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This classification is largely based on Vaillant's hierarchical view of defences, but has some modifications. Examples include: denial, fantasy, rationalization, regression, isolation, projection, and displacement. However, additional defense mechanisms are still proposed and investigated by different authors.
Anticipation is an emotion involving pleasure or anxiety in considering or awaiting an expected event. Anticipatory emotions include fear , anxiety , hope and trust . [ 1 ] When the anticipated event fails to occur, it results in disappointment (for a positive event) or relief (for a negative one).
Undoing is a defense mechanism in which a person tries to cancel out or remove an unhealthy, destructive or otherwise threatening thought or action by engaging in contrary behavior. For example, after thinking about being violent with someone, one would then be overly nice or accommodating to them.
George Vaillant divided defense mechanisms into a hierarchy of defenses ranging from immature through neurotic to healthy defenses, [12] and placed intellectualization – imagining an act of violence without feeling the accompanying emotions, for example – in the mid-range, neurotic defenses. [13]
In its malignant forms, it is a defense mechanism in which the ego defends itself against disowned and highly negative parts of the self by denying their existence in themselves and attributing them to others, breeding misunderstanding and causing interpersonal damage. [2] Projection incorporates blame shifting and can manifest as shame dumping ...
Projective identification is a term introduced by Melanie Klein and then widely adopted in psychoanalytic psychotherapy.Projective identification may be used as a type of defense, a means of communicating, a primitive form of relationship, or a route to psychological change; [1] used for ridding the self of unwanted parts or for controlling the other's body and mind.
Reaction formation is an effective form of disguise, and can be utilized in many forms. For example, "solicitude may be a reaction-formation against cruelty, cleanliness against coprophilia". [1] An analyst might explain a client's unconditional pacifism as a reaction formation against their sadism. In addition,
Anna Freud (1936) ranked regression first in her enumeration of the defense mechanisms', [16] and similarly suggested that people act out behaviors from the stage of psychosexual development in which they are fixated. For example, an individual fixated at an earlier developmental stage might cry or sulk upon hearing unpleasant news.