Defense Mechanisms - UAlberta



Defense Mechanisms

The task of the ego is to balance

the desires of the id against the censure of the superego while appraising external reality.

Freud: "Thus the ego, driven by the id, confined by the superego, repulsed by reality, struggles to master its…task….Life is not easy."

"I" may not have the strength to carry out my task. Anxiety results.

Sources of anxiety

- repression of sexual impulses

- birth trauma (overwhelming helplessness)

- oral stage - loss of the mother

- anal stage - loss of the mother's love

Oedipal stage – fear of castration

post-Oedipal – fear of one's own self-evaluations (condemn my wishes and ideas)

Anxiety involves:

- the experience of helplessness

- the experience of loss

When anxiety becomes overwhelming, "I" block being aware of whatever is the source of anxiety: Defenses

Anna Freud

- sixth child

- became Freud's caretaker and "heir"

- became an analyst in her own right

- worked with childhood neuroses (blocked development)

- developed Freud's notion of "ego defenses"

- observable behaviors

- maneuvers for adjusting to social and biological needs

- emphasized ego functioning

Anna Freud's Three Sources of Anxiety:

1. danger of superego dissatisfaction:

moral anxiety

2. danger of the strength of unconscious impulses: neurotic anxiety

- fear of being overwhelmed

3. danger in the outside world: reality anxiety

- genuine hazards

- fear of parental displeasure

The Defenses:

Repression – motivated forgetting

- abrupt and involuntary removal from awareness of any threatening impulse, idea, or memory

- prerequisite for each of the other defenses

Altruistic Surrender – sacrifice of self

- fulfill needs vicariously by identifying with the satisfactions of another

- may give up own ambitions to allow another to be fulfilled

Introjection – taking within

- incorporating into one's own behavior and beliefs the characteristics of some admired person

Identification with the aggressor – adopting feared traits

- adopting the traits or mannerisms of a feared person or object

Defense mechanisms deny, falsify or distort reality

They operate unconsciously; the person is not aware of what is taking place

All are based on repression – keeping something feared out of conscious awareness.

Repressions are hard to abolish. The individual avoids situations in which the fear might be extinguished.

Repressions tie up the person's energy.

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