Defense Mechanism

Defense Mechanism

Introduction

Defense mechanism as described in psychoanalytic theory by Freud explains that they are psychological strategies, which are brought into play by unconscious minds. They are used to distort, deny or manipulate reality. These usually take place through repression, rationalization, identification and displacement. Healthy persons on the contrary, use defense mechanisms that are different types of defenses through their entire life. The mental or physical health of a person gets affected when the persistent use of ego defense mechanism becomes pathological. It further leads to maladaptive behavior, which adversely affects an individual's health. Defense mechanisms are usually referred to as the ego defense mechanisms. Therefore, they are categorized as occurring when there is an id conflict within the impulses. It is also thought that defense mechanism defines a single term for personality traits. These personality traits arise because of traumatic experiences or some kind of loss. In order to be specific, they are usually reactions that were discovered in Anna's time (daughter of Sigmund Freud).

Discussion

One of the defense mechanism includes repression. Repression or psychic repression is an attempt by an individual through which he or she tries to deny and repel his or her own impulses and desires. It takes out the desires from one's consciousness and subdues it in unconsciousness. Repression also plays a vital role in a person's mental illness. Repression pre exists in an ego and is not a defense mechanism. One of the examples of repression is the repression of emotions. It is one of the depression, addiction and disease in our culture. For instance, in many families, repression or expression of emotions is shown in abusive ways. When a child gets angry due to some reason, a parent further punishes him or her in order to repress them. This makes the child feel ashamed and rejected. Whereas a healthier and positive response from parents would help the child to regain its confidence and strength. Another example of repression is in which parents create confusion and repression amongst children. It usually happens when a child claims that he is feeling sad or angry and for that, the response of parents is, “oh that is not possible and u cannot feel that”. This helps the child to believe and learn to mistrust himself. This further leads to negative consequences as a child gets indulged in smoking cigarettes and alcohol drinking to release his or her anxiety and stress.

Furthermore, rationalization is another example of defense mechanism. In rationalization, when something happen to us and we do not want to accept it, then we make up various reasons to why this happened. The main aim of rationalization is to do something as if being unkind to a person. Hence, we try not only to rationalize the actions and things that we have done but also to find various reasons for our values, models, belief and thoughts, as to why this happened. For instance, if a person himself tries to evade taxpaying and then later on talks about ...