Defense Mechanisms
Defense mechanisms are unconscious psychological processes that protect the self from anxiety-producing thoughts and feelings. Anna Freud defined these as "unconscious resources used by the ego" to decrease internal stress.
Vaillant's Hierarchy
- Adaptation to Life (1977)
- Ego Mechanisms of Defense: A Guide for Clinicians and Researchers (1992).
George Vaillant organised defenses into four levels based on maturity:
- Level I – Pathological: denial, distortion, delusional projection
- Level II – Immature: fantasy, projection, passive aggression, acting out, dissociation
- Level III – Neurotic: intellectualization, reaction formation, displacement, repression, isolation
- Level IV – Mature: humour, sublimation, suppression, altruism, anticipation
Definitions
Anna Freud's The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence (1936) systematised her fathers original defense mechanisms and added four more.
Acting Out
Direct expression of an unconscious wish or impulse through action, without conscious awareness of the emotion driving the behaviour. Provides short-term relief but prevents lasting improvement.
Altruistic Surrender
In altruistic surrender, a person avoids anxiety by living vicariously, abandoning her or his own ambitions and replacing them with those of someone else.
Anna Freud addition
Anticipation
Realistic planning for future discomfort. The individual experiences emotional reactions in advance while considering realistic alternative responses. A mature defense that becomes maladaptive when excessive (anticipatory anxiety).
Deflection
Avoiding uncomfortable feelings by focusing on other topics or tangential issues, steering conversation away from anxiety-provoking content.
Denial
Refusing to accept external reality because it is too threatening. The individual dismisses reality and focuses on internal explanations or fallacies instead.
Devaluation
Attributing exaggeratedly negative qualities to the self or others. Used to make a person or situation seem harmless, or to hide feelings of inferiority.
Displacement
Displacement is a defense mechanism in psychology where a person unconsciously redirects negative emotions or feelings from their original source to a less threatening person or object.
For example, someone who is angry at their boss might take their anger out on a family member.
Dissociation
Disconnecting from present experience to continue existing in moments too painful to bear. Frequent use results in discontinuous perception of oneself and time. Allows psychological escape when physical escape is impossible.
Humour
Expressing ideas and feelings (especially unpleasant ones) in ways that give pleasure to others. The distress is acknowledged but "skirted around" through wit. A mature defense.
Idealisation
Attributing exaggerated positive qualities to self or others. Serves as protection from feelings of powerlessness or worthlessness.
Identification with the Aggressor
Identifying with an overpowering aggressor by adopting their behaviours, beliefs, and attitudes. The child becomes what they fear in order to feel less threatened.
Anna Freud addition
Intellectualisation
Excessive thinking or over-analysing to increase distance from emotions. The idea is kept conscious but expressed as a generalisation, detaching the subject from the feeling itself.
Introjection
The process by which what is outside oneself is taken in and treated as one's own. Can be the basis of healthy identification, or in problematic forms, lead to identification with the aggressor.
Isolation of Affect
Detachment of emotion from an idea, making it "flat." The individual can describe a traumatic event factually without displaying emotion.
Passive Aggression
Indirect expression of hostility. The person may be uncooperative, deliberately ignore others, or adopt a persistently negative attitude.
Projection
The tendency to see your own unacceptable desires in other people. The desires are still there, but they're not yours anymore—they belong to someone else. Anna Freud called this "displacement outward."
Projective Identification
In psychoanalysis, projective identification is a defense mechanism in which the individual projects qualities that are unacceptable to the self onto another person, and that person introjects the projected qualities and believes him/herself to be characterized by them appropriately and justifiably.
Often used by parents, repeating their own childhood traumas.
References: Whose projection-whose identity?
Rationalisation
Substituting a more acceptable reason than the true one for one's behaviour. Often used when one doesn't get something wanted ("sour grapes").
Reaction Formation
Reaction formation is a psychological defense mechanism in which someone unconsciously replaces an unwanted impulse with its opposite, often in an exaggerated way.
Regression
Reverting to patterns of thinking and behaving from an earlier developmental stage rather than handling unacceptable impulses in a more adult manner.
Repression
An unconscious mechanism keeping disturbing thoughts from becoming conscious. The individual cannot recall threatening situations, persons, or events. Anna Freud called this "motivated forgetting."
Splitting
Viewing people or events as either all bad or all good, failing to integrate positive and negative qualities. The same person may be alternately idealised and devalued. Common in borderline personality organisation.
Sublimation
Transforming unacceptable emotions into socially acceptable activities. Considered one of the most adaptive defenses.
Example: A person with chronic anger takes up boxing.
Suppression
Conscious or voluntary blocking of unpleasant feelings. Unlike repression, the person is aware they are doing it—choosing to "not dwell" on something.
Time Distortion (Proposed 2023)
Time distortion may act as a protective shield by making distressing events feel more temporally distant, or by accelerating perception of anticipated events.
Reference: Fowler (2023), International Research Journal of Modernization in Engineering Technology and Science
Turning Against the Self
Directing aggressive impulses against oneself rather than external objects. Suicide is the extreme example.
Anna Freud addition
Undoing
Attempting to cancel out an unacceptable behaviour or thought by doing something to reverse it. Involves symbolically nullifying guilt through confession or atonement.