Ego Defenses

Overview

• Unconscious processes that prevent undesirable feelings (such as anxiety or depression)

Immature Defenses (More Primitive)

• Acting out
  • use actions to express unacceptable feelings and thoughts
    • tantrums
• Dissociation
  • temporary drastic change in behavior
  • extreme forms can result in dissociative identity disorder (multiple personality disorder)
• Denial
  • avoidance of awareness of some painful reality
    • initially refusing to believe a diagnosis of AIDS or cancer
• Displacement  
  • taking feelings out on a neutral 3rd party 
    • fight with wife → yell at dog
• Fixation
  • “stuck” in an earlier developmental stage
    • Freud’s “oral fixation”
• Fantasy 
  • substituting an imaginary, less disturbing view of the world when the actual reality is difficult or painful
• Identification 
  • imitating behavior (good or bad) of a more powerful person
    • abused child becomes abusive parent later in life
• Isolation of affect 
  • separation of emotion from events or ideas
    • describing murder in graphic detail without emotional response
• Passive aggression
  • expression of angry feelings in a non-confrontational way 
• Projection 
  • attributing unacceptable internal feelings to an external source 
    • Philandering husband claims his wife is cheating
• Rationalization
  • making excuses to avoid the real reason for actions or to avoid self-blame
    • claiming that grades are not important anyway after failing a test
• Reaction formation 
  • replacing an unwanted idea or feeling with its opposite (“an equal and opposite reaction”)
    • a patient with hypersexual thoughts becomes a nun 
• Regression 
  • reversion to more childlike behavior
    • particularly seen in children under stress (illness, punishment, birth of new sibling, or fatigue)
    • e.g. toilet trained child wets the bed while he is hospitalized
• Repression
  • involuntary withholding of bad thoughts from consciousness
• Splitting 
  • belief that people are either all good or all bad
    • resident is mean but the medical student is warm and caring
• seen in borderline personality disorder

Mature Defenses (Less Primitive)

• Altruism
  • alleviating guilt through charity and generosity 
    • e.g. criminal donates to church
• Humor 
  • appreciating the humor in a situation to relieve stress
    • joke about your licensing exams
• Sublimation 
  • replacing an unacceptable action with a more acceptable action
    • aggressive personality is redirected toward a successful military career
• Suppression 
  • voluntary withholding of an idea or feeling from consciousness