Psychological defense mechanisms: unconscious psychological processes that provide relief from intrapsychic conflict and anxiety. The following is a brief description of a few of the more common defense mechanisms.

 

Compensation: an unconscious attempt to make up for real or imagined short-comings.A perceived deficit is compensated for by skill or success in another area. For example, a perceived lack of height is compensated for skill in business, the arts, or other areas.

Denial: an unconscious attempt to reject unacceptable feelings, needs, thoughts, wishes, or external reality factors, A reality that causes anxiety is simply not perceived. For example, a mother may unconsciously refuse to see her son's true character because it is too anxiety-arousing. The use of denial may lead to abrupt intrusion of reality into one's life. The mother above, for example, may receive the news that her son has been arrested for armed robbery.

Displacement: the unconscious transfer of unacceptable thoughts, feelings or desires from the self to a more acceptable external substitute.  Displacement is the redirection of energy from a dangerous or forbidden object to a more socially acceptable one. For example, attraction to a married person may be displaced to some other activity. A classic instance is playing a musical instrument instead.

Dissociation: the unconscious separation and detachment of affect from a negatively charged thought, experience, memory, or object.

Fantasy is the conjuring of an imagined scenario to replace a real one. Imagining one's sexual partner as being someone else is a fairly common example.

Idealization: the unconscious overvaluation of a desired attribute of another.

Identification: unconscious redirecting of unacceptable thoughts, feelings or impulses from the external to the self.

Intellectualization: unconscious control of affects or impulses by excessive thinking about them rather than affectively experiencing them.Intellectualization is treating an emotionally charged situation in a muted or non emotional fashion. For example, someone who accepts the news of a marital breakup passively and with stoicism may be using intellectualization.

Introjection: unconscious redirecting of unacceptable thoughts, feelings or impulses from the external to the self.

Minimization: unconscious lessening of importance of an experience or affect.

Projection: an unconscious phenomenon, in which that which is unacceptable or intolerable within the self is rejected and attributed to an external other or others. Projection is blaming others or other things for one's problems or failures. For example, someone might say, "The devil made me do it", or blame others for being the cause of a problem.

Rationalization: the unconscious effort to justify or make consciously tolerable behaviors, feelings, thoughts or desires that are unacceptable. Rationalization is realizing that one's motives are not always pure or publicly acceptable and substituting appropriate motives. For example, failing to study because one was "exhausted" rather than "lazy" is an example. Being lazy is not seen as a socially acceptable motivation.

Reaction formation: unconscious mechanism whereby an individual adopts the opposite thought, feeling or behavior from that which he truly holds. Reaction formation is showing the exact opposite of one's true motivation or intentions. (Unconsciously, remember.) So, saying "I hate you." may indicate love instead. Or, believing that you love to teach may be necessary after you have spent years preparing and then found out that the only job you could obtain was in a horrible school with violent students. The choice is to admit your wasted time and energy preparing for such a job, or to believe that you enjoy it.

Regression: unconscious return to more infantile behaviors or thoughts.  Regression occurs when the coping behaviors of an earlier developmental stage reappear. For example, crying or throwing a tantrum may be used to cope with a stressful event. Typically, we view such behaviors as inappropriate for adults, and further, as holdovers from an earlier time (childhood) when such behaviors were more acceptable.

Repression: withholding from consciousness or expulsion from awareness of an idea or affect. This usually pertains to an internal reality, whereas denial more generally affects the perception of external reality.  Repression is central to psychoanalysis. It requires that highly anxiety-arousing items be stored deep in the unconscious, where they will not affect conscious activities. Repressed items, however, may manifest themselves in dreams or in slips of the tongue. A repressed item is not usually available for recall. Instead, it may appear later, unexpectedly. For example, I once attempted to recall all of the Fourth of July days I had spent over a ten-year period, but one was unaccessible to me. A few weeks later, while in the shower, it hit me. I had been involved in a major family dispute that particular day, and had apparently repressed it.

Sublimation is when motives are either sexual or violent, reflecting the psychoanalytic instincts of libido and thanatos (both will be discussed later), and are redirected into non-instinctual paths. For example, aggressive motivations may be redirected into the more acceptable framework of games.

Substitution: unconscious replacement of an unreachable or unacceptable goal by another more acceptable once.

Undoing: unconscious attempt to reverse an unacceptable thought, feeling or behavior by reenacting its opposite, usually repetitively.