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Definition
- used to manage internal conflicts
- behaviors that protect people from anxiety
- automatic, involuntary, usually unconscious psychological activities
- purpose is to exclude unacceptable thoughts, urges, threats, and impulses from awareness for fear of disapproval, punishment, or other negative outcomes |
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Definition
| emotional conflict is dealt with through actions rather than feelings (i.e., instead of talking about feeling neglected, a person will get into trouble to get attention). |
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| enables one to make up for real or fancied deficiencies (i.e., a person who stutters becomes a very expressive writer; a short man assumes a cocky, overbearing manner). |
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| repressed urge is expressed disguised as a disturbance of body function, usually of the sensory, voluntary nervous system (as pain, deafness, blindness, paralysis, convulsions, tics). |
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| deterioration of existing defenses. |
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| primitive defense; inability to acknowledge true significance of thoughts, feelings, wishes, behavior, or external reality factors that are consciously intolerable. |
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| a defense mechanism frequently used by persons with borderline personality organization in which a person attributes exaggerated negative qualities to self or another. It is the split of primitive idealization. |
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| a process that enables a person to split mental functions in a manner that allows him or her to express forbidden or unconscious impulses without taking responsibility for the action, either because he or she is unable to remember the disowned behavior, or because it is not experienced as his or her own (i.e., pathologically expressed as fugue states, amnesia, or dissociative neurosis, or normally expressed as daydreaming). |
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Definition
| directing an impulse, wish, or feeling toward a person or situation that is not its real object, thus permitting expression in a less threatening situation (i.e., a man angry at his boss kicks his dog). |
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| overestimation of an admired aspect or attribute of another. |
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| universal mechanism whereby a person patterns himself or herself after a significant other. Plays a major role in personality development, especially superego development. |
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Term
| Identification With the Aggressor |
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Definition
| mastering anxiety by identifying with a powerful aggressor (such as an abusing parent) to counteract feelings of helplessness and to feel powerful oneself. Usually involves behaving like the aggressor (i.e., abusing others after one has been abused oneself). |
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Definition
| primitive mechanism in which psychic representation of a person is (or parts of a person are) figuratively ingested. |
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| loss of motivation to engage in (usually pleasurable) activity avoided because it might stir up conflict over forbidden impulses (i.e., writing, learning, or work blocks or social shyness). |
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Definition
| loved or hated external objects are symbolically absorbed within self (converse of projection; i.e., in severe depression, unconscious unacceptable hatred is turned toward self). |
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| where the person avoids uncomfortable emotions by focusing on facts and logic. Emotional aspects are completely ignored as being irrelevant. Jargon is often used as a device of intellectualization. By using complex terminology, the focus is placed on the words rather than the emotions. |
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Definition
| unacceptable impulse, idea, or act is separated from its original memory source, thereby removing the original emotional charge associated with it. |
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Definition
| primitive defense; attributing one’s disowned attitudes, wishes, feelings, and urges to some external object or person. |
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| Projective Identification |
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Definition
| a form of projection utilized by persons with borderline personality disorder—unconsciously perceiving others’ behavior as a reflection of one’s own identity. |
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Definition
| third line of defense; not unconscious. Giving believable explanation for irrational behavior; motivated by unacceptable unconscious wishes or by defenses used to cope with such wishes. |
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| person adopts affects, ideas, attitudes, or behaviors that are opposites of those he or she harbors consciously or unconsciously (i.e., excessive moral zeal masking strong, but repressed asocial impulses or being excessively sweet to mask unconscious anger). |
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Definition
| partial or symbolic return to more infantile patterns of reacting or thinking. Can be in service to ego (i.e., as dependency during illness). |
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| key mechanism; expressed clinically by amnesia or symptomatic forgetting serving to banish unacceptable ideas, fantasies, affects, or impulses from consciousness. |
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Definition
| efensive mechanism associated with borderline personality disorder in which a person perceives self and others as “all good” or “all bad.” Splitting serves to protect the good objects. A person cannot integrate the good and bad in people. |
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Definition
| potentially maladaptive feelings or behaviors are diverted into socially acceptable, adaptive channels (i.e., a person who has angry feelings channels them into athletics). |
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Definition
| unattainable or unacceptable goal, emotion, or object is replaced by one more attainable or acceptable. |
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| a mental representation stands for some other thing, class of things, or attribute. This mechanism underlies dream formation and some other symptoms (such as conversion reactions, obsessions, compulsions) with a link between the latent meaning of the symptom and the symbol; usually unconscious. |
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| defense to deflect hostile aggression or other unacceptable impulses from another to self. |
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| a person uses words or actions to symbolically reverse or negate unacceptable thoughts, feelings, or actions (i.e., a person compulsively washing hands to deal with obsessive thoughts). |
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