Defense Mechanism

English: Sigmund and his daughter Anna Freud Nederlands: Foto van Sigmund en Anna Freud, op vakantie in de Italiaanse Dolomieten (1913) Česky: Sigmund Freud se svou dcerou Annou (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In 1922 the pioneering psychologist Sigmund Freud wrote that the defense mechanism is “a general designation for all the techniques which the ego makes use of in conflicts which may lead to neurosis.”¹

The defense mechanism may be useful and adaptive but when inappropriate or out of balance it is regarded as neurotic and potentially destructive.

A defense mechanism arises from anxiety that poses a threat to the psyche. Anxiety may be generated by instinctual tensions, guilt (threats of bad conscience from the superego) or by actual danger.

Freud was close to his daughter, Anna, who became a psychoanalyst in her own right. Anna Freud lists the defense mechanisms as

1. regression
2. repression
3. reaction formation
4. isolation
5. undoing
6. projection
7. introjection
8. turning against the self
9. reversal
10. sublimation

Of the ten, sublimation always refers to positive, so-called normal behavior and is never deemed neurotic or negative. Additionally, the psychological processes of splitting and denial are usually regarded as defense mechanisms.

It’s interesting to note that the idea of the defense mechanism is worded in such a way so as to make the world seem like a hostile, attacking place. While it’s true that much of human life is about psychological assault and being assaulted, children with a good, loving upbringing have parents (or primary caregivers), family and friends who shield them from many of life’s attacks. Good parenting also knows how to guide the child toward a healthy kind of mastery that includes genuine consideration for the rights of others. From this, kids and adults can experience all the joy and satisfaction that accompanies a mature balance of mastery and considerateness.

Having said this, one might wonder why Freud didn’t take a more positive approach and call these psychological dynamics coping or, perhaps, living mechanisms instead of defense mechanisms. Perhaps Freud’s choice was partly due to the fact that he developed his theories from working with neurotic patients. Also, Freud had a pessimistic, atheistic vision in which his patients, at best, progressed from neurotic anxiety to an apparently normal state of human unhappiness.

By forwarding a psychology which omitted God’s love from the healing process, one could say that, for all his smarts, Freud missed the main point.

—

¹ Cited in Charles Rycroft, A Critical Dictionary of Psychoanalysis, Harmondsworth: Penguin 1977, p. 28.

Related articles

• Anna Freud (earthpages.wordpress.com)
• Defense Mechanism (socyberty.com)
• Sigmund Freud (earthpages.wordpress.com)
• Freud’s Not Dead; He’s Just Really Hard to Find (my.psychologytoday.com)
• The Geezer’s Dirty Dozen on Psychodynamic Psychotherapy (jajsamos.wordpress.com)
• Sigmund Freud: a summary (newlifeparties.com)
• Totem and Taboo: The Life and Thought of Sigmund Freud (psychologytoday.com)
• Defense Mechanism (ourpoetrycorner.wordpress.com)
• Freud’s Not Dead; He’s Just Really Hard to Find (psychologytoday.com)
• Dreams. Freud. (giftofgabb30.wordpress.com)
• What Is Neuroticism? What Causes Neurosis? (medicalnewstoday.com)

Displacement

Sigmund Freud on 18 July 1929 by Gustav Klimt at Café Landtmann – The opposition between Eros and death instinct, cultural and instinctual impulse | Oil on canvas, 2000 (Photo credit: Christiaan Tonnis)

In Freudian psychoanalysis displacement is an unconscious defense mechanism where an idea, object (Freudian term that includes other people) or behavior is substituted for another.

Like sublimation, this involves a redirection of mental energy but with displacement the original impulse may be socially acceptable, whereas with sublimation the original impulse is socially unacceptable.

Displacement may occur in dreams when one image stands for another. Or it may occur in a simple substitution of one activity or person for another. When it’s linked with sublimation, displacement might result in humor where the unspeakable is spoken, if in a veiled manner.

