2. Defense Mechanisms
The ego must protect you from threatening thoughts in our unconscious
Enter “defense mechanisms”
Methods used to reduce or redirect anxiety by distorting reality
You are usually unaware they are occurring

3. Projection Denial Regression Reaction Formation Repression
Defense Mechanisms
Repression
Projection
Displacement
Reaction Formation
Regression
Denial

4. 1.) Repression
A threatening idea, memory, or emotion is blocked from conscious
This is done without the awareness of the conscious mind.
For example…A child who was abused may block out the experience completely

5. Hypothetical
Obama’s experience as POTUS

6. 2.) Projection
Disguises threatening impulses by attributing them to others.
When your own unacceptable feelings are pushed on others
“She doesn’t trust me” may really be “I don’t trust myself”

7. Examples Bullying Calling someone stupid
Calling people derogatory terms based on sexuality

8. 3.) Displacement
Redirecting one’s feelings toward another person or object.
Often displaced on less threatening things.
Children who fear expressing anger against their parents may displace it by kicking the family pet.
Student upset over a test score may snap on a friend.

9. Displacement Continued…
Is not necessarily negative
Sublimation
When displacement serves a higher cultural or socially useful purpose
Music, Art, Comedy

10. 4.) Reaction Formation
Occurs when a feeling that produces unconscious anxiety is transformed into its opposite in consciousness
This is sometimes evident with extravagant claims
It is as if the person is trying to convince themselves of something that is not true

11. Examples
A college freshman tells all of his old friends that he loves the experience
A woman tells her best friend that she could never imagine dating anyone other than her current boyfriend

12. 5.) Regression Returning to an earlier, comforting form of behavior
A 12 year old sucking his thumb when he faces challenges at school
Adults lashing out, throwing temper tantrums

13. 6.) Denial Not accepting the ego-threatening truth
Protects a person’s self image and preserves the illusion of invulnerability

14. Practice!
Have Freudian concepts registered in your unconscious? Which Freudian defense mechanisms do the following suggest?

15. A 6-year-old boy who moves to a new city starts sucking his thumb.
An alcoholic storms out of his intervention because “he doesn’t have a damn drinking problem!”
A man who is angry at his boss shouts at his kids for making noise.
A woman whose father was cruel to
her when she was little insists over
and over that she loves him dearly.
A racist justifies segregation by saying
that black men are only interested
in sex with white women.

16. How’d You Do?? Regression Denial Displacement Reaction Formation
Projection