Stress

1
Stress

• The Definition
• and
• Coping Mechanism

2
Definition

• No definition
• Individual accept
• Difficult to address
• No common agreement
• Difficult to measure
• Perceptional, personal

3
Physical, mental or emotional strain or tension
4
A condition or feeling experienced when a person
perceives that demands exceed the personal and
social resources the individual to mobilize
5
Bad or Good

• Distress

6
Bad or Good

• Eustress

7
Stress Response
Fight or flight
8
Coping Mechanism Type

• Adaptive mechanisms That offer positive help.
• Attack mechanisms That push discomfort onto
  others.
• Avoidance mechanisms That avoid the issue.
• Behavioral mechanisms That change what we do.

• Cognitive mechanisms That change what we think.
• Conversion mechanisms That change one thing into
  another.
• Defense mechanisms Freud's original set.
• Self-harm mechanisms That hurt our selves.

9
Compartmentalization

• Description
• Compartmentalization is a 'divide and conquer'
  process for separating thoughts that will
  conflict with one another. This may happen when
  they are different beliefs or even when there are
  conflicting values.

10
Compartmentalization

• Example
• A person who is very religious and also a
  scientist holds the opposing beliefs in different
  cognitive compartments, such that when they are
  in church, they can have blind faith, whist when
  they are in the laboratory, they question
  everything.
• There is sometimes honor amongst thieves, where
  together they act as honest people. Thieves also
  may be very honest in their family lives.
• My son is an angel in school and a demon at home.
  

11
Compartmentalization

• Discussion
• Compartmentalizing is building walls to prevent
  inner conflict. To some extent, we all
  compartmentalize our lives, living different
  value sets in the different groups to which we
  belong. Thus we may be ruthless at work but
  loving at home. We rationalize this by explaining
  that 'that's just the way it is'.

12
Compensation

• Description
• Where a person has a weakness in one area, they
  may compensate by accentuating or building up
  strengths in another area. Thus when they are
  faced with their weakness, they can say 'ah, but
  I am good at...', and hence feel reasonably good
  about the situation.
• Compensation may also occur in ad hoc situations,
  for example where a person does not get a joke,
  they may compensate by hearty laughter or by
  feigning disinterest. 

13
Compensation

• Example
• People who feel inferior because they are short
  may train hard to be very strong. 
• People who are not intellectually gifted may turn
  their attention to social skills.

14
Compensation

• Discussion
• Compensation lets us avoid the discomfort of
  feeling inferior by counterbalancing this with a
  feeling of superiority in an area which is close
  enough to the uncomfortable situation such that
  where it appears, the compensation automatically
  is accessed. 
• Compensation is usually relatively harmless
  unless the area of compensation is harmful in
  some way, for example where a person who is
  socially limited compensates with aggression.

15
Displacement

• Description
• Displacement is the shifting of actions from a
  desired target to a substitute target when there
  is some reason why the first target is not
  permitted or not available.
• Displacement may involve retaining the action and
  simply shifting the target of that action. Where
  this is not feasible, the action itself may also
  change. Where possible the second target will
  resemble the original target in some way. 
• Phobias may also use displacement as a mechanism
  for releasing energy that is caused in other
  ways.

16
Displacement

• Example
• The boss gets angry and shouts at me. I go home
  and shout at my wife. She then shouts at our son.
  With nobody left to displace anger onto, he goes
  and kicks the dog.
• A man wins the lottery. He turns to the person
  next to him and gives the person a big kiss.
• A boy is afraid of horses. It turns out to be a
  displaced fear of his father.
• A religious person who is sexually frustrated
  focuses their attention on food, becoming a
  gourmet.
• A woman, rejected by her boyfriend, goes out with
  another man 'on the rebound'.

17
Displacement

• Discussion
• Displacement occurs when the Id wants to do
  something of which the Super ego does not permit.
  The Ego thus finds some other way of releasing
  the psychic energy of the Id. Thus there is a
  transfer of energy from a repressed
  object-cathexis to a more acceptable object.
• Displaced actions tend to be to into related
  areas or subjects. If I want to shout at a person
  but feel that I cannot, then shouting at somebody
  else is preferred to going to play the piano,
  although this may still be used if there is no
  other way I can release my anger.

