Motivation and emotion/Book/2015/Defense mechanism motivation

Defense mechanism motivation:
What motivates the use of defense mechanisms?

Multimedia presentation (3 min)

Overview

Figure 1. Sigmund Freud, Austrian neurologist known as the father of psychoanalysis and unconscious defense mechanisms

Imagine a scenario - You are in your workplace and a co-worker makes a negative comment about the work you are doing. What happens to you psychologically? Do respond with humour? Do you tell yourself they are jealous of your work and ashamed of theirs? Or do you tell yourself that your work is fine even though you actually agree with what the person said? All of these are defense mechanisms. What are defense mechanisms and what motivates a person to project them in different ways? The following chapter will discuss why individuals use defense mechanisms. Many studies have been conducted on the theory of defense mechanisms with the first dating back the early twentieth century by Sigmund Freud and being continued by noted psychologists such as George Eman Vaillant.

What are Defense Mechanisms?

When an individual encounters or suffers from some kind of psychological anxiety, or difficulty, they respond in different ways. These coping styles are known as defense mechanisms and can be considered both adaptive or maladaptive depending on the situation and particular type of defense mechanism the person subconsciously employs. For example, if you lash out at a person once it may not be too much of a problem but if you do it consistently when anxious or stressed a bigger issue is probably taking place (Schacter, 2011). Defense mechanisms include feeling anger, denial or even repression. The five stages of loss and grief - denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance - are different efense mechanisms and are all ways of dealing with distress or anxiety. Cramar (2008; 2012) described defense mechanisms as:

mental processes, also present in normal personality, that alter the perception of a disturbing external event or a disruptive inner state with the aim to protect the individual from excessive anxiety or other negative emotions arising from the perceptions of these stimuli.

Defense Mechanism Classifications

To help psychologists better understand defense mechanisms they came up with an example for each type. However, the exact number of defense mechanisms is something that is constantly being argued about. At the very least 27 different mechanisms exist, the most common of these, however, are:

• Denial - A refusal to accept reality as it is. Refusing to acknowledge when someone says you aren't very good at something you love.
• Fantasy - Hiding from anxiety by going to a "happy place". Playing video games and escaping into other forms of external fantasy instead of facing problems
• Projection - Placing your own unwanted desires or impulses onto someone or something else. Blaming the tool, not the trades person.
• Displacement - Pushing aggression onto another person instead of the cause of the aggression. Having a bad day at work and instead of getting angry at the manager, getting angry at the household dog.
• Identification - Becoming or styling oneself after someone famous or more successful. Dressing like your favourite rock star when your in a small unsuccessful band.
• Regression - Mentally taking oneself back to an earlier safer place when feeling anxiety. Pretending a bad relationship never happened instead of dealing with it and moving on.
• Reaction formation - Reacting to a negative situation by acting and responding in the opposite. The world's about to end and thinking "everything's going to be okay..."
• Rationalisation - Justifying a negative opinion or actions with societal examples. It's okay, so and so does it and its fine.
• Anticipation Dealing with known large problems by breaking it down into smaller, easier to deal with issues. Planning for an argument by breaking it down into its individual properties.
• Humour - Not taking what could be a tense situation or anxieties by making jokes and trying to make light of the situation. Making jokes at a funeral to instead of outwardly feeling and showing sadness.
• Sublimation - Transferring emotions from being displayed in a "negative" way to a more "positive" way. Instead of being able to act on sexual lust for someone, a person might exercise instead.

History of Defense Mechanisms

Freud's Theory of Defense Mechanisms

One of the first people to study the theory of defense mechanisms was Sigmund Freud. In fact, it is often considered his biggest original contribution to human psychology (Reeve, 2015). He believed that unconscious "defense mechanisms" protected individuals from anxiety and other negative emotions and situations. His theories into defense mechanisms are greatly influenced by his theories into the Id, Ego and Superego with the Ego playing the biggest role on defense mechanisms. To better understand how these concepts play into the theories of defense mechanisms it is important to understand their different properties:

A visual representation of Freud's theories regarding the Id, Ego and Superego as an iceberg.

• Id - The id is the childish, pleasure oriented aspect of the personality that has no ability to regulate or delay gratification.
• Superego - The superego is the aspect of the personality that is most concerned with morals and ethics, also known as a person's conscience.
• Ego - The ego is the moderator between the irrationality of the id and the morals of the superego, constantly looking for ways to placate both.

