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Definition
| a return to a prior, lower state of cognitive, emotional, or behavioral functioning. This term is associated particularly with psychoanalytic theory, denoting a situation in which the individual reverts to immature behavior or to an earlier stage of psychosexual development when threatened with overwhelming external problems or internal conflicts. |
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Term
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| In classical psychoanalytic theory and other forms of depth psychology, the basic defense mechanism that excludes painful experiences and unacceptable impulses from consciousness. Repression operates on an unconscious level as a protection against anxiety produced by objectionable sexual wishes, feelings of hostility, and ego-threatening experiences and memories of all kinds. It also comes into play in many other forms of defense, as in denial, in which individuals avoid unpleasant realities by first trying to repress them and then negating them when repression fails. |
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| a primitive defense mechanism used to protect oneself from conflict, in which objects provoking anxiety and ambivalence are dichotomized into extreme representations (part-objects) with either positive or negative qualities, resulting in polarized viewpoints that fluctuate in extremes of seeing the self or others as either all good or all bad. This mechanism is used not only by infants and young children, who are not yet capable of integrating these polarized viewpoints, but also by adults with dysfunctional patterns of dealing with ambivalence; it is often associated with borderline personality disorder |
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| classical psychoanalytic theory, a defense mechanism in which unacceptable sexual or aggressive drives are unconsciously channeled into socially acceptable modes of expression and redirected into new, learned behaviors, which indirectly provide some satisfaction for the original drives. For example, an exhibitionistic impulse may gain a new outlet in choreography; a voyeuristic urge may lead to scientific research; and a dangerously aggressive drive may be expressed with impunity on the football field. As well as allowing for substitute satisfactions, such outlets are posited to protect individuals from the anxiety induced by the original drive |
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| the replacement of one thing with another. In psychoanalytic theory, it denotes the replacement of unacceptable emotions or unattainable goals with alternative feelings or achievable aims. Substitution may be viewed as a positive adaptation or solution (e.g., adoption when one cannot have a child of one’s own) or as a negative, maladaptive response (e.g., emotional eating after a frustrating day at the office) |
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Term
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Definition
| In classical psychoanalytic theory, the substitution of a symbol for a repressed impulse, affect, or idea in order to avoid censorship by the superego (e.g., dreaming of a steeple or other phallic symbol instead of a penis |
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Definition
The redirection of negative emotions towards others, unto themselves.
Ex: A child with abusive parents thinks that they deserve the punishment and views abuse as "discipline" for their own good |
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Definition
Undoing is a defense mechanism in which a person tries to cancel out or remove an unhealthy, destructive or otherwise threatening thought or actions by engaging in contrary behavior.
Ex: after thinking about being violent with someone, one would then be overly nice or accommodating to them. |
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