Defence mechanisms progresson

Brand Psychology book by Jonathan Gabay

Defence Mechanisms

(Supporting material for

Brand Psychology book

by Jonathan Gabay)


DEFINITION

Ego Defense Mechanisms protect themind/self/ego from anxiety or provide aretreat from a difficult situation.


Key figures in Defence Mechanism development

• Sigmund Freud • Founder of psychoanalysis. • Theory of Psychosexual

Development. The Id, Ego, and Superego

• Dream interpretation. Free association.

Anna Freud• Child psychoanalysis• Clear explanations of

defense mechanism• Concept of signal anxiety.

Otto F. Kernberg-theory of borderline

personality organization ,based on ego psychological object relations theory.

Robert Plutchik- defenses as derivatives of

basic emotions.George EmanValliant -a continuum related

to psychoanalytical developmental levels.


Pathological/Narcissistic Defenses

Denial

Distortion

Projection

Regression


IMMATURE DEFENCES

• Acting out

• Hypochondriasis

• Introjections

• Passive aggressive behavior

• Regression

• Schizoid fantasy

• Somatization

Commonly present in adolescents.

Such defenses can be viewed as immature, difficult to deal with.


NEUROTIC DEFENCES Considered neurotic – fairly common in adults

• Rationalization.

• Sexualization.

• Compensation.

• Splitting.

• Inhibition.

• Isolation.

• Displacement.

• Repression.

• Externalization.

• Intellectualization.

• Reaction Formation.

• Dissociation.


MATURE DEFENCESCommonly found among emotionally healthy adults

• Altruism

• Anticipation

• Asceticism

• Humor

• Sublimation

• Suppression

• These defenses enhance pleasure and sense of control.


DENIAL

• Involuntary exclusion of unpleasant or painful reality from conscious awareness.– Postulated by Sigmund Freud

• Simple denial• - deny the reality of unpleasant facts.• Minimization• - Recognize the fact, but deny its seriousness. • Projection

– - admit both fact and seriousness but deny responsibility.


Death and loss denial

1. Denial and Isolation• Buffers shock.• Supports through first wave of

pain.2. Anger• Powerful emotion deflected

and redirected as anger.• Anger may be aimed at

inanimate objects, strangers, or dying/ deceased.

• Rationally, the person is not to be blamed.

• Emotionally, the person is resented for causing pain.

3. BargainingA need to regain control –If only the doctors were called earlier …If only I had tried to be a better person …Deals struck with a higher power to postpone inevitable and protect from painful reality.4. Depression5. Acceptance


TYPES OF DENIAL

• Denial of fact

– Avoids a fact by lying.

– lying can be an outright falsehood (commission),

– leaving out certain details to tailor a story (omission),

– falsely agreeing to something

– (also referred to as "yessing" behaviour).


Denial of responsibility

– Avoiding personal responsibility.

– Blaming

– A direct statement shifting blame; may overlap with denial of fact

– Minimizing

– Attempt to make the consequences of an action appear less harmful.

– Justifying –

– Having made a choice, tries to make it appear look acceptable (due to a perception of what is "right”).


• Denial of impact

• Avoids thinking about or understanding the harms a behaviour (i.e. denial of consequences).

• Avoids a sense of guilt.

• Prevent remorse or empathy of others.

• Denial of awareness

• Avoids pain and harm by stating they were in a different state of awareness (such as alcohol or drug intoxication).


• Denial of cycle

• “It just happened."

• Denial of denial

• Involves thoughts, actions and behaviours

• Example:

• Overt consumerism - bolsters belief that personal behaviour need not change.


DISTORTION

• Totally redesigning external reality to suit

inner needs.

• Delusions - especially grandiose.


PROJECTION

• Perceiving and reacting to unacceptable inner impulses and derivatives as though they emanated from outside the self.

• Freudian Projection– Projective identification – connection of the self with that projected impulse

continues.

Examples:– Blaming– Clinical-Delusions – Paranoid personality.


Acting out

• Expression of an unconscious impulses; gratifying impulses rather

than prohibiting them.

• Designed (often unconsciously or semi-consciously) to gain

attention.