Defense mechanisms are generally in the domain of the ego. Everyday the ego is in a constant state of vulnerability such as when a person starts a new job, goes to a party where they do not know anyone or when they are about to take a big exam (Reeve, 2015). This state of vulnerability can potentially overwhelm the ego with high levels of anxiety, causing it to require ways to buffer itself from these negative emotions. Many of these negative emotions come from conflicts originating from id impulses (neurotic anxiety), superego demands (moral anxiety) and environmental dangers (realistic anxiety). To be able to cope with the stress from the id and superego the ego must have a certain amount of maturity; without this it can get overwhelmed and can result in psychopathology (Reeve, 2015).

Freud discovered most of the known coping strategies that we know of today. He also identified five important properties that each defense mechanism must have, these include:

Defense mechanisms buffering the ego from the Superego, Id and environmental demands

1. Defense mechanisms are a major means of managing instinct and effect
2. They are unconscious
3. They are discreet (from one another)
4. Although often the hallmarks of major psychiatric syndromes, defenses are dynamic and reversible
5. They can be adaptive as well as pathological

Once Sigmund Freud passed away much of his research was continued by his daughter Anna Freud, including much of the development of defense mechanisms (Vaillant, 1992). Anna Freud studied the effects of defense mechanisms on children and found that they too use them in what is often a safe and healthy way. She theorised that children often unconsciously view themselves as weak in a world filled with powerful adults. These beliefs are what can often cause them to escape into a world of fantasy that allows them to role play into characters that make them feel better. Actions like these allow them to go from being in a passive role to being in a more active role.

Vaillant's Defense Mechanism Categorization

The next major advance into the study of defense mechanisms came from a psychologist called George Vaillant. He theorised that the pre-established forms of defense mechanisms could be further broken down into categories or levels with the lower levels having far more primitive traits than those the come after them. He generated four different levels of defense mechanisms, each of a different type based on the psychology of each defense mechanism, these four levels being Pathological, Immature, Neurotic and Mature.

Level I - Pathological - Pathological defenses can be considered some of the more severe types of defense mechanisms. People who employ these forms of defenses often change external experiences so that they don't have to deal with the reality of the situation that may be causing the anxiety or distress. These cases are often most common in people who are suffering from psychosis. These defense mechanisms include:

• Conversion
• Delusional Projection
• Denial
• Distortion
• Extreme Projection
• Splitting

Level II - Immature - Immature defense mechanisms are usually found in adults more often than children. These types of defenses are often employed to help deal with stressful people or environments however people often overuse these defenses which become highly undesirable in a social setting due to their immaturity. Individuals who over use these defense mechanisms often begin to find it difficult to cope and fall back on their use more and more as time goes on unless intervention takes place. Immature defenses can include:

Going to one's happy place can be a form of fantasy

• Acting Out
• Fantasy
• Idealization
• Introjection
• Passive Aggression
• Projective Identification
• Projection
• Somatization
• Wishful Thinking

Level III - Neurotic - Often these are the most common form of defense mechanism, usually employed by adults. Even though they are not as harmful as some of the other defense mechanisms they can still be ruinous to relationships and the workplace when relied upon too often. These include:

Isolation is common example of a neurotic defense mechanism

• Displacement
• Dissociation
• Hypochondriasis
• Intellectualization
• Isolation
• Rationalization
• Reaction Formation
• Regression
• Repression
• Undoing
• Upward and Downward Social Comparisons
• Withdrawal

Level IV - Mature - Mature defense mechanisms are exactly what the name implies. They are often more positive in nature when compare to other defenses and are far more socially acceptable due to the evolutionary nature that they exhibit and their usefulness, especially in maintaining tight family bonds. They also allow the individual to feel more pleasure when used as opposed to the negative defense mechanisms. These are:

Humour is an incredibly common defense mechanism and can quite often be effective at relieving tension. It can sometimes make it worse however.

