  • Ego: the moderator between the id and superego which seeks compromises to pacify both.
  • Superego: internalized societal and parental standards of "good" and "bad" and "right" and "wrong" behaviour.

Primary and secondary processes

In the ego, there are two processes going on. First, there is the unconscious primary process, where the thoughts are not organized in a coherent way, the feelings can shift, contradictions are not in conflict or are just not perceived that way, and condensations arise. There is no logic and no time line. Lust is important for this process. By contrast, there is the conscious secondary process, where strong boundaries are set and thoughts must be organized in a coherent way. Most conscious thoughts originate here.

The reality principle

Id impulses are not appropriate for civilized society, so society presses us to modify the pleasure principle in favour of the reality principle; that is, the requirements of the external world.

Formation of the superego

The superego forms as the child grows and internalizes parental and societal standards. The superego consists of two structures: the conscience, which stores information about what is "bad" and what has been punished and the ego ideal, which stores information about what is "good" and what one "should" do or be. (Interestingly, the Freudian conscience became cognitive-behavioural therapist Albert Ellis' focus.)

The ego's use of defence mechanisms

When anxiety becomes too overwhelming it is then the place of the ego to employ defence mechanisms to protect the individual. Feelings of guilt, embarrassment and shame often accompany the feeling of anxiety. In the first definitive book on defence mechanisms, Ego and mechanisms of defence (1936), Anna Freud introduced the concept of signal anxiety; she stated that it was ‘not directly a conflicted instinctual tension but a signal occurring in the ego of an anticipated instinctual tension’. The signaling function of anxiety is thus seen as a crucial one and biologically adapted to warn the organism of danger or a threat to its equilibrium. The anxiety is felt as an increase in bodily or mental tension and the signal that the organism receives in this way allows it the possibility of taking defensive action towards the perceived danger. Defence mechanisms work by distorting the id impulses into acceptable forms, or by unconscious blockage of these impulses.

Use of defense mechanisms

According to Freudian theory, some disorders, such as personality disorders and psychosis, may be caused in part by inadequate use of appropriate defense mechanisms. The maladaptive use of defense mechanisms can occur in a variety of cases, such as when they become automatic and prevent individuals from realizing their true feelings and thoughts or when they put the person in actual danger. For example, someone who is in denial about the possibility that a new sexual partner could carry an STD may not take appropriate precautions to protect their own sexual health.

Defense mechanisms can also be maladaptive when they are continually used in a way that disrupts reality-testing. Repeated denial and paranoid projection use can cause people to lose touch with the real world and their surroundings and consequently isolate themselves from it and dwell in a ‘created’ world of their own design. For example, people with addictive behaviour are known to misuse such defence mechanisms as denial.

List of defence mechanisms

Sigmund Freud was the first person to develop the theory of defense mechanisms, and his daughter Anna Freud clarified and conceptualized it. She has described various different defence mechanisms:

  • Compensation. Compensation occurs when someone takes up one behaviour because one cannot accomplish another behaviour.
  • Denial. Unconsciously refusing to perceive the more unpleasant aspects of external reality (feelings, events, or both), replacing it with a less threatening but inaccurate one.
  • Displacement. An unconscious defence mechanism, whereby the mind redirects emotion from a ‘dangerous’ object to a ‘safe’ object. In psychoanalytic theory, displacement is a defence mechanism that shifts sexual or aggressive impulses to a more acceptable or less threatening target; redirecting emotion to a safer outlet;
  • Dissociation. Separation or postponement of a feeling that normally would accompany a situation or thought.
  • Escapism. A person uses fantasy, literature or other forms of culture to escape real-world problems or perhaps to deal with difficult emotional problems within the laws of a safe, but imaginary world. This can both be constructive and developing or limitting if the real problems are never faced.
  • Humour. Refocuses attention on the somewhat comical side of the situation as to relieve negative tension; similar to comic relief.
  • Idealization. Form of denial in which the object of attention is presented as "all good" masking true negative feelings towards the other.
  • Identification. The unconscious modeling of one's self upon another person's behavior.
  • Intellectualization (isolation). Concentrating on the intellectual components of the situations as to distance oneself from the anxiety provoking emotions associated with these situations;
  • Introjection. Identifying with some idea or object so deeply that it becomes a part of that person.
  • Inversion. Refocusing of aggression or emotions evoked from an external force onto one's self.
  • Isolation. separating feelings and thoughts that are connected
  • Minimizing. writing off problematic events of behaviors as being too minor to worry about.
  • Projection. Attributing to others, one’s own unacceptable or unwanted thoughts and/or emotions. Projection reduces anxiety in the way that it allows the expression of the impulse or desire without letting the ego recognize it;
  • Rationalization. The process of constructing a logical justification for a decision that was originally arrived at through a different mental process;
  • Reaction formation. The converting of unconscious wishes or impulses that are perceived to be dangerous into their opposites;
  • Regression. The reversion to an earlier stage of development in the face of unacceptable impulses;
  • Repression. The process of pulling thoughts into the unconscious and preventing painful or dangerous thoughts from entering consciousness. The painful feelings are initially conscious and then forgotten. They are stored in the unconscious and, under certain circumstances, can be retrieved. Repression can range from momentary memory lapses to complete amnesia of a catastrophic event, such as a murder or an earthquake.
  • Somatisation. Manifestation of emotional anxiety into physical symptoms.
  • Splitting. Repressing, dissociating or disconnecting important feelings that are "dangerous" to psychic well-being. Causes the person to get out of touch with her/his feelings; fragmented self. An example is Anna Nicole Smith's bizarre reaction to her son's death as she believed he was still alive.
  • Substitution. When a person replaces one feeling or emotion for another.
  • Sublimation. The refocusing of psychic energy (which Sigmund Freud believed was limited) away from negative outlets to more positive outlets. These drives which cannot find an outlet are rechannelled. In Freud’s classic theory, erotic energy is only allowed limited expression due to repression, and much of the remainder of a given group’s erotic energy is used to develop its culture and civilization. Freud considered this defence mechanism the most productive compared to the others that he identified. Sublimation is the process of transforming libido into ‘socially useful’ achievements, mainly art. Psychoanalysts often refer to sublimation as the only truly successful defence mechanism;
  • Suppression. The conscious process of pushing thoughts into the preconscious.
  • Undoing. A person tries to 'undo' a negative or threatening thought by their actions.