• Can be destructive to self or others, and may inhibit the

development of more constructive responses to the feelings.

• Examples:

– Temper tantrums

– Rebellious behaviours


INTROJECTION

• Unconscious internalization of the qualities of an object or person.

Example:

Identification with the aggressor.

• Stockholm syndrome.

• Depression.


Hypochondriasis

Exaggerating for the purpose of evasion and regression.

Passive aggression

• Indirect aggression towards others through passivity, masochism and turning against the self.


REGRESSION

• Effort to return to an earlier libidinal phase, so avoid tension and conflict of the current phase.

– A person may revert to immature behavior to ventilate feelings of frustration.

– Becomes a problem when used frequently to avoid adult situations.


SCHIZOID FANTASY

• Withdrawal in self to resolve conflict and gratify frustrated wishes.

• Something which is not or cannot be real.

• Examples:

– Adolescence wish to fulfilling sexual daydreams.

– Middle-aged wish to be youthful, virile and alluring.

– Narcissistic personality disorder.


Somatization

• Converting psychic derivatives into bodily

symptoms.

• Reacting with somatic rather than psychic

appearances.

• Unconscious rechanneling of repressed

emotions into somatic symptoms.


REACTION FORMATION

• Converting an unacceptable impulse into its opposite.

– The original, rejected impulse doesn’t disappear.

– Persists, unconscious, in its original infantile form.


REPRESSION

• Expelling or withholding an idea or feeling from consciousness

• Primary repression

• Refers to the curbing of ideas and feelings before they have attained

consciousness.

• Secondary repression

• Excludes from awareness what was once experienced at a conscious level.

Examples:

• Forgetfulness.

• Slip of tongue.


RATIONALIZATION

• Ernest jones-contributed the term "rationalization" to psychoanalysis.

• Offering rational explanations to justify attitudes, beliefs, or unacceptable behaviour.

– Providing logical explanations for irrational behaviour motivated by unacceptable wishes.


DISPLACEMENT

• Involves taking out frustrations, feelings, and impulses on people or objects that are less threatening.

• Punching cushions in anger.

• Bosses ‘snapping’ for no reason at employees.


DISSOCIATION

• Involuntary splitting or suppression of mental function from rest of the personality.

• Allows expression of forbidden unconscious impulses without any accompanying sense of responsibility for actions.


INTELLECTUALIZATION

• One of Freud's original defence mechanisms

– Employing intellectual processes to avoid

affective expressions or experiences.

• Intellectualization may accompany, but differs from

rationalization, which is validation of irrational

behaviour through clichés, stories, and simplified

explanation.


UNDOING

• Unconsciously motivated actions which symbolically counteract unacceptable thoughts ,impulses or actions.

– Example :

• “Sorry for bumping into you.”

• Compulsive OCD.


SEXUALIZATION

• Endowing an object or function with sexual significance that it didn’t previously possess.

• Can also refer to warding off anxieties associated with prohibited impulses or derivatives.


EXTERNALIZATION

• Perceiving one’s personality, including impulses, conflicts, moods and attitudes in the external world.

• More general than ‘projection’.

• Example:

• A belligerent person perceives others as argumentative whilst believing him/her self to be blameless.


INHIBITION

• conscious or unconscious constraint or curtailment of a

process or behaviour, especially of impulses or desires.

• Conscious inhibition is commonly present whenever

whenever two desires are in conflict.

• Examples:

• Writing blocks

• Eating delicious cakes, whilst dieting.


COMPENSATION

• Unconscious tendency to deal with a fear or conflict by excessive effort in the opposite direction.

• Example:

• Excessive preoccupation with body building to counter inferiority.


SPLITTING

• Viewing of self or others as either good or bad without considering the entire range of qualities in between.

• Example:

• Seeing all brands as greedy.


SUPPRESSION

Deliberately trying to stop thinking about certain thoughts.


ASCETICISM

• Eliminating the enjoyment of experiences by assigning moral values to specific pleasures.

• Gratification is derived from renunciation.


Brand Psychology

Available 2015

Education

Defence mechanisms progresson