• Acceptance
• Altruism
• Anticipation
• Courage
• Emotional self-regulation
• Forgiveness
• Gratitude
• Humility
• Humour
• Identification
• Mercy
• Mindfulness
• Patience
• Respect
• Sublimation
• Tolerance

Another important contribution Vaillant made was his experiment to help him test his ideas about people's maturity levels and it's overall impact on their ego strength and life adjustment (Reeve 2015). Vaillant followed 56 men over a 30-year period. Vaillant interviewed each person while they were in the college years and assessed their overall defense mechanism levels putting them into mature (levels three and four) and immature (levels one and two) groups. He then used these groups to understand how the defense mechanisms acted as a personal style against distress and anxiety (Reeve 2015). At the conclusion of this study Vaillant sought to learn how different defense mechanism styles could be used to predict how people would do later in life. Over the 30 year period, each man's life adjustment was measured using four categories: career, social, psychological and medical. The men who were put into the mature category were found to be more successfully well-adjusted, showed higher psychological maturity, kept a fulfilling job over a longer period of time and had far better relationship and friendships (e.g. avoided divorce, didn't need to see a psychiatrist as often or at all, suffered from far less psychopathology and mental illnesses; Reeve 2015). Vaillant followed this study up 20 years later by applying the same practices to both men and women of different backgrounds. He found that once again those who employed mature defense mechanisms showed far better outcomes later in life in social setting, the workplace and overall mental health (Reeve 2015).

Another factor of defense mechanism study has been into how the different levels can effect people psychopathologically. People who live highly stressful lives and employ immature defense mechanism styles showed much higher rates of depression (75%). People who have similarly stressful lives but make use of mature defense mechanisms showed little or no signs of depression (0%). Based on these finding psychologists have been able to make use of similar techniques to assist people who are suffering from post traumatic stress disorder after being in combat.

Defense Mechanisms Across Different People

We understand the effect that defense mechanisms have on people but how do they effect different people and genders? Diehl et al. performed numerous studies on a selected group of people of both genders and who had completely different backgrounds. They found that even although men and women both change the same way over a lifetime, they both differed in the use of defense mechanisms, specifically intellectualisation, rationalisation and doubt. Women made higher use of rationalisation and doubt defense mechanisms, whereas men made far more use of the intellectualisation defense mechanism (Diehl et al).

Studies have also been performed to see what effect, if any, defense mechanisms have over time. It has been argued that while many studies have been performed to see what effects defense mechanisms have on people over time Diehl et al. looked at how defense mechanisms themselves change over time and found that there is a systematic change in how defense mechanisms change over a person's life with a difference in ego level, verbal ability and inductive reasoning.

Defense Mechanisms and Emotion Regulation

While they sound like they could be the same thing, defense mechanisms and emotion regulation are actually different psychological theories. Emotional regulation consists of all processes, whether they are conscious or unconscious, internal or external, used to increase, maintain or decrease negative and or positive emotions. This is different from defense mechanisms due to the fact that defense mechanisms are actually mostly an unconscious phenomena that the individual often doesn't realise that they're doing. Emotion regulation strategies are also focused on the management of emotions like aggression, anger, sadness and happiness, whereas defense mechanisms are aimed at the control of impulses like those related to sex and aggression (Sala et al., 2015).The final major difference between emotion regulation and defense mechanisms is that emotions are more fluid and have a far broader range of potential objectives, whereas the impulses that defense mechanisms manage are far more rigid in nature and have a smaller number of things that they are meant to control (Sala et al., 2015).

Even though these two concepts both seem different there are quite a few similarities between them, unsurprisingly, emotion regulation has actually been found to be linked to defense mechanisms. Both emotion regulation and defense mechanisms have been linked to the management of affect. Affect is essentially a superordiante category that controls and includes different states of mind including stress, moods, emotions and impulses (Sala et al., 2015). Impulses have also been found to be similar to emotions in that they have a valence and they both direct and have a fair amount of influence over behaviour. Defense mechanisms and emotion regulation have also been found to be involved in normative development and are incredibly important in the state of an individual's mental health. Both constructs have also been included in the official definition of psychological well-being (Sala et al., 2015). After performing numerous studies into defense mechanisms and emotion regulation, Sala et al. found comprehensive overlap in key points of both concepts including suppression and image distortion.

Conclusion

This chapter was intended to assist with the concepts of what defense mechanisms are and how and why they are motivated. Study into defense mechanisms has been extensive ever since Sigmund Freud founded his theories into the Id, Ego and Superego. The effect they have on a person over the development over their lifetime and how they live their day to day lives. Defense mechanisms play an important role and are complex, with multiple levels as well as different types. They are also great predictors on whether or not people may have mental disabilities such as depression.