18
Displacement

• Discussion
• Displacements are often quite satisfactory and
  workable mechanisms for releasing energy more
  safely.
• Dreams can be interpreted as the displacement of
  stored tensions into other forms (dreams are
  often highly metaphoric).
• Displacement is one of Freud's original defense
  mechanisms.

19
Idealization

• Description
• Idealization is the over-estimation of the
  desirable qualities and underestimation of the
  limitations of a desired thing. We also tend to
  idealize those things that we have chosen or
  acquired.
• The opposite of Idealization is Demonization,
  where something that is not desired or disliked
  has its weak points exaggerated and its strong
  points played down.

20
Idealization

• Example
• A teenager in awe of a rock star idealizes their
  idol, imagining them to have a perfect life, to
  be kind and thoughtful, and so on. They ignore
  the star's grosser habits and rough background.
• A person has bought an exotic foreign holiday.
  They dream about how perfect their vacation will
  be, not thinking about insects, heat, crime etc. 
• I buy a sports car and look admiringly at its
  sleek lines. I ignore the fact that it drinks
  fuel and is rather uncomfortable.
• A person in a religious cult idealizes the cult
  and its leader, assuming they are perfect and
  that the outside world is very poor in comparison.

21
Idealization

• Discussion
• Idealizing allows us to confirm our decisions as
  being wise and intelligent as we play up the good
  things we have chosen and downplay detracting
  factors. We thus cope with potentially dissonant
  thoughts that we have made a wrong decision.
• It also makes us feel better to pay attention to
  things we desire that spend our time thinking
  about less pleasant things.
• Playing up the good things and pushing down the
  bad things also creates a contrast that makes the
  good things seem even better.

22
Identification

• Description
• A person changes apparent facets of their
  personality such that they appear to be more like
  other people. It may be to change to an idealized
  prototype.
• This generally happens as a subconscious process,
  the person consciously as well as subconsciously
  wants to be like the other person.
• Areas of identification may include external
  elements, such as clothing and hair styles (which
  may be chosen without consciously realizing the
  influences that are at play) as well as internal
  factors such as beliefs, values and attitudes.

23
Identification

• Example
• A girl dresses like her friends, as much because
  she likes the garb as any conscious desire to be
  like them.
• A person in a meeting adopts similar body
  language to their manager, and tend to take the
  same viewpoint.
• Two people in a party meet and each finds the
  other very attractive. Between them they both
  adjust their views and postures to be more
  similar to one another.

24
Identification

• Discussion
• By 'becoming another person', I am effectively
  escaping myself and my woes. If I believe that
  person to be superior to me, I both escape my
  inferiority and move more towards my ideal.
  Identification thus helps preserve the ego whilst
  concealing inadequacies.
• It is said that 'Imitation is the sincerest form
  of flattery' and identifying with another person
  is likely to make that person find me more
  attractive, not only from the flattery viewpoint
  but also because we generally trust people who
  are like us.
• The reverse is also true, and I will tend to
  avoid such things of people that I dislike.

25
Intellectualization

• Description
• Intellectualization is a 'flight into reason',
  where the person avoids uncomfortable emotions by
  focusing on facts and logic. The situation is
  treated as an interesting problem that engages
  the person on a rational basis, whilst the
  emotional aspects are completely ignored as being
  irrelevant.
• Jargon is often used as a device of
  intellectualization. By using complex
  terminology, the focus becomes on the words and
  finer definitions rather than the human effects.

26
Intellectualization

• Example
• A person told they have cancer asks for details
  on the probability of survival and the success
  rates of various drugs. The doctor may join in,
  using 'carcinoma' instead of 'cancer' and
  'terminal' instead of 'fatal'.
• A woman who has been raped seeks out information
  on other cases and the psychology of rapists and
  victims. She takes self-defense classes in order
  to feel better (rather than more directly
  addressing the psychological and emotional
  issues).
• A person who is in heavily debt builds a complex
  spreadsheet of how long it would take to repay
  using different payment options and interest
  rates.

