Defense Mechanisms
Freud proposed that the ego protects itself with defense mechanisms—tactics that reduce or redirect anxiety by distorting reality. Here are some examples.
All these defense mechanisms function indirectly and unconsciously, reducing anxiety by disguising some threatening impulse. Just as the body unconsciously defends itself against disease, so also, believed Freud, does the ego unconsciously defend itself against anxiety.
- Repression banishes anxiety-arousing wishes from consciousness. According to Freud, repression underlies all the other defense mechanisms, each of which disguises threatening impulses and keeps them from reaching consciousness. Freud believed that repression explains why we do not remember our childhood lust for our parent of the other sex. However, he also believed that repression is often incomplete, with repressed urges seeping out in dream symbols and slips of the tongue.
- Regression allows us to retreat to an earlier, more infantile stage of development. Facing the anxious first days of school, a child may regress to the oral comfort of thumb-sucking. Juvenile monkeys, when anxious, retreat to infantile clinging to their mothers or to one another (Suomi, 1987). Even homesick new college students may long for the security and comfort of home.
- In reaction formation, the ego unconsciously makes unacceptable impulses look like their opposites. En route to consciousness, the unacceptable proposition “I hate him” becomes “I love him.” Timidity becomes daring. Feelings of inadequacy become bravado.
- Projection disguises threatening impulses by attributing them to others. Thus, “He doesn’t trust me” may be a projection of the actual feeling “I don’t trust him” or “I don’t trust myself.” An El Salvadoran saying captures the idea: “The thief thinks everyone else is a thief.”
- Rationalization occurs when we unconsciously generate self-justifying explanations to hide from ourselves the real reasons for our actions. Thus, habitual drinkers may say they drink with their friends “just to be sociable.” Students who fail to study may rationalize, “All work and no play creates a dull person.”
- Displacement diverts sexual or aggressive impulses toward an object or person that is psychologically more acceptable than the one that aroused the feelings. Children who fear expressing anger against their parents may displace it by kicking the family pet. Students upset over an exam may snap at a roommate.
- Denial protects the person from real events that are painful to accept, either by rejecting a fact or its seriousness. Dying patients may deny the gravity of their illness. Parents may deny their child’s misconduct. Spouses may deny evidence of their partner’s affairs.
All these defense mechanisms function indirectly and unconsciously, reducing anxiety by disguising some threatening impulse. Just as the body unconsciously defends itself against disease, so also, believed Freud, does the ego unconsciously defend itself against anxiety.
References
Myers, D. (2010). Psychology. 9th ed. New York: Worth Publishers.
Suomi, S. (1987). Genetic and maternal contributions to individual differences in rhesus monkey biobehavioral development. In N. A. Krasnegor & others (Eds.), Perinatal development: A psychobiological perspective. Orlando, FL: Academic Press. (p. 557)
Suomi, S. (1987). Genetic and maternal contributions to individual differences in rhesus monkey biobehavioral development. In N. A. Krasnegor & others (Eds.), Perinatal development: A psychobiological perspective. Orlando, FL: Academic Press. (p. 557)