Quiz

Point added for a correct answer:
Points for an incorrect answer:
Ignore the questions' coefficients:

1 Which is an immature defense mechanism?

	Passive Aggression.
	Displacement.
	Splitting.
	Denial.

2 Who came up with the four levels of defense mechanisms?

	Sigmund Freud
	Anna Freud
	George Vaillant
	Barbara Gordon

3 What is the main component of Freud's Defense mechanism theory?

	The Id
	The Superego
	The Ego
	Environmental factors

4 People who employ the use of immature defense mechanisms are more likely to have depression?

	TRUE
	FALSE

5 Defense mechanisms and emotion regulation are the same concept?

	TRUE
	FALSE

See also

• Sigmund Freud
• George Eman Vaillant

References

American Psychiatric Association. (2000). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: DSM-IV-TR. Washington DC: American Psychiatric Association

Cramer, P (2008) Seven Pillars of Defense Mechanism Theory. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, Volume 2. pp 1963-1981. doi: 10.111/j.1751-9004.2008.00135.x

Cramer, P (2012) Psychological Maturity and Change in Adult Defense Mechanisms. Journal of Research in Personality, Volume 46. pp 306-316. doi: 10.1016/j.jrp.2012.02.011

Cramer, P (2015). IQ and Defense Mechanisms Assessed with the TAT. Rorschachiana, Volume 36. pp 40-57. doi: 10.1027/1192-5604/a0000058

Cramer, P; Block, Jack (1998, Jan). Preschool Antecedents of Defense Mechanism use in Young Adults: A Longitudinal Study. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Volume 74. pp 159-169. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.74.1.159

Diehl, Manfred; Chui, Helena; Hay, Elizabeth L; Lumley, Mark A; Gruhn, Daniel; Labouvie-Vief, Gisela (2014, Feb). Changing in Coping and Defense Mechanisms Across Adulthood: Longitudinal Findings in a European American Sample. Developmental Psychology, Volume 50. pp 634-648. doi:10.1037/a0033619

Grohol, John M (2007, Oct 26) 15 Common Defense Mechanisms. Retrieved from http://psychcentral.com/lib/15-common-defense-mechanisms

Kramer, Ueli; de Roten, Yves; Perry, J Christopher; Despland, Jean-Nicholas (2013, January). Beyond Splitting: Ovserver-related Defense Mechanisms in Borderline Personality Disorder. Psychoanalytic Psychology, Volume 30. pp 3-15. doi: 10.1037/a0029463

Khaleelee, Olya (2009). The Use of the Defense Mechanism Test to Aid in Understanding the Personality of Senior Executives and the Implications for their Careers. Rorschachiana, Volume 30. pp 73-96. doi 10.1027/1192-5604.30.1.73

Perry, J Christopher; Hoglend, P; Shear, Katherine; Vaillant, George E; Horowitz, Mardi; Kardos, Marianne E; Bille, Henrik; Kagan, Denise (1998 March). Field Trial of a Diagnostic Axis for Defense Mechanisms for DSM IV. Journal of Personality Disorders Volume 12. Pp 56-68. doi:10.1521/pedi.1998.12.1.56

Reeve, Johnmarshall (2015): Understanding Motivation and Emotion Sixth Edition, University of Korea, pp 484-487, ISBN 978-1-118-51779-6

Sala, Maria Nives; Testa, Silvia; Pons, Francisco; Molina, Paola (2015). Emotion Regulation and Defense Mechanisms. Journal of Individual Differences, Volume 36. pp 19-29. doi:10.1027/1614-0001/a000151

Schacter, Daniel L (2011): Psychology Second Edition, Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10010, Worth Publishers, pp 482-483, ISBN 978-1-4292-3719-2

Vaillant, George E (1992): Ego Mechanisms of Defense: A Guide for Clinicians and Researchers, American Psychiatric Press Inc, 1400 K Street, N.W., Washington DC, 20005, ISBN 0-88048-404-7

Wilkinson, Wayne W; Ritchie, Timothy D (2015, March). The Dimensionality of Defense Mechanism Parcels in the Defense Style. Psychological Assessment, Volume 27. pp 326-331. doi:10.1037/pas0000051