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TRANSCRIPT
Brand Psychology book by Jonathan Gabay
Defence Mechanisms
(Supporting material for
Brand Psychology book
by Jonathan Gabay)
Brand Psychology book by Jonathan Gabay
DEFINITION
Ego Defense Mechanisms protect themind/self/ego from anxiety or provide aretreat from a difficult situation.
Brand Psychology book by Jonathan Gabay
Key figures in Defence Mechanism development
• Sigmund Freud • Founder of psychoanalysis. • Theory of Psychosexual
Development. The Id, Ego, and Superego
• Dream interpretation. Free association.
Anna Freud• Child psychoanalysis• Clear explanations of
defense mechanism• Concept of signal anxiety.
Otto F. Kernberg-theory of borderline
personality organization ,based on ego psychological object relations theory.
Robert Plutchik- defenses as derivatives of
basic emotions.George EmanValliant -a continuum related
to psychoanalytical developmental levels.
Brand Psychology book by Jonathan Gabay
Pathological/Narcissistic Defenses
Denial
Distortion
Projection
Regression
Brand Psychology book by Jonathan Gabay
IMMATURE DEFENCES
• Acting out
• Hypochondriasis
• Introjections
• Passive aggressive behavior
• Regression
• Schizoid fantasy
• Somatization
Commonly present in adolescents.
Such defenses can be viewed as immature, difficult to deal with.
Brand Psychology book by Jonathan Gabay
NEUROTIC DEFENCES Considered neurotic – fairly common in adults
• Rationalization.
• Sexualization.
• Compensation.
• Splitting.
• Inhibition.
• Isolation.
• Displacement.
• Repression.
• Externalization.
• Intellectualization.
• Reaction Formation.
• Dissociation.
Brand Psychology book by Jonathan Gabay
MATURE DEFENCESCommonly found among emotionally healthy adults
• Altruism
• Anticipation
• Asceticism
• Humor
• Sublimation
• Suppression
• These defenses enhance pleasure and sense of control.
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DENIAL
• Involuntary exclusion of unpleasant or painful reality from conscious awareness.– Postulated by Sigmund Freud
• Simple denial• - deny the reality of unpleasant facts.• Minimization• - Recognize the fact, but deny its seriousness. • Projection
– - admit both fact and seriousness but deny responsibility.
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Death and loss denial
1. Denial and Isolation• Buffers shock.• Supports through first wave of
pain.2. Anger• Powerful emotion deflected
and redirected as anger.• Anger may be aimed at
inanimate objects, strangers, or dying/ deceased.
• Rationally, the person is not to be blamed.
• Emotionally, the person is resented for causing pain.
3. BargainingA need to regain control –If only the doctors were called earlier …If only I had tried to be a better person …Deals struck with a higher power to postpone inevitable and protect from painful reality.4. Depression5. Acceptance
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TYPES OF DENIAL
• Denial of fact
– Avoids a fact by lying.
– lying can be an outright falsehood (commission),
– leaving out certain details to tailor a story (omission),
– falsely agreeing to something
– (also referred to as "yessing" behaviour).
Brand Psychology book by Jonathan Gabay
Denial of responsibility
– Avoiding personal responsibility.
– Blaming
– A direct statement shifting blame; may overlap with denial of fact
– Minimizing
– Attempt to make the consequences of an action appear less harmful.
– Justifying –
– Having made a choice, tries to make it appear look acceptable (due to a perception of what is "right”).
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• Denial of impact
• Avoids thinking about or understanding the harms a behaviour (i.e. denial of consequences).
• Avoids a sense of guilt.
• Prevent remorse or empathy of others.
• Denial of awareness
• Avoids pain and harm by stating they were in a different state of awareness (such as alcohol or drug intoxication).
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• Denial of cycle
• “It just happened."
• Denial of denial
• Involves thoughts, actions and behaviours
• Example:
• Overt consumerism - bolsters belief that personal behaviour need not change.
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DISTORTION
• Totally redesigning external reality to suit
inner needs.
• Delusions - especially grandiose.
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PROJECTION
• Perceiving and reacting to unacceptable inner impulses and derivatives as though they emanated from outside the self.
• Freudian Projection– Projective identification – connection of the self with that projected impulse
continues.
Examples:– Blaming– Clinical-Delusions – Paranoid personality.