Different theories and classifications of defence mechanisms

The list of particular defence mechanisms is huge and there is no theoretical consensus on the amount of defence mechanisms. It has been attempted to classify defence mechanisms according to some of their properties (i.e. underlying mechanisms, similarities or connections with personality). Different theorists have different categorizations and conceptualizations of defence mechanisms. Large reviews of theories of defence mechanisms are available from Paulhus, Fridhandler and Hayes (1997)[1] and Cramer (1991)[2]. Also Journal of Personality (1998)[3] has a special issue on defence mechanisms.

O.F. Kernberg's view of borderline defence mechanisms

Otto Kernberg (1967) has developed a theory of borderline personality organization (which one consequence may be borderline personality disorder). His theory is based on ego psychological object relations theory. Borderline personality organization develops when the child cannot integrate positive and negative mental objects together. Kernberg views the use of primitive defence mechanisms central to this personality organization. Primitive psychological defences are projection, denial, dissociation or splitting, and they are called borderline defence mechanisms. Also devaluation and projective identification are seen as borderline defences. [4]

G.E. Vaillant's hierarchy of defence mechanisms

In George Vaillant's (1977) categorization defences form a continuum regarding to their psychoanalytical developmental level [5]. Levels are:

  • Level I - psychotic defences (i.e. psychotic denial, delusional projection)
  • Level II - immature defences (i.e. fantasy, projection, passive aggression, acting out)
  • Level III - neurotic defences (i.e. intellectualization, reaction formation, dissociation, displacement, repression)
  • Level IV - mature defences (i.e. humor, sublimation, suppression, altruism, anticipation)

R. Plutchik's psychoevolutionary theory of emotions and defence mechanisms

Robert Plutchik's (1979) theory views defences as derivatives of basic emotions. Defence mechanisms in his theory are (in order of placement in circumplex model): reaction formation, denial, repression, regression, compensation, projection, displacement, intellectualization. [6]

Classification in diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM-IV)

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) published by American Psychiatric Association (1994) includes tentative diagnostic axis for defence mechanisms [7]. This classification is largely based on Vaillant's hierarchical view of defences, but has some modifications. Levels of defence are:

  • Defensive disregulation (i.e. delusional projection and psychotic denial)
  • Action Level (i.e. passive aggression, acting out)
  • Disavowal or image-distorting (ie. projection, fantasy)
  • Compromise formation level (i.e. dissociation, displacement)
  • High adaptive (i.e. altruism, sublimation)

Notes

  1. ^ Paulhus, D.L., Fridhandler B., & Hayes S. (1997). Psychological defence: Contemporary theory and research. In R. Hogan, J. Johnson & S.R. Briggs (Ed.), Handbook of personality psychology (543-579). California: Academic Press.
  2. ^ Cramer, P. (1991). The Development of Defense Mechanisms: Theory, Research, and Assessment. New York, Springer-Verlag.
  3. ^ Special issue on Defense mechanisms. Journal of Personality (1998), 66(6)
  4. ^ Kernberg, O. (1967). Borderline Personality Organization. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 15:641-685
  5. ^ Vaillant, G. E. (1977). Adaptation to life. Boston: Little Brown.
  6. ^ Plutchik, R., Kellerman, H., & Conte, H. R. (1979). A structural theory of ego defenses and emotions. In C. E. Izard (Ed.), Emotions in personality and psychopathology (pp. 229–-257). New York: Plenum Press.
  7. ^ American Psychiatric Association. (1994). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (4th ed.). Washington, DC: Author.

References

  • Fonagy, P. and Target, M. (2003). Psychoanalytic Theories: Perspectives from Developmental Psychopathology. London: Whurr Publishers.
  • Freud, A. (1937). The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence. London: Hogarth Press and Institute of Psycho-Analysis.
  • "The Complete Guide to Social Work". Independent Study for the ASWB exam

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