Psych 2B03
Jasmyn Lee
Part IV: The Hidden World of the Mind: The Psychoanalytic Approach
Chapter 11: The Workings of the Unconscious Mind: Defenses and Slips
Defense Mechanisms – the techniques the ego uses to keep certain thoughts and impulses hidden in order to avoid anxiety
o Not always effective
Paraplexes – commonly known as “Freudian Slips”; thoughts, words and actions that occasionally leak out; say something
you didn’t mean to say, do something against your better judgment
o Provide important clues about the activities of the unconscious part of the mind
o Freud believed that the ego permits the expression of prohibited thoughts and feelings on purpose that allows the
ordinarily forbidden to be enjoyed mechanism by which this is accomplished is humor or wit
Humors action, statement or joke allows an impulse or feeling ordinarily seen as inappropriate to be enjoyable or
acceptable
Anxiety
Anxiety From Psychic Conflict
Three aspects of reality: things we want, things that are possible and things that are morally right
Three psychic structures of the mind that battle each other
o Id – impulses; generates wants
o Superego – provides moral judgment
o Ego – tries to figure out rational thing to do
Psychic Conflict – occurs when a mind battles itself (id, ego, superego); result is anxiety
Compromise Formation – the ego trying to satisfy both the id and superego (at least a little)
o Believed by modern psychologists (ego psychologists) to be the most important function of the ego
Realistic Anxiety
Anxiety generated by the real world
Terror Management theory – many of our thought processes and motivations are based on an effort to deal with and avoid
thinking about the fact that we will all die due to our mortality,
o Tom Pyszczynski, Jeff Greenberg and Sheldon Solomon (1997)
Many sources of anxiety; relationships, performance in school, career aspirations, any threat to self esteem
Keep anxiety within bounds; do not go to either extreme
o Too little anxiety, person may fail to sensibly handle problems
o Too much anxiety – person can become completely nonfunctional
o Eg/ Avoid anxiety, even if we distort reality; being realistic about ones chances in life can lead to depression;
people who are optimistic (even unrealistic) are happier and experience better mental health wrong
Anxiety is a sign that something is not right; if we avoid feeling anxious, we might avoid dealing with the
underlying problem
Defense Mechanisms
Anna Freud created an inventory of unconscious tools of psychological defense from the unconscious part of the ego
Denial
Refusing to acknowledge the source of anxiety, or failing to perceive it in the first place
Effective in the short run; can lead to a serious lack of reality
Primary purpose; to keep an individual from being overwhelmed by the initial shock, as psychological resources are
mustered to do something more permanent about it
Eg/ when checking an exam mark and find out she failed, says “NO!” checks again later in a calmer frame of mind
People are likely to take credit for successes, but blame failures on external circumstances or other people
Persistent denial may be a sign of serious psychopathology
o Eg/ alcoholism; have you ever tried telling an alcoholic that she has a drinking problem?
Repression
Banishing the past from your present awareness; keeps problematic impulse of the id out of consciousness and action
Involves less outright negation of reality than does denial
o Not denying that something exists; you just don’t think about it
Can result from conscious effort – some research indicates that trying not to think about something now, may prevent you
from accessing that information in memory later
1 Psych 2B03
Jasmyn Lee
Elaborate secondary protection from anxiety-arousing stimuli – anything related to or that may remind you of anxiety-
producing stimuli, is pushed into the unconscious
o Repression causes you to forget what you did, but sometimes also forget other things that might remind you of
what you did
o Eg/ student who resents parents; may end up forgetting names of roommates parents, or to relay the phone
message from roommates parents to roommate
If the feeling, memory or impulse is successfully repressed, then you are defended against the anxiety it would cause
Ego must oppose the force of the id with an equal amount of its own energy
o Ego has limited amount of psychic energy that it takes away from the id
o Every forbidden feeling, memory or impulse has a certain amount of id energy forcing it toward consciousness
and behavioural expression
If the ego runs low on energy or tried to defend too many impulses at once, the forbidden impulses can make its way to
consciousness – result; you feel anxiety
o Eg/ mild-mannered man that absorbed insults and humiliation for many years; defenses fail and he goes on a
murderous rampage
o Eg/ severe shortage of free psychic energy can lead to depression; the mind preoccupied with keeping certain
thoughts and memories out of awareness has less processing capacity left to deal with anything else
Reaction Formation
Keeps forbidden thoughts, feelings and impulses out of awareness and action by instigating their opposites; builds a safety
margin, ensuring that the impulse never reaches consciousness or action
Used on very dangerous or strong forbidden impulses
If individuals are concerned that they might have an unacceptable trait, they might seek to display the opposite trait
Eg/ unconscious homosexual impulses; may cause “gay bashing”
Eg/ Sibling Rivalry – when a new baby is brought home, the older sibling hates the baby; when the older sibling discovers
the parents are protective of the baby and harming the baby is disapproved of, sibling learns to repress hate, says “I love
my new baby sister!”
Behaviour driven by reaction formation may not look quite right
Eg/ women completed questionnaires to measure the degree of “sex guilt” then showed erotic images; women who
scored lower on sex guilt were found to be more aroused than women who scored high on sex guilt
Eg/ men completed questionnaire to measure homophobia, then showed videotapes of homosexual activity; men who
scored lower on homophobia were more aroused than those who scored higher
Projection
Protects against unwanted impulses by causing a behaviour that, at first, appears to be opposite; attributing to somebody
else a thought or an impulse that is feared in oneself
Eg/ People who doubt own intelligence may say that they’re surrounded by morons to make themselves feel better
Eg/ participants took a personality test and were told (falsely) that their scores indicated a certain bad trait; they then
were to watch a person on videotape and rate that persons traits – participants rated that person worse than themselves
on the trait on which they received negative feedback
Rationalization
Concocting a seemingly rational case for why you did something
Trivialization – convincing yourself that your shortcomings or regrettable actions don’t matter
o Eg/ stealing form employer; rationalizing that what you stole wont be missed
Cognitive Dissonance – negative emotion when experimenters induce them to express opinions that are really not their
own
Intellectualization
Turning the feeling into a thought; turn a heated, anxiety-provoking issue into something cool, abstract and analytical
o May involve developing a technical vocabulary that allows discussion of horrifying things without using everyday,
emotionally arousing language
Eg/ A colonel talking about war without using the words, kill, die, suffer, bleed – instead they analyze maps and charts to
tell an interesting story
Eg/ Surgeon; reluctant to talk about pain (rather, discomfort) or death (rather, expire) – needs to do this in order to do the
surgery
Cost to intellectualization
o Eg/ Colonel might forge that his decision to kill people
2 Psych 2B03
More
Less
