Ego Defenses

[Lorenzo]

Ego Defenses: Unconscious mental processes of the ego used to resolve conflict and prevent feelings of anxiety and depression.

[Lorenzo]

Immature Ego Defenses - more primitive


Acting Out: unacceptable feelings and thoughts are expressed through actions eg, tantrums

Dissociation: Temporary , drastic change in personality, memory, consciousness, or motor behavior to avoid emotional stress eg, extreme forms can result in dissociative identity disorder (multiple personality disorder)

Denial: Avoidance of awreness of some painful reality eg, a common reaction in newly diagnosed AIDS and cancer patients

Displacement: Process whereby avoided ideas and feelings are transferred to some neutral person or object eg, a man places hate another man because the man reminds him of his own failures

Fixation: Partially remaining at a more childesh level of development (vs. projection) eg, an elderly man exhibiting teenage sexual preferences

[Lorenzo]

continued...

Identification: Modeling behavior after another person who is more powerful (though not necessarily admired) eg, abused child identifies himself/herself as an abuser.

Isolation of affect: Separation of feelings from ideas and events eg, describing murder in graphic detail with no emotional response

Projection: An unacceptable internal impulse is attributed to an external source eg, a man who wants another woman thinks his wife is cheating on him

Rationalization: Proclaiming logical reasons for actions actually performed for other reasons, usually to avoid self blame eg, after getting fired, claiming that the job was not important anyway.

[Lorenzo]

continued....

Reaction Formation: Process whereby a warded-off idea or feeling is replaced by an (unconsciously derived) emphasis on its opposite.

Regression: Turning back the maturational clock and going back to earlier modes of dealing with the world

Repression: Involuntary withholding of an idea or feeling from conscious awareness.

[Lorenzo]

Mature Ego Defenses

Altruism: Guilty feelings alleviated by unsolicited generosity toward others

Humor: Appreciating the amusing nature of an anxiety-provoking or adverse action; eg, an anxious man makes fun of another person to evade attention on himself / herself

Sublimation: Process whereby one replaces an unacceptable wish with a course of action that is similar to the wish but does not conflict with one's value system

Suppression: Voluntary withholding of an idea or feeling from conscious awareness (vs. repression).