27
Intellectualization

• Discussion
• Intellectualization protects against anxiety by
  repressing the emotions connected with an event.
  It is also known as 'Isolation of affect' as the
  affective elements are removed from the
  situation.
• Freud believed that memories have both conscious
  and unconscious aspects, and that
  intellectualization allows for the conscious
  analysis of an event in a way that does not
  provoke anxiety.
• Intellectualization is one of Freud's original
  defense mechanisms.

28
Performing Rituals

• Description
• Rituals are pre-defined sequences of activity.
  When faced with a difficult situation we may
  indulge in some form of ritualized activity
  rather than face the situation just now. In this
  way, we may avoid the problem for a few seconds
  and sometimes for much longer.
• These rituals can be small physical actions, long
  scripts of speech or more complex combinations of
  behavior.

29
Performing Rituals

• Example
• When faced with being dismissed from a job, a
  person wrings their hands and talks about how
  hard they work and how events conspire against
  them. It is an excuse they have used a number of
  times before.
• When asked a question for which I do not have an
  immediate answer, I clear my throat and say
  something like 'I'm glad you asked that
  question...'.

30
Performing Rituals

• Discussion
• Rituals take time to perform. This puts off an
  uncomfortable immediate future. This may give us
  enough time to gather our thoughts and calm down
  a little.
• Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) often takes
  this pattern to extreme, endlessly and needlessly
  repeating a ritualized behavior such as washing
  or counting things to put off anxious thoughts or
  actions indefinitely.

31
Sublimation

• Description
• It is the transformation of unwanted impulses
  into something less harmful.
• This can simply be a distracting release or may
  be a constructive and valuable piece of work.
• Sublimation channels this energy away from
  destructive acts and into something that is
  socially acceptable and/or creatively effective.
• Many sports and games are sublimations of
  aggressive urges.

32
Sublimation

• Example
• I am angry. I go out and chop wood. I end up with
  a useful pile of firewood. I am also fitter and
  nobody is harmed.
• A person who has an obsessive need for control
  and order becomes a successful business
  entrepreneur.
• A person with strong sexual urges becomes an
  artist.
• A man who has extra-marital desires takes up
  household repairs when his wife is out of town.

33
Sublimation

• Discussion
• Sublimation is probably the most useful and
  constructive of the defense mechanisms.
• Freud believed that the greatest achievements in
  civilization were due to the effective
  sublimation of our sexual and aggressive urges
  that are sourced in the Id and then channeled by
  the Ego as directed by the Super ego. In his more
  basic musings, he considered such as painting as
  a potentially sublimated desire to smear one's
  own fasces.

34
Substitution

• Description
• Take something that leads to discomfort and
  replace it with something that does not lead to
  discomfort.
• This 'something' may be range of items, including
  a behavior, a context or a physical item.

35
Substitution

• Example
• Rather than making a difficult phone call, I call
  my daughter for a chat.
• Instead of putting up a mirror, I put up a
  photograph of myself when I was younger.

36
Substitution

• Discussion
• Substitution is a form of avoidance, as we avoid
  difficulty by substitution comfort. It is not the
  same as displacement, which moves a behavior from
  one target to another.
• We often use this simple replacement strategy to
  put off things we would rather not do. It often
  appears something like two similar magnetic poles
  approaching -- the close they come to one
  another, the stronger is the force to push them
  apart.

37
Undoing

• Description
• Undoing is performing an act to 'undo' a previous
  unacceptable act or thought.
• It is often a form of apology, although it may
  not include the actual act of saying that you are
  sorry.
• Confession is a form of undoing, including that
  done in a church to a priest or a secret
  admission to a close friend.

38
Undoing

• Description
• An act or communication which partially negates a
  previous one. Examples (1) two close friends
  have a violent argument when they next meet,
  each act as if the disagreement had never
  occurred. (2) when asked to recommend a friend
  for a job, a man makes derogatory comments which
  prevent the friend's getting the position a few
  days later, the man drops in to see his friend
  and brings him a small gift.

39
Undoing

• Example
• Lady Macbeth compulsively washes her hands after
  committing murder.
• A man who has been unkind to his wife buys her
  flowers (but does not apologize).
• A person who has barged in front of others in a
  queue holds the door open for them.
• A teenager who has been rather noisy tidies the
  room without having to be asked.

