NOTE: Free essay sample provided on this page should be used for references or sample purposes only. The sample essay is available to anyone, so any direct quoting without mentioning the source will be considered plagiarism by schools, colleges and universities that use plagiarism detection software. To get a completely brand-new, plagiarism-free essay, please use our essay writing service.
One click instant price quote
... capable ambitions and actions. One may convert a compelling interest in getting a parent's attention into a drive to do well in school. Sexual drives can be pored into sports. Anger and resentment of the advantages of others can be funneled into an obsession to excel in a lucrative career.
Fantasy: daydreams and their substitutes -- novels and TV Soaps -- are escapes, a way to avoid our real worries or boredom. We may imagine being highly successful when we feel unsuccessful; at least we feel better for the moment. Actually, we often benefit by rehearsing in fantasy for future successes. At other times, fantasies may provide a way to express feelings we need to get off our chest. Fantasy is only a defense when it is an escape. Anticipation of the future through fantasy is a mark of an intelligent species.
Many self-help methods use fantasy: covert rehearsal, covert sensitization, desensitization, venting feelings, decision making, empathy, increasing motivation and awareness and many others. If fantasies can be therapeutic, then they can be harmful, e. g. imagining awful consequences could create fears, sad thoughts may produce depression, reliving an insult in fantasy might build anger. Fantasy may be part of the problem or part of the solution. Compensation or substitution: trying to make up for some feeling of inadequacy by excelling in some way.
Alfred Adler, a free-thinking student of Freud, observed that feelings of weakness and inferiority are common when we are young. Much of life, he thought, was devoted to compensating for our real or imaginary weaknesses, i. e. striving for superiority. Both men and women strive for power, competency, courage, wealth, and independence.
Karen Horney wrote, 'The neurotic striving for power... is born of anxiety, hatred and feelings of inferiority... the normal striving for power is born of strength, the neurotic of weakness. 's onetime we work on improving in the area we are weak in, so the skinny, shy child becomes Miss or Mr. America or the kid with speech problems becomes a politician (like Demosthenes with rocks in his mouth or Winston Churchill). Sometimes we find other areas to make up for our weaknesses; the unattractive student becomes an outstanding scholar, the average student becomes an outstanding athlete, the person in an unsatisfying marriage becomes deeply involved with the children. These are compensatory substitutions.
Many are good ways of handling stress; some are not, as when an unloved teenager seeks love promiscuously. Undoing: if you have done something bad, sometimes you can undo it or make up for it. Example: if you have said some very critical and hurtful things about one of your parents or a friend, later you may try to undo the harm by saying nice things about them or by be being nice to them and apologizing (sometimes it is the overdone apology that reveals the hostility). In essence it is having the decency to feel guilty and do something about it.
Freud used undoing to explain certain obsessive-compulsive acts, e. g. a 17 -year-old with masturbation guilt felt compelled to recite the alphabet backwards every time he had a sexual thought. He thought that would undo the sin. Intellectualization or isolation: hiding one's emotional responses or problems under a facade of big words and pretending one has no problem.
Suppose you were listening to a friend describe going through his parents' divorce. He may tell about deeply hurtful situations but show no sadness or anger; he gives a superficial behavioral description of what happened; he might even clinically 'analyze' his parents' underlying motives without showing his own emotions. Likewise, people may discuss war without vividly feeling the misery of many people dying. This is a repression of the painful parts. Freud believed that the compulsive hand-washer was trying to cleanse his hands of the guilt of masturbation but the feeling of guilt was separated from the hand-washing. There are many other defense mechanisms ('acting out' as a way of rebelling and reducing tension, 'self-repudiation' to get others off your back, seeking sympathy, etc. ).
More importantly, there are many other much healthier ways of coping with stress, fears, and anxiety which we will review later in this chapter and in chapter 12. As Sigmund Freud described ego defense mechanisms, the processes were primarily unconscious. As Anna Freud and later psychoanalysts studied these processes more intensely and re-defined them, the mechanisms came to be seen as more conscious and available to the ego (the conscious self) for dealing with anxiety. This new focus on the ego as a coping, self-directing part of our personality came after Freud. For Freud, however, the great driving forces were in the id -- the unconscious sexual and destructive instincts. The ego was merely 'a rider of a spirited horse' who tried to have some control over the animal instincts.
The later 'ego psychologists' also extended the role of the ego beyond reducing anxiety and into a means of mastering and enjoying life. Today the Cognitive theorists tend to believe, again, that the ego -- the rational mind -- is in charge or, at least, has the potential to make a substantial difference. Freud would say, if he were here today, that most of psychology has repressed and denied his disturbing insights into the powerful sexual, selfish, hostile, and irrational nature of man, just as he predicted we would. Could he be right?
