PSYC 217 Lecture Notes - Lecture 18: Defence Mechanisms, Childhood Amnesia, Midlife Crisis
Document Summary
Defence mechanisms: unconscious manoeuvres intended to minimize anxiety: repression: motivated forgetting of emotionally threatening memories or impulses = distressing internal experiences. We forget bc we want to forget. Infantile amnesia: the inability to remember anything prior to about the age of 3: denial: motivated forgetting of distressing external experiences. A mother who loses a child in a car accident insists that her child is alive: regression: the act of returning psychologically to a younger, and typically simpler and safer age. Midlife crisis buying new cars to seem younger, going to clubs again to seem younger: reaction-formation: transformation of an anxiety-provoking emotion into its opposite. The observable emotion we see actually reflects the emotion opposite to the one the persona feels unconsciously. A woman who is sexually attracted to a coworker experiences hatred and revulsion toward him: projection: unconscious attribution of our negative characteristics to others.
