Definitions1
Often described as a refusal to accept reality or facts, this defense mechanism is frequently used by individuals to avoid acknowledging a painful truth, such as an addiction or a terminal diagnosis.
Denial
This defense mechanism involves creating logical, socially acceptable explanations for behaviors or feelings that are actually driven by unconscious or unacceptable motives.
Rationalization
When a 40-year-old man who is sick with the flu assumes a fetal position in bed and calls his mother to bring him chicken soup, he is exhibiting this defense mechanism.
Regression
After failing to get a promotion at work, Sarah tells her friends, 'I didn't really want that job anyway because the commute was too long and the boss is too demanding
Rationalization
This unconscious defense mechanism involves pushing painful or unacceptable thoughts, memories, or impulses out of conscious awareness.
Repression
Sublimation
After being reprimanded by their boss, an employee comes home and yells at their spouse instead of confronting the true source of their frustration.
Displacement
A cheating spouse who constantly accuses their partner of being unfaithful, despite having no evidence, is a classic example of this defense mechanism.
Projection
This defense mechanism involves retreating to an earlier, more infantile stage of development when faced with unacceptable impulses or stress.
Regression
This defense mechanism involves attributing one’s own unacceptable thoughts, feelings, or motives to another person or group.
Projection
A soldier returns from a war zone and cannot consciously remember the traumatic event that caused his injury, despite having recurring nightmares about it
Repression
These unconscious psychological processes protect the self from anxiety-producing thoughts and feelings.
Defense mechanism
When a person redirects their unacceptable impulses or frustrations from the original, threatening source onto a safer, substitute target.
Displacement
This Austrian neurologist is the founder of psychoanalysis and famously developed the structural model of the psyche consisting of the id, ego, and superego.
Sigmund Freud
After receiving a terminal diagnosis, a patient insists the lab results were mixed up and continues planning a vacation as if they are perfectly healthy.
Denial
Instead of acting on an aggressive impulse to hit someone, an individual channels that energy into intense, competitive contact sports or boxing.
Sublimation