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Defense Mechanism
Knowledge Quiz for defense mechanisms
Definition | Term |
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Emotional Conflict is deal through actions rather than feelings (i.e., instead of talking about feeling neglected, a person will get into trouble to get attention). | Acting Out |
Individual will make up for real or fancied deficiencies (i.e., a person who stutters become very expressive writer; short man assumes a cocky attitude, etc.) | Compensation |
Person with repressed urge is expressed disguised as a disturbance of body function, usually of the sensory, voluntary nervous systems (as pain, deafness, blindness, paralysis, convulsions, tics.) | Conversion |
The deterioration of existing defenses. | De-compensation |
A primitive defense; inability to acknowledge true significance of thoughts, feelings, wishes, behavior, or external reality factors that are consciously intolerable. | Denial |
The person frequently used by another person with poor organization where they attributes exaggerated negative qualities to self or another. It is the split of primitive idealization. | Devaluation |
A process that enables a person to split from mental functions to express forbidden impulses w/o taking responsibility for the action, person is unable to remember or is not experienced. | Dissociation |
Directing an impulse, wish or feeling toward a person or situation that is not its real object, thus permitting expression in a less threatening situation. | Displacement |
Overestimation of an admired aspect or attribute of another | Idealization |
Universal mechanism where a person patterns self after a significant other. Plays a major role in personality development, especially superego development. | Identification |
Mastering anxiety by identifying w/ powerful aggressor to counteract feelings of helplessness and feel powerful. Usually involves behaving like an aggressor. | Identification with the aggressor |
Primitive mechanism in which psychic representation of a person is figuratively ingested. | Incorporation |
Loss of motivation to engage in (usually pleasurable) activity avoided because it might stir up conflict over forbidden impulses. | Inhibition |
Loved or hated external objects are symbolically absorbed within self | Introjection |
Person avoids uncomfortable emotions by focusing on facts. Emotional aspects are completely ignored as being irrelevant. Jargon is often used as a device. | Intellectualization |
Unacceptable impulses, idea, or act is separated from its original memory source, thereby removing the original emotional charge associated with it. | Isolation of Affect |
Primitive Defense; attributing one's disowned attitudes, wishes, feelings, and urges to some external object or person. | Projection |
The person utilized unconscious thoughts of perceiving other's behavior as a reflection of one's own identity | Projective Identification |
Conscious defense of giving believable explanation for irritation behavior; motivated by unacceptable unconscious wishes to cope with uncomfortable feelings. | Rationalization |
Person adopts affects, ideas, attitudes, or behaviors as their opposites of those they harbor consciously or unconsciously | Reaction Formation |
Partial or symbolic return to a more infantile pattern of reacting or thinking. Can be in services to ego (i.e., as dependency) | Regression |
Key mechanism; expressed by deny or forgetting unacceptable ideas, fantasies, affects, or impulses from consciousness. | Repression |
Mechanism when a person perceives self and others as "all good" or "all bad." This serves to protect the good objects, a person cannot integrate the good and bad in people. | Splitting |
Potentially maladaptive feelings or behaviors are diverted into socially acceptable, adaptive channels (i.e., person who has angry feelings channels them into athletics.) | Sublimation |
Unattainable or unacceptable goal, emotion, or object is replaced by one more attainable or acceptable. | Substitution |
A mental representation stands for some other thing. This mechanism underlies dream formation & some other symptoms with a link between the latent meaning and symbol. | Symbolization |
Defense to deflect hostile aggression or other unacceptable impulses from another to self. | Turning Against Self |
A person uses words or actions to reverse or negate unacceptable thoughts, feelings, or actions (i.e., a person washing hands to deal with obsessive thoughts). | Undoing |