Although displacement is usually described as a primary process (the primitive, unconscious part of the psyche that doesn’t follow strict rules about space and time), when it merges with conscious activity it also becomes a secondary process (the newer part of the mind concerned with logic, order and daytime reality). Examples of displacement as a primary and secondary process would be daydreaming, creative acts, and emotional thoughts.¹

—

¹ Charles Rycroft, A Critical Dictionary of Psychoanalysis. Penguin, 1972, pp. 35, 124-125. It should be noted that not everyone accepts Freud’s view of primary and secondary processes and, moreover, that the two are essentially at odds with one another.

Related articles

• Defense Mechanism (earthpages.wordpress.com)
• A country on the couch (mindhacks.com)
• Link Between Freud’s Unconscious Conflicts And Conscious Anxiety Disorder Symptoms Shown, Lending Empirical Support To Psychoanalysis (medicalnewstoday.com)
• Perceptions are not Always Correct (psychologyrebel.wordpress.com)
• Freud’s theory of unconscious conflict linked to anxiety symptoms in new U-M brain research (eurekalert.org)
• Neuroscience Study Supports Freud’s View of Anxiety (psychcentral.com)
• The Freudian Fallacy (wariscrime.com)
• Why I’m A Freudian, and What That Means (theholydark.wordpress.com)
• Defense Mechanism (socyberty.com)

Denial

Sigmund Freud Quote (Photo credit: Psychology Pictures)

Denial is a Freudian defense mechanism in which a harmful or painful aspect of the self (or the subjective content of a distressing experience) is denied. A very broad concept, denial can involve feelings of depression, worthlessness, crankiness and anxiety. According to Melanie Klein, denial can be followed by splitting and projection.

The concept is valuable in helping others overcome traumatic experiences, such as child abuse or, for that matter, in redirecting individuals away from damaging addictions. But the idea can be egregiously misused by non-specialists.

In everyday usage we often hear people saying that someone else is “in denial.” The criticism could refer to some problem that the denying person apparently is not addressing. But those making that judgement often don’t know the whole story behind the (allegedly) denying person’s attitudinal and behavioral choices. So a deeply spiritual person, for instance, might be accused of “being in denial” by a materialistic person who cannot understand why the spiritual person believes and behaves in a certain way.

A word of caution then. Those who say others are in denial might in some instances be telling us more about their own ignorance of the spiritual life than of the slighted person’s avoidance of things they supposedly don’t want to deal with.

Freud himself would not have seen it this way because he was a materialist who didn’t believe in God. And this was, despite all of Freud’s pioneering genius, his greatest flaw and limitation. For any psychological theory that omits the healing power of God’s love is bound to fall short, somewhere along the line.

Related articles

• Defense Mechanism (earthpages.wordpress.com)
• Defense Mechanisms (trueorwrong.wordpress.com)
• Don’t be in denial about denial! (livethelesson.wordpress.com)
• Getting Past HIV Denial (everydayhealth.com)
• Freud’s Not Dead; He’s Just Really Hard to Find (psychologytoday.com)
• Queen of Denial (thejaneellen.wordpress.com)
• Going Against the Herd (oswaldsobrino.com)
• Sigmund Freud: a summary (newlifeparties.com)

Sigmund Freud

Entrance to Freuds consulting room (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) was a Jew of Austrian parentage and the founder of psychoanalysis. He studied medicine in Vienna and then neurology and psychopathology. He was marginalized by the medical community for his interest in the idea of infant sexuality. Today he, perhaps ironically, is often frowned on as a reductionist.

Freud remains one of the great innovators of the modern age. He attempted to scientifically outline the idea of the unconscious which formerly had been represented in literature, philosophy and nineteenth-century occultism.

His psychoanalytic techniques of free association and abreaction were influenced by several other contemporaneous “doctors of the mind,” most notably Jean-Martin Charcot, but Freud made them uniquely his own.

His works were almost entirely destroyed by the occupying Nazis. In 1938 he reluctantly withdrew from Vienna to London, leaving behind several sisters, all of whom died in concentration camps.

A habitual cigar-smoker, his relationship with his daughter Anna became extremely close; she acted as secretary, friend and confidant. Freud eventually contracted jaw cancer but refused pain-killers because they dulled his mind and interfered with his work.

After Freud’s death Anna further elaborated on the idea of defense mechanisms, distinguishing herself as an important thinker in her own right.

