defense mechanisms

The defense mechanisms
We know that ego deals with the demands of reality , but when the anxiety become overwhelming the ego must defense about itself. That happen by unconsciously blocking the impulses or distorting them into a more acceptable , less threatening form. So that we called what happen by The defense mechanisms .
(1) denial
Denial involves blocking external events from awareness if the situation be too much to handle . people deny the reality of death of a loved one ,and student fail to pick up his test results .
Anna Freud also mentions denial in fantasy: this is when children transform an evil father into loving teddy bear.
(2) Repression
Anna Freud called it "motivated forgetting" in which the person not being able to recall a threatening situations ,persons, and events .
Repression be clear when a guilty girl with strong sexual desires , tend to forget her boy friend`s name even when trying to introduce him to her relations .
Repression involves pushing unwanted mental contents into unconscious mind
(3) Asceticism
It involves the renunciation of needs to be less threatened .
Preadolescents, when feel threatened by their emerging sexual desires , may unconsciously try to protect themselves by denying ,not only sexual desires but all desires .they try to become as monk-like .
Anna Freud called asceticism by restriction of ego in which a person loses his interest in some aspect of life.
(4) Isolation
Isolation involves stripping the emotion form a difficult memory or threatening impulse
Nothing demonstrate isolation more clearly than a theater full of people laughing hysterically while someone is shown being dismembered .
(5) Displacement
It is the redirection of an impulse onto substitute target, if the impulse ,the desire is okay with you but the person you direct that desire towards is too threatening you can displace to someone or something that represents a symbolic substitute
An example for displacement , when you de angry you will kick cats, furniture ,clothes to reduce the feeling with anger .
(6) projection
Anna Freud called it displacement outward. It involves the tendency to see your own unacceptable desires in other people .
An example for projection ,the husband who attracted to lady next door become more jealous of his wife from strange men.
In little words projection means seeing what you feel, represent, and fear in other people .
(7) Altruistic surrender
It is a form of projection that at first glance looks like its opposite, the extreme example of altruistic surrender is the person who lives his whole life for and through another.