Ego defenses
Immature
- Acting out: Expressing unacceptable feelings through actions
- Denial: Behaving as if an aspect of reality does not exist
- Displacement: Transferring feelings to less threatening object/person
- Intellectualization: Focusing on nonemotional aspects to avoid distressing feelings
- Passive aggression: Avoiding conflict by expressing hostility covertly
- Projection: Attributing one’s own feelings to others
- Rationalization: Justifying behavior to avoid difficult truths
- Common in OCD
- Reaction formation: Transforming unacceptable feelings/impulses into the opposite
- Forming an opposite reaction
- Regression: Reverting to earlier developmental stage
- See Rett syndrome
- Splitting: Experiencing a person/situation as either all positive or all negative
| Be bad to others | |
|---|---|
| Feeling is from someone else | Displacement |
| Feeling is from self | Projection |
| Be good to others | |
| Not beneficial to society | Reaction formation |
| Beneficial to society | Sublimation |
| Escaping from an idea | |
| Not intentionally (subconsciously) | Repression |
| Intentionally | Suppression |
Mnemonic
Immature mechanisms are all before "S", because they are not strong enough...
Mature
- Sublimation: Channeling impulses into socially acceptable behaviors
- Suppression: Putting unwanted feelings aside to cope with reality
For doctors and patients
- Transference
- The patient projects unconscious feelings about significant persons in their childhood onto the therapist (e.g., the therapist is treated as a parental figure).
- The therapist can gain insight into personal conflicts by interpreting these feelings.
- Countertransference: a complication in which the therapist projects unconscious feelings onto the patient (e.g., the therapist sees the patient as a sibling)