Related Posts » Catharsis, Cathexis, Censor, Civilization and its Discontents, Ego, Electra Complex, Eros, Fromm (Erich), Icebox effect, Id, Jung (Carl Gustav), Klein (Melanie), Moses and Monotheism, Neurosis, Object, Oedipus Complex, Parapraxes, Pleasure Principle, Psychopath, Psychosis, Reality Principle, Repression, Sadism, Masochism, Secondary Revision, Stages of Psychosexual Development, Superego, Thanatos, The Future of an Illusion, Unconscious

Related articles

• Mortensen tackles loquacious Sigmund Freud (upi.com)
• My hero: Sigmund Freud (guardian.co.uk)
• A DANGEROUS METHOD Blu-ray Review (collider.com)
• Sigmund Freud’s Theory of Personality Traits (marlenebertrand.wordpress.com)
• The Psychodynamic Theory (socyberty.com)
• Freud (ackermansketchpad.blogspot.com)
• Fictionalizing Sigmund Freud’s baby sister (macleans.ca)
• The Question of God – C.S.Lewis and Freud (rodiagnusdei.wordpress.com)
• Taproot Theatre imagines if Sigmund Freud and C.S. Lewis came to tea (phinneywood.com)

Anna Freud

Anna Freud (1895-1982) was the daughter of Sigmund Freud and an important psychoanalytic thinker particularly in the area of child psychoanalysis. Her The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence (1936) elaborated on her father’s idea of defense mechanisms.

Sigmund and his daughter Anna Freud Nederlands: Foto van Sigmund en Anna Freud, op vakantie in de Italiaanse Dolomieten (1913) Česky: Sigmund Freud se svou dcerou Annou (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Related articles

• Me, Myself, and My Ego (theconfluencecountdown.com)
• A DANGEROUS METHOD Blu-ray Review (collider.com)
• Sigmund Freud’s Theory of Personality Traits (marlenebertrand.wordpress.com)
• My hero: Sigmund Freud (guardian.co.uk)

Isolation

Sigmund and his daughter Anna Freud via Wikipedia

In psychoanalysis, isolation is a defense mechanism developed by Sigmund Freud (and later by Anna Freud) in which a painful or traumatic memory and its associations are separated from the rest of conscious experience.

With isolation, memory is not repressed but the emotive content and associated feeling tones are severed or weakened almost to the point of non-existence. Related thinking, feeling and outward activity are essentially blocked for a period after having recalled the painful event.

This artificial stripping of the affective component from memory could occur, for instance, with victims of sexual abuse, rape or natural catastrophes.

Related articles

• Psychoanalysis Encyclopedia: Isolation (enotes.com)
• Sigmund Freud (iiteeeestudents.wordpress.com)
• Sigmund Freud Timeline Important Dates in the Life and Career of Sigmund Freud (iiteeeestudents.wordpress.com)
• Id (earthpages.wordpress.com)
• Kabbalah: The Mystical Origin of Psychoanalysis (blogcritics.org)
• He’s Back: Freddy Crews Claws Freud (psychologytoday.com)
• Introjection (earthpages.wordpress.com)
• First Mention: Sigmund Freud, 1909 (nytimes.com)
• What is the specialized of sigmund freud (wiki.answers.com)
• Sabina’s Saga (Part 1) (drvitelli.typepad.com)

Introjection

Group photo in front of Clark University Sigmund Freud, Stanley Hall, C.G.Jung; Back row: Abraham A. Brill, Ernest Jones, Sandor Ferenczi. Photo taken for Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts publication - uploaded by Psychology Pictures via Flickr

Introjection is a Freudian defense mechanism in which one relates to an external object in terms of its imagined instead of actual functioning.

The imaginary content is called an introject and can take negative or positive forms—e.g. the punitive mother, the kindly grandfather, the distant father, and so on.

According to Freud, introjection plays a role in the development of the superego and in diminishing separation anxiety. And it’s considered a normal aspect of psychological development leading toward ego independence.¹

There are a couple of issues here to be considered.

