By the end of each day we accumulate a whole baggage of some unmet needs. In order to protect the psyche from feelings of incompleteness or trauma, our behavior is regulated by special mechanisms that are to some extent specific to each individual. However, numerous studies of the mechanisms of psychological protection of the individual show that its functions are rather contradictory. While they help a person to adapt in their own inner world, psychological protection often worsens his fitness for the external (social) environment.
Methods of psychological defense
Let us dwell on the characteristics of the main methods of psychological defense:
- Compensation or an unconscious attempt to overcome shortcomings. And both real and imaginary. This is an unconscious mechanism associated with our desire to achieve a certain status. Examples of this mechanism of psychological defense are quite common: remember popular blind singers or maimed artists. Sometimes, however, a similar method can be expressed is not entirely acceptable. So, for example, one disabled person will succeed at the Paralympic Games, and the other will compensate for the defectiveness with excessive aggression.
- Sublimation. This is the name for switching unwanted impulses (aggression, unsatisfied sexual energy) into other forms of activity more relevant in society. For example, aggression can sublimate in different sports, etc. According to Freud, sublimation, as a mechanism of psychological defense, is the substitution of sexual energy by other (non-sexual) forms and goals. It is the energy of attraction that is most susceptible to the effect of sublimation .
- Isolation is a mechanism of psychological protection of the individual, in which a person separates his feelings from an understanding of what is happening. Thanks to this mechanism, for example, a doctor can abstract himself from the suffering of the patient, while maintaining coolness during the operation, and the rescuer will be assembled, caring for those who still need help.
- Negation is one of the first mechanisms of psychological defense of the individual. So, as a child, we hid from monsters under the blanket, so that they ceased to exist in our (imaginary) reality. In adult life, negation is most often used during crisis situations, when we face death, for example.
- Regression. The most vivid example is the behavior of the first child, in the case of the appearance of a second child. Often the first children begin to behave like small children to cope with a psychological trauma. Those. there is an unconscious return to the earlier level of adaptation.
- Projection. In this case, we notice or endow other objects with those thoughts or desires that we reject in ourselves. "He does not notice a speck in his eye," - just about this case.
In addition to the above, there are such mechanisms of psychological defense as intellectualization , displacement , replacement or reactive formation . In different situations, our psyche chooses different functions, but one can dominate the transformation of negative information. There are even special tests, according to the results of which you will determine which mechanisms of psychological protection use most often.