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Acting out
• Expression of an unconscious impulses; gratifying impulses rather
than prohibiting them.
• Designed (often unconsciously or semi-consciously) to gain
attention.
• Can be destructive to self or others, and may inhibit the
development of more constructive responses to the feelings.
• Examples:
– Temper tantrums
– Rebellious behaviours
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INTROJECTION
• Unconscious internalization of the qualities of an object or person.
Example:
Identification with the aggressor.
• Stockholm syndrome.
• Depression.
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Hypochondriasis
Exaggerating for the purpose of evasion and regression.
Passive aggression
• Indirect aggression towards others through passivity, masochism and turning against the self.
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REGRESSION
• Effort to return to an earlier libidinal phase, so avoid tension and conflict of the current phase.
– A person may revert to immature behavior to ventilate feelings of frustration.
– Becomes a problem when used frequently to avoid adult situations.
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SCHIZOID FANTASY
• Withdrawal in self to resolve conflict and gratify frustrated wishes.
• Something which is not or cannot be real.
• Examples:
– Adolescence wish to fulfilling sexual daydreams.
– Middle-aged wish to be youthful, virile and alluring.
– Narcissistic personality disorder.
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Somatization
• Converting psychic derivatives into bodily
symptoms.
• Reacting with somatic rather than psychic
appearances.
• Unconscious rechanneling of repressed
emotions into somatic symptoms.
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REACTION FORMATION
• Converting an unacceptable impulse into its opposite.
– The original, rejected impulse doesn’t disappear.
– Persists, unconscious, in its original infantile form.
Brand Psychology book by Jonathan Gabay
REPRESSION
• Expelling or withholding an idea or feeling from consciousness
• Primary repression
• Refers to the curbing of ideas and feelings before they have attained
consciousness.
• Secondary repression
• Excludes from awareness what was once experienced at a conscious level.
Examples:
• Forgetfulness.
• Slip of tongue.
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RATIONALIZATION
• Ernest jones-contributed the term "rationalization" to psychoanalysis.
• Offering rational explanations to justify attitudes, beliefs, or unacceptable behaviour.
– Providing logical explanations for irrational behaviour motivated by unacceptable wishes.
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DISPLACEMENT
• Involves taking out frustrations, feelings, and impulses on people or objects that are less threatening.
• Punching cushions in anger.
• Bosses ‘snapping’ for no reason at employees.
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DISSOCIATION
• Involuntary splitting or suppression of mental function from rest of the personality.
• Allows expression of forbidden unconscious impulses without any accompanying sense of responsibility for actions.
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INTELLECTUALIZATION
• One of Freud's original defence mechanisms
– Employing intellectual processes to avoid
affective expressions or experiences.
• Intellectualization may accompany, but differs from
rationalization, which is validation of irrational
behaviour through clichés, stories, and simplified
explanation.
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UNDOING
• Unconsciously motivated actions which symbolically counteract unacceptable thoughts ,impulses or actions.
– Example :
• “Sorry for bumping into you.”
• Compulsive OCD.
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SEXUALIZATION
• Endowing an object or function with sexual significance that it didn’t previously possess.
• Can also refer to warding off anxieties associated with prohibited impulses or derivatives.
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EXTERNALIZATION
• Perceiving one’s personality, including impulses, conflicts, moods and attitudes in the external world.
• More general than ‘projection’.
• Example:
• A belligerent person perceives others as argumentative whilst believing him/her self to be blameless.
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INHIBITION
• conscious or unconscious constraint or curtailment of a
process or behaviour, especially of impulses or desires.
• Conscious inhibition is commonly present whenever
whenever two desires are in conflict.
• Examples:
• Writing blocks
• Eating delicious cakes, whilst dieting.
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COMPENSATION
• Unconscious tendency to deal with a fear or conflict by excessive effort in the opposite direction.
• Example:
• Excessive preoccupation with body building to counter inferiority.
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SPLITTING
• Viewing of self or others as either good or bad without considering the entire range of qualities in between.
• Example:
• Seeing all brands as greedy.
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SUPPRESSION
Deliberately trying to stop thinking about certain thoughts.
Brand Psychology book by Jonathan Gabay
ASCETICISM
• Eliminating the enjoyment of experiences by assigning moral values to specific pleasures.
• Gratification is derived from renunciation.
Brand Psychology book by Jonathan Gabay
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Available 2015