40
Undoing

• Discussion
• When we do (or even think) something that is
  outside our values we feel shame and hence a need
  to make right what we have done that is wrong.
• Undoing can be a form of apology. By reversing
  former actions the person is tacitly admitting
  they were wrong.

41
Acting Out

• Description
• 'Acting out' means literally means acting out the
  desires that are forbidden by the Super ego and
  yet desired by the Id.
• A person who is acting out desires may do it in
  spite of their conscience or may do it with
  relatively little thought. Thus the act may be
  being deliberately bad or may be thoughtless
  wrongdoing.
• Where the person knows that they are doing wrong,
  they may seek to protect themselves from
  society's eyes by hiding their action. They may
  also later fall into using other coping
  mechanisms such as Denial to protect themselves
  from feelings of shame.

42
Acting Out

• Example
• An addict gives in to their desire for alcohol or
  drugs.
• A person who dislikes another person seeks to
  cause actual harm to them.

43
Acting Out

• Discussion
• Acting out may be considered as actually not
  coping, although it is handling the pressure by
  giving in to one side, whereas most other coping
  mechanisms seek to handle the pressure of not
  giving in.
• A person who is acting out may decide to 'repent
  at leisure', seeking the pleasure of the now by
  mortgaging future contentment. This may be caused
  by cognitive short-sightedness or by contrarian
  tendencies.
• Acting out is an opposite of sublimation, whereby
  a desired behavior is displaced into an
  acceptable activity.

44
Fight-or-Flight

• Physical changes
• Our senses sharpening. Pupils dilate (open out)
  so we can see more clearly, even in darkness. Our
  hairs stand on end, making us more sensitive to
  our environment (and also making us appear
  larger, hopefully intimidating our opponent).
• The cardio-vascular system leaping into action,
  with the heart pump rate going from one up to
  five gallons per minutes and our arteries
  constricting to maximize pressure around the
  system whilst the veins open out to ease return
  of blood to the heart.

45
Fight-or-Flight

• Physical changes
• The respiratory system joining in as the lungs,
  throat and nostrils open up and breathing
  speeding up to get more air in the system so the
  increased blood flow can be re-oxygenated. The
  blood carries oxygen to the muscles, allowing
  them to work harder. Deeper breathing also helps
  us to scream more loudly!
• Fat from fatty cells and glucose from the liver
  being metabolized to create instant energy.

46
Fight-or-Flight

• Physical changes
• Blood vessels to the kidney and digestive system
  being constricted, effectively shutting down
  systems that are not essential. A part of this
  effect is reduction of saliva in the mouth. The
  bowels and bladder may also open out to reduce
  the need for other internal actions (this might
  also dissuade our attackers!).
• Blood vessels to the skin being constricted
  reducing any potential blood loss. Sweat glands
  also open, providing an external cooling liquid
  to our over-worked system. (this makes the skin
  look pale and clammy).

47
Fight-or-Flight

• Physical changes
• Endorphins, which are the body's natural pain
  killers, are released (when you are fighting, you
  do not want be bothered with pain-that can be
  put off until later.)
• The natural judgment system is also turned down
  and more primitive responses take overthis is a
  time for action rather than deep thought.

48
Fight-or-Flight

• Modern effects
• Unfortunately, we are historically too close to
  the original value of this primitive response for
  our systems to have evolved to a more appropriate
  use of it, and many of lifes stresses trigger
  this response. The surprises and shocks of modern
  living leave us in a permanent state of arousal
  that takes its toll on our bodies, as described
  by Hans Selye's General Adaptation Syndrome.
• It also happens when a creative new idea makes us
  feel uncertain about things of which we
  previously were sure. The biochemical changes in
  our brain make us aggressive, fighting the new
  idea, or make us timid, fleeing from it.

49
Fight-or-Flight

• Freezing
• A third alternative response which often comes
  before fight or flight is freezing. This is often
  used by prey as they seek not to be noticed by
  predators.
• Humans also will pause at signs of danger. By
  freezing, you also cut down on noise and visual
  change and so may hear or see things around you
  more clearly.

50
Passive Aggression

• Description