1. Sigmund Freud
Defense Mechanisms

2. Repression What you do:
Keep painful thoughts and feelings away from consciousness.
Don’t think about it!
Examples:
Early abuse
Lies you have told
Painful memories
Problems:
Diverts needed energy
Blocks out stressful situations that could be worked out

3. Denial
Ego feels anxiety from perception of strong external or internal danger it can’t escape or deal with directly
What you do:
Tell yourself it is not happening
Tell yourself it is not your fault
Conscious denial

4. Displacement Feeling: anxiety anger What you do:
Direct the feeling away from its actual target to another, safer target

5. Projection What you do:
Attribute your own undesirable impulses, feeling, or desires to another person
Examples:
“I hate her” really means “I think she hates me”
Problems:
Misperceive the other person’s motivations
Don’t deal with your own feelings
Overreaction

6. Reaction-Formation What you do:
In defense against the threatening impulse, express the opposite impulse.
Examples:
Someone frightens you so you act super nice
Someone frightens you so you snub them
The sex offender becomes the great protector of society.
Problems:
False persona

7. Rationalization What you do:
Make up excuses for inadequacies, failure, or loss
Examples:
If I had wanted to try hard, I could have done it too.
If my friend were more understanding, I wouldn’t have to loose my temper.
If I wanted to I could have a body
like his/hers.
If I had better teachers, I would have gotten higher grades.
Problems:
Energy would be better spent on improving.
The truth catches up with you.

8. Compensation What you do:
Develop or strengthen positive traits to make up for limitations
Distract attention from the weaknesses
Examples:
Weak in school, excellent in sports.
Class clown
Problems:
Unbalanced
Incompetent in some areas

9. Regression What you do: Revert back to behavior of an earlier stage
Use childhood coping mechanisms
Examples:
Temper tantrums, swearing, fighting, sulking, crying
Problems:
Does not solve the problem
People think you are immature
You are not learning to cope well

10. Fantasy
What you do:
Dreaming, imagining instead of living in the present world, because you don’t feel competent to achieve.
Pretending
Examples:
Wanting to look good and pretending to yourself that you are one of the movie stars you read about.
Making up stories about how successful you are, rather than working on your success.
Problems:
You get stuck in the fantasy rather than
using your talents to become successful.