Question

Chapter 12 Personality -Identifying Defense Mechanisms in Everyday Life

Rationale This activity is designed to get you to explore in more detail Freud's theory of personality formation, and in particular, his defense mechanisms. We briefly discussed Freud in our online lecture on Personality. Many students experience challenges when trying to keep Freud’s defense mechanisms straight. This activity presents various scenarios and requires students to identify the defense mechanisms being used.

Instructions: Each of the following scenarios illustrates one of Freud’s defense mechanisms from the list below. Read each case and identify the defense mechanism. It is possible some scenarios have more than one answer, in this case you need only indicate one choice.

           Displacement     Projection           Rationalization   Reaction Formation

           Regression         Repression           Sublimation        Denial

G.        Emmanuel’s mother has been very busy taking on extra projects at work. She frequently works late or brings the projects home to complete at night. Despite the fact that he is 8 years old, Emmanuel has been sucking his thumb and wetting the bed. What defense is Emmanuel using?

H.        Georgia was extremely close to her grandfather. He died unexpectedly last year and though Georgia attended all the funeral services, she does not remember any of events that took place for those three days. What defense is Georgia using?

Answer 1

Reaction Formation - A person goes beyond denial and behaves in exactly the opposite to which the person thinks and feels.

Regression- A person tends to go back psychologically in time whenever the person is faced with a lot of stress and problems he does not want to deal with

Repression- A person unconsciously pushes down the feelings or thoughts from coming into the consciousness and awareness

Sublimation- A person tries to satisfy one's id impulse by engaging in socially accepted behavior and channelizing it to something more productive and socially approved sort of behaviors

Denial- A person completely denies the existence of a problem or issue whenever the issue is too overwhelming for the person

Displacement- With the help of displacement a person satisfy the id or impulse by substituting it with another object

Projection- A person tends to attribute one's unacceptable wishes, wants, and desires onto others.

Rationalization- An individual tries to justify or rationalize one's feelings and behavior by providing logic and explanations avoiding the truth.

G.        Emmanuel’s mother has been very busy taking on extra projects at work. She frequently works late or brings the projects home to complete at night. Despite the fact that he is 8 years old, Emmanuel has been sucking his thumb and wetting the bed. What defense is Emmanuel using?

Emmanuel wants to get his mother's love and attention but obviously she is too busy and preoccupied all the time even when she is home, for an 8-year-old this is a bit too overwhelming. So, he started sucking his thumb like a baby does and also bedwetting that is going back in time psychologically and using the defense of Regression.

H.        Georgia was extremely close to her grandfather. He died unexpectedly last year and though Georgia attended all the funeral services, she does not remember any of the events that took place for those three days. What defense is Georgia using?

Georgia attended the funeral of her beloved grandfather but refuses to have any memory about the three days that revolve around the death of her grandfather with whom she was very close and this has made her go into denial of his death. She is using the defense of Denial