Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
In the first definitive book on defence mechanisms, The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence (1936), [7] Anna Freud enumerated the ten defence mechanisms that appear in the works of her father, Sigmund Freud: repression, regression, reaction formation, isolation, undoing, projection, introjection, turning against one's own person, reversal into the opposite, and sublimation or displacement.
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]
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.
Narcissistic defenses are among the earliest defense mechanisms to emerge, and include denial, distortion, and projection. [4] Splitting is another defense mechanism prevalent among individuals with narcissistic personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, and antisocial personality disorder—seeing people and situations in black and white terms, either as all bad or all good.
It is considered a self-stabilizing defense mechanism used when there is a lack of full psychological contact between a child and the adults providing that child's psychological needs. [8] In other words, it provides the illusion of maintaining relationship but at the expense of a loss of self . [ 8 ]
The defense that effects (brings about) this process is called splitting. Splitting is the tendency to view events or people as either all bad or all good. [ 1 ] When viewing people as all good, the individual is said to be using the defense mechanism idealization : a mental mechanism in which the person attributes exaggeratedly positive ...
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 ...
Isolation (German: Isolierung) is a defence mechanism in psychoanalytic theory, first proposed by Sigmund Freud. While related to repression, the concept distinguishes itself in several ways. It is characterized as a mental process involving the creation of a gap between an unpleasant or threatening cognition and other thoughts and feelings.