Defense Mechanisms And The Defense Mechanism

(“Emotional Intelligence” 5). In the story “Anxiety: Challenge by Another Name,”

She took what she learned from her father, expanded on it, and altered it to be relevant for children. Anna believed that children’s symptoms were different from that of adults and often related to developmental stages. Anna also differed from her father’s theories in that she concentrated more on the ego of the id, ego, and superego. These ideas contributed to her founding of ego psychology. Anna found that the ego deserved much more study than previously given and wrote the book, The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense in 1936. This book on defense mechanisms was to give quite a clear depiction of how the defenses work. Anna and her ego psychology had an influential impact on Erik Erikson. Erik later went on to work in and expand the field of ego psychology and psychoanalysis leading to more contributions in the field.

In every human being, intrapsychic conflicts are bound to occur. These internal conflicts are usually caused from every day tension and negative encounters. Oftentimes, anxiety can be a heavy burden on the mind and should not be underestimated. Fortunately, the human mind has defense mechanisms to defend people from unpleasant emotions and feelings. Defense mechanisms’ primary role is to reduce anxiety and help people cope with negative experiences. Additionally, defense mechanisms are all individually unique; each are geared toward a different way of dealing with anxiety. In most cases, these conflicts are resolved by themselves in short periods of time; however, this is not always the case. Occasionally, people encounter a traumatizing experience

Defense mechanisms is defined as being the ego’s protective method of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality. These are the six different defense mechanisms: Regression, repression, suppression, reaction formation, projection, rationalization, displacement, and denial. Out of these six defense mechanisms, I believe that I use denial, suppression, and rationalization the most to keep my unwanted thoughts and memories in my unconscious.

Freud established the term defense mechanism, which helps cope with anxiety produced by the ego. People frequently have desires and urges that are deemed unacceptable within society. Cersei Lannister exhibits the use of defense mechanisms such as denial, displacement, and regression.

In the movie “Antwone Fisher” it’s clear that Antwone presents with several overlapping disorders, Post-traumatic Disorder, generalized anxiety disorders and depression. He suffered psychological, verbal, physical and sexual abuse early in his childhood. Deprived of several psychological developmental stages, trust vs mistrust (oral), autonomy vs shame and doubt (anal), initiative vs guilt (phallic), industry vs inferiority (latency), intimacy vs isolation (genital), as a young child was the cause of his neurodevelopmental disorders. Throughout his childhood Antwone adopted a vast number of defense mechanisms ego defense mechanisms to cope with his disorders specifically anxiety disorder. Several therapies are used to assist is in recover person-centered

In chapter 1 Michael Jenson mainly talks about us humans in a bigger perspective, “the human zoo is open for inspection” (Page 7) and also relates to the topic of anxiety. He

For petty issues and difficulties human do not build a defense system. People are incapable of predicting their emotional response, because they are unaware of how their brains work; therefore they choose to be self-deceptive. We humans have the tendency ignore the facts in front of us, because we are afraid of what the facts have in store for us. Gilbert displays examples of how denial can be beneficial to one’s happiness as he states, “The deception was elaborate and effective, but it was perpetrated unconsciously, and in this Osten was not unique (Gilbert

The expansion and dissection of Becks cognitive theory is also seen in that of anxiety disorders. Wells and Matthews (1994) critically reviewed studies of information processing in anxiety and depression and their findings were that other than cognitive bias (consistent with Becks theory of anxiety) overlapping and common features were identified. Attentional biases, such as the role of self-focus; traditionally conceptualised in the maintenance of social phobia, was also found in panic disorder, specific phobia and hypochrondriasis. The same was identified for selective attention for threat related material, dysfunctional appraisals and avoidance and safety behaviours. Wells concluded the differences between models occur in the content of appraisals and beliefs such as selective attention in anxiety is concerned with danger; for example a person with phobia- blood injury type selectively attends to information concerning their fear, whereas a person with PTSD may attend to combat related cues. This review highlights common processes in multi level accounts. A larger review was conducted in the work of Fairburn et al (2003) for eating disorders and suggested that eating disorders share distinctive and common maintenance processes, and that patients move between these diagnoses

The normal reaction to feelings of helplessness and vulnerability is often a need to regain control–

What if I look stupid? What if I embarrass myself? I should better not go.” With that specific cognition, child A’s emotions are worried and anxious. In effect, negative and odd cognitions lead to one’s emotions to become worried and anxious, thus the child is being limited. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy consists of two components, which are cognitive and behavioral therapy. Cognitive therapy emphasizes how one’s negative perceptions and cognitive thinking portrays onto one’s environment. Behavioral therapy accesses one’s behavior and emotion from one’s reaction to anxiety’s triggers (Bubrick, 2017). CBT can be modeled with the help of my Biopsychosocial model for anxiety disorder. Cognitive therapy addresses the psychological factors, specifically perceived control and cognitions (cognitive appraisals and cognitive distortions); in addition to, social environmental factors, specifically stressful situations and peer groups. Behavioral therapy addresses the biological factors, specifically one’s body’s adaptive reaction and response to stressful environment, and “personality type”. Through the practice of CBT, anxiety disorder vulnerabilities will be reduced.

The methods by which human beings rationalize their thinking can be explained through many theories and speculations. Two important theories about human thought are explained by Leslie Bell and Daniel Gilbert in their essays “Hard to Get: Twenty-Something women and the Paradox of Sexual Freedom” and “Immune to Reality”, respectively. Bell applies the term splitting to explain how the women she spoke with are able to cope with the conflictions they feel over their sexual desires. Splitting is a tool used within psychoanalytic theory to describe a means of dualistic or binary thinking. Similarly, Gilbert coined the phrase psychological immune system to explain human self-rationalization behavior when someone suffers a severe setback. The psychological immune system is a method of protecting the mind from the harsh reality of some events. Both splitting and the psychological immune system approach the idea that human behavior is designed to protect the well being of the mind whether it is through simplification, detachment, or fabrication of the true circumstances.

The therapist used the Cognitive Model of Panic (Clark, 1986), initially developing the three key elements of

The defenses can also give us insight into our own mental processes--sometimes mental gymnastics or contortions. All defenses involve distortions of reality; they are ways of feeling better by fooling ourselves. If we realized these defenses in our lives, we might handle reality better. Almost all adjustment books mention these defense mechanisms, even the writers who are arrogantly critical of Freud. An excellent text about Sigmund and Anna Freud and the ego defenses is by Christopher Monte (1980).

According to Freud, there are three kinds of anxiety – reality, moral and neurotic. Reality anxiety is experienced when there is an actual danger coming from the external world. Moral anxiety arises when there is a conflict between one’s behavior and what the superego is demanding one to do. Finally, neurotic anxiety is felt when the ego feels incapable of controlling the id and the urges hiding in it. The tools people use to get rid of anxiety is what psychoanalysts call “Defense Mechanisms” (Schultz and Schultz, 2009). Defense mechanisms are different behavioral patterns, some of them are considered mature (for example humor) and some immature but what is important for this paper is that in psychoanalytic therapy, defense mechanisms are identified and the goal of the therapy is to overcome them and access the unconscious conflicts which are according to the Freudians the root of any mental problem. Moreover, all problems’ origin can be found in childhood - most often in a faulty relationship with one of the primary caregivers (Hough,