Defense mechanisms are automatic psychological processes and can be typical of neurotic or psychotic, protecting the individual from anxiety or perception of internal and external dangers or stressors.
They measure the individual’s response, avoiding emotional conflicts in the face of internal or external stressors.
- Although neurosis and psychosis.
- Modes of functioning of the human psyche.
- Often coincide with certain characteristics.
- The mechanisms that control them are different.
The difference lies mainly in the relationship with reality and in the way it is built; in neurosis fantasy reigns in response to a fixation point; in psychosis, however, there is a complete substitution that seeks to restore something he was initially denied. life.
“Un expressed emotions will never die, will they be buried alive and appear more unpleasantly later?Sigmund Freud?
The mechanism by which the Ego prevents thoughts that generate anxiety from reaching consciousness is the most basic defense mechanism, for any other has to happen first.
It replaces our real anxiety-inducing desire, which is intolerable, with another goal that does not cause anxiety and is acceptable. This mechanism may explain why we suddenly have a phobia of something.
For example, if we feel dirty and are embarrassed to say so, we express our disgust and phobia by addressing roaches.
It is a psychological process that consists of the tendency to increase the feeling of personal worth by adopting the characteristics of someone who is admired.
Mechanism described by Melanie Klein, which refers to fantasies by which the subject introduces his own personality or I (totally or partially) into the object to control, possess or cause harm.
Described by Anna Freud and Ferenczi, it is that the subject reproduces a characteristic of the person that causes him anxiety: the person ceases to be the threatened person to be the person who threatens.
Mechanism by which unrecognized characteristics that cause anxiety to another person or object are attributed to it. This defense is present in psychosis, neurosis and perversion.
Mechanism described by Ferenczi which consists in attributing himself to the characteristics of others, without developing or adjusting himself, for example, a depressed person can integrate the attitudes and thoughts of another person.
The healthy way to do this would be through identification. Identification is about incorporating someone else’s desirable things into your own self. Introjection would be like “accepting them without digesting them,” resulting in a non-integrative self.
A mechanism by which reprehensible thoughts are suppressed and then expressed through their opposites. This defense mechanism explains the madness, which would hide a repressed depression.
Mechanism by which a libidinous object is repressed and replaced by a more acceptable and conscious object, in this way it is possible to satisfy the forbidden pleasure disguised.
For example, someone who feels revulsion for their partner but can’t accept this fact suppresses this emotion and expresses it in the form of an allergic reaction.
Mechanism that seeks to replace an unacceptable object or activity with one of greater social or ethical value.
It consists of the rational justification of thoughts or behaviors that produce anxiety.
It differs from intellectualization because it occupies a different place, not assuming a systematic avoidance of affections, but attributing more plausibility to them than real motivations, giving a rational or ideal justification.
The individual tries to give a discursive formulation to his conflicts and emotions in order to control them, combined with the emotional isolation that usually accompanies a painful fact, with a rational explanation.
A mechanism by which an uncomfortable representation of your affection is separated, keeping it on a conscious level, but devoid of any associative bond.
For example, a child who is anxious to be abused, but cannot see the relationship between the two.
It is a deformation of the repressed that can manifest itself in three ways: in dreams, in symptoms and in certain artistic productions.
According to Freud, it is a coherent active process that seeks to undo what has been done, the individual tries to turn a thought or act into something that has never happened.
It consists of turning the end of a disc into its opposite, the end of the transforming impulse, not the object by which it is satisfied.
For example, if my partner leaves me, the love I felt for him becomes hate. For the same object I loved, now I feel hatred. The impulse has been transformed, but not the object (my companion).
According to Freud, this mechanism consists in eliminating an uncomfortable representation, not erasing it (cancellation), or refusing to recognize it as belonging to the individual (denial), but even denying the reality of perception associated with that representation.
It is a psychotic defense mechanism against the anguish of dissociation and death. A part of the Ego is in contact with reality that does not disturb.
The other part of the Ego loses all contact with reality, rejecting all aspects that are very scary and, if necessary, rebuilding a new reality more acceptable and, in turn, more desired by illusion.
It is the mechanism of a limiting state that combats the anguish of object loss and dissociates uncomfortable representations.
For example, an individual who projects the difficult part of his reality to the outside, but without ever losing contact with it. Dissociation does not imply a loss of contact with reality.
Inclusion, a term used by Lacan to refer to exclusion, implies the rejection of the primordial signifier in the constitution of the child as an individual differentiated from its mother, which condemns the child not to form a subject in the pre-existing linguistic universe and predisposes him to the psychosis.
Defense mechanisms are divided into different groups that relate to defensive functioning levels.
Neurotic defense mechanisms are articulated as protectors in the face of unacceptable reality, even if a connection is established with it at a certain level.
In psychosis, however, painful reality is not tolerated in any way and defense mechanisms are articulated leaving the person in contact only with the desired or imagined reality, without contact with painful reality.
In this way, it is possible to obtain some stability in emotions, sometimes this emotional stability is achieved by building an illusion.