First, it should be stressed that introjection is part of a developmental process and as such, involves a series of ‘necessary mistakes’ in understanding—mistakes that must be overcome for true maturity to arise. However, we never really stop distorting our world, so it’s problematic trying to determine exactly where healthy imagining starts and unhealthy imagining stops. As in most scientific assessments, not a little bit of human bias is involved.

Another problem, one not really looked at by Freud or his hardcore followers, is that a person may be intuiting the unexpressed impulses and thoughts (aggressive or benevolent) of another which rarely (or possibly never) come to the surface, socially speaking. So if, for example, an aggressor is clever enough to mask his or her aggression in front of others, he or she may seem benevolent when, in fact, harboring aggressive tendencies. If a person picks this up at the intuitive level, he or she may be concerned, but a supposedly dispassionate psychoanalyst may dismiss that concern as a mere introject, when, in fact, it’s quite an accurate perception of aggression.

Freud’s at one time student C. G. Jung talked about the importance of intuitive knowledge to a greater degree than did Freud. Jung even incorporated intuition into his model of the self. But even Jung doesn’t really offer much more than an introductory analysis regarding the importance of non-localized, non-discursive knowing—at least, this is the perspective which most bona fide mystics would hold.

—

¹ Charles Rycroft, A Critical Dictionary of Psychoanalysis, Harmondsworth: Penguin 1977, pp. 77-78.

Related articles

• Id (earthpages.wordpress.com)
• Toronto International Film Festival 2011: ‘A Dangerous Method’ (Notes from the Road) (popmatters.com)
• A Dangerous Gender * Sabina Spielrein and the Masks of Jung and Freud (silkroadvisions.wordpress.com)
• ‘Dangerous’ film probes flaws in Freud-Jung friendship (ctv.ca)
• Inflation (earthpages.wordpress.com)
• do fish see water? (literarylew.wordpress.com)
• Let’s Learn From Jung and Freud (teezah.wordpress.com)
• SIGMUND FREUD: Psychoanalyst (time.com)
• What does ‘Freudian’ mean? (freudinoceania.com)
• Cronenberg ‘cures’ cast in Freud-Jung drama (pbpulse.com)

Normal

Image via Wikipedia

The issue of normalcy is arguably a complicated one. Does the idea of normal change over time or is there something constant that mankind can always refer back to?

A compelling argument against the idea of a transhistorical normalcy is found in poststructural thought. Postructuralists point out that different cultures regard normalcy differently, both now and throughout history.

For example, in Biblical times and the Middle Ages abnormality was often associated with demonic influence or possession. Not a few individuals were literally burnt at the stake when defined as abnormal heretics.

Today, however, it seems both abnormal and cruel that anyone would burn another living person, for any apparent reason whatsoever.

In contemporary society, we see a shift away from religious to medical explanations for abnormality. Violent criminals, for instance, are often said to be mentally ill instead of ‘possessed by Satan.’

Another difficulty in ascertaining the normal as a moral good is the issue of hypocrisy. In sociology, power and labeling theorists suggest that individuals and groups possessing social power often label other powerless individuals and groups as deviant for engaging in practices that members of the high-powered groups profit from.

Although today’s social scene shouldn’t be reduced to such a simple formulation, we should point out that in medieval times there was a high degree of reliability among witch hunters when classifying targeted individuals as witches. And in contemporary society there’s a high degree of reliability among psychiatrists in defining so-called mental illnesses.

However, one could argue that, in both instances, a high degree of reliability in assessment does not necessarily relate to a high degree of validity for that assessment.

In other words, just because a powerful social group says something is so, it doesn’t necessarily follow that it actually is so. This is a basic philosophy 101 point certainly overlooked by witch hunters and sometimes by contemporary psychiatrists and clinical psychologists, along with anyone who unconditionally accepts a particular worldview that happens to be hegemonic or perhaps just in vogue.

Canadian folk-rocker Bruce Cockburn expressed his own views on normality in the song, “The Trouble With Normal” (1981; released 1983):

The trouble with normal is it always gets worse.

Search Think Free » Corruption, Death and Resurrection, Defense Mechanism, Deviance, Ego, Icebox Effect, Introjection, Neurosis, Nominalism, Paranormal, Prime Directive, Psychopath, Psychosis, Stages of Psychosexual Development, Suffering, Turning Against the Self, Evelyn Underhil, X-Men

Related Articles

• What Is Normal? (psychologytoday.com)
• Has The Green-eyed Monster Gone Too Far? (socyberty.com)
• Elizabeth Carr and Conceiving “Normally” (stirrup-queens.com)
• Keep throwing feces at each other, gays — Focus on the Family has yet to give us ‘normalcy’ pass (pinkbananaworld.com)
• A “Must Read” Book (diabetesupdate.blogspot.com)
• Abnormal Psychology: Understanding Cruelty and Absurdity (socyberty.com)

Add more, report errors or voice your opinion by posting a comment

Neurosis

Advertidos! by Psicoloco / Alex Torres

In psychology and its more medically legitimate sister, psychiatry, neurosis is a less serious mental disorder or condition than psychosis. Examples of neuroses would be phobias, obsessions, anxiety, depression, hysteria and hypochondria.

According to these disciplines, the neurotic hasn’t lost his or her grip on reality but experiences anxiety to a degree that can have a negative effect on judgment.

Psychosis, on the other hand, is generally regarded as a non-violent or violent ‘break with reality’ where normal judgment is severely impaired or non-existent.

However, some sociologists say notions of reality and normalcy are culture-bound, while not a few philosophers continue to debate the nature of both reality and normalcy (e.g. normalcy as an ethical good).

In addition, theologians along with spiritual and religious lay persons often include their particular interpretation of God and spirituality as factors in conceptualizing the real and the normal.

In short, the idea of neurosis is, perhaps, not without validity but also open to critical debate on various interconnected fronts.

Search Think Free » Alien Possession Theory (APT), Compensation, Defense Mechanism, Madness, Obsession

Add to this, report errors, suggest edits or voice your opinion by leaving a comment

Projection

Freud exhibition: Amira Elwakil

Projection, literally “throwing in front of oneself,” is a Freudian defense mechanism which Charles Rycroft¹ points out has two meanings:

1. Believing inner mental activity is outwardly real, as in dreams and hallucinations
2. Attributing one’s own mental activity to an external object²

A disturbing aspect of the first type of projection would be found in the violent psychotic who can’t distinguish between their violent inner fantasy world and their personal acts of violence. These people walk around, as it were, in a kind of waking dream state, not realizing that they’re harming real people as they live out their darkly twisted desires, “defend” against non-existent threats or, perhaps, obey the promptings of inner demons.

An example of the second type of projection would be a mother with no respect for her daughter’s individuality who continually complains that her child has “no respect” for elders, even though the child is respectful of elders.

Projection need not be negative, but it often is. Freud, in a letter to C. G. Jung, jokes that one should not be “led like Faust see a Helen [of Troy] in every woman.”³

Joseph Campbell says projection may be positive, providing the activated content is mutually beneficial. For instance, a young man and woman in the grip of projection reenact the archetypal contents symbolized in the Romeo and Juliet or Tristan and Isolte stories. Here we see the “perfect” other in our new partner’s eyes, if but for a while, until reality creeps in or maybe bites.

Jung, too, recognizes that projection may be positive but only as long as the archetypal contents are ‘alive’ and facilitate mutual growth. Some psychological theorists ask if we can ever strip ourselves from projection, wondering if relationships are merely mutually agreed upon fantasies or temporary infatuations.

In response to this, others like Erich Fromm say our ability to love others makes us uniquely human. For Fromm, to reduce this divine mystery to a psychoanalytic interpretation is to do great injustice to the sanctity and beauty of love.

Perhaps the goal is to recognize and progressively go beyond projections to reach a more profound mode of relationship, realizing that we’ll probably always fall a bit short of perfect, genuine and selfless love for others.

—

¹ Charles Rycroft, A Critical Dictionary of Psychoanalysis, Harmondsworth: Penguin 1977, pp. 125-126.

² For Freud, the term “object” can also refer to other people.

³ Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, New York: Vintage, 1965, p. 363.

» Eros, Agape, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Book of Job, Denial, Diamond Sutra, Philia, Symbol, Tibetan Book of the Dead, Transference, Witch, Witches Hammer

Add to this, report errors, suggest edts or voice your opinion by leaving a comment