Are we denying our basic biological and innate drives? It is likely that each of us can sometimes recognize when we use defense mechanisms. We can't detect every time, but by being very familiar with the common defense mechanisms and by being vigilant, we can investigate our possible use of defense mechanisms and keep ourselves honest. Most of the time (not all, as we saw in denial) it is helpful to stay in touch with reality. Awareness is the mark of a healthy, adjusted person. Work on it.
More recent experimental investigations of defenses Almost all of the information about defense mechanisms mentioned above comes from pre-W. W. II psychoanalysts. Just to illustrate how 'scientific' beliefs wax and wane, history shows that many academic psychologists during the 70 's and early 80 's rejected the notion of unconscious thoughts and, especially, Freud's notions of unconscious ego defenses. Clinical psychologists, however, in contrast to experimentalists, continued using the idea of defenses. Then in the late 1980 's, cognitive researchers began to repeatedly find ample evidence for unconscious mental processes.
For example, experimental studies have shown that experiences we have no conscious memory of can have an influence on our performance of certain tasks. Factors we have no awareness of can influence our decision-making; procedures that are at first conscious can be repeated often enough that they become automatic and unconscious. In social interactions many people deceive themselves in ways that build their self-esteem; children who claim very high self-esteem are often hiding a profound sense of inferiority, etc. , etc. The researchers have often used different terms, such as 'scapegoating' instead of displacement, 'self-presentation ploys' instead reaction formation, 'positive illusions' instead of denial, 'counterfactual thinking' instead of undoing, and so on (Cramer, 2000).
But, a rose is a rose... Many benefits will come from the new experimental interests in defensive cognitive processes. For one thing, there are clarifying distinctions being made between coping processes and defense mechanisms. Coping processes are conscious, intentional, learned, and associated with normal adjustment. Defense mechanisms are unconscious, unintentional, self-protective instincts or dispositions, and associated with pathology (Cramer, 1998).
This is a meaningful difference, because different self-change techniques will surely be needed for coping than for dealing with defenses. Another clarification emerging from the research is the distinction between sometimes healthy or adaptive defense mechanisms and very disturbed mental processes. Sublimation, suppression (sort of conscious denial), altruism, humor, and even some denial in children can be healthy and useful in certain circumstances. Also, some defenses may temporarily help one adapt but in the long run interfere with problem-solving: intellectualization, repression, undoing, displacement, dissociation, idealization, misjudging one's power, and others. Still other defenses alter our perception of reality and, thus, interfere with solving our problems: denial, projection, rationalization, and unrealistic fantasies. Some more hidden defenses are revealed by certain maladaptive behaviors: acting out, severe withdrawal, passive-aggressive acts, and so on.
Lastly, extremely irrational defenses play a central role in serious psychoses: delusional projection, serious distortion of reality, complete denial of basic conditions, and so on. The more maladaptive defenses that one uses, the more likely one has a serious psychiatric disorder, many symptoms, and interpersonal problems. If you compare Freud's defense mechanisms with modern research finding, the traditional defenses seem more intuitively understandable and more applicable to a wider range of situations. Eventually, with more and more research, new findings will show us more details about when and how defenses are used in specific circumstances. Then, we will develop better ways to cope than by using defenses that rely on distortions of reality. Defense Mechanisms Associated with Psychiatric Disorders Substance Abuse: Regression, Projection, Rationalization, Denial, Fragmentation (form of denial, refer to time), Minimization (refer to quantity) Schizophrenia: Fixation, Regression, Symbolization (keep demons away), Identification Delusional Disorders: Paranoid - Projection, Erotomania - Projection Grandeur - Reaction formation, Omnipotence, Somatic - Regression Mood Disorders (Depression): Introjection (loss, anger), Reaction formation (mania) Generalized Anxiety & Panic Disorder: Regression (or repression? ) Phobias: Displacement, Symbolization, Avoidance Oedipal Complex: Displacement (father, horse) Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: Isolation of Affect (ignore others' feelings? ), Undoing (washing) Reaction Formation, Regression Somatoform Disorders: Repression, Somatization, Conversion Body dimorphic disorders: repression, dissociation, distortion, symbolization Dissociative Disorders (amnesia, multiple personalities): Repression, Dissociation Personality Disorders: Paranoid - Projection, Histrionic - Dissociation Borderline - Splitting, Acting out, Projective Identification Always pathological: Conversion, Somatization
Free research essays on topics related to: obsessive compulsive, mental processes, decision making, defense mechanisms, reaction formation
Research essay sample on Obsessive Compulsive Defense Mechanisms
