Defence Mechanisms

While many of Freud's ideas concerning personality have been criticized and largely dismissed, his concept of defence mechanisms,  or "... technique[s] used to defend against anxiety and to maintain self-esteem..." (p. 332) is still helpful to many psychologists.  The use of defence mechanisms can indicate problem areas for a person as a defence mechanism gives some relief from anxiety producing thoughts and actions at the expense of distorting the real world.

Your text identifies the following defence mechanisms:

• repression, the removal of threatening thoughts from awareness;
• projection, the attribution of unacceptable impulses to others;
• denial, the refusal to recognize a threatening situation or thought;
• rationalization, giving a reasonable explanation for an event;
• regression, the return to a less mature, anxiety reducing behaviour;
• reaction formation, the expression of the opposite of disturbing ideas;
• displacement, substituting a less threatening object for impulses;
• sublimation, the channeling of impulses to socially acceptable outlets.

Can you match the defence mechanism with the situations below?

1. _____Mark doesn't deal with his three pack/day cigarette habit, claiming that "I'll probably die from an accident before cancer gets me."
2. _____After some especially frustrating and unfair criticism from her professor, Jan starts an argument with her roommate during lunch.
3. _____Dave has no memory of his seventh grade class play which was marred by his forgetting his lines and leaving the stage in tears.
4. _____Jack explains his bad grade on the final by noting that he had a long phone call from his parents the night before the exam.
5. _____Sue, who was quite the "party animal" only a few months earlier, writes the university president arguing for the mandatory expulsion of alcohol-using students.
6. _____Carol uses her anger over a disagreement with a friend to set a school record in the 100 meters.
7. _____Bill, who ordinarily keeps his anger under wraps, sees every other driver's breach of automotive etiquette as a personal criticism.
8. _____After an especially traumatic day, in which she failed three different exams, Lisa curls up in a blanket and rocks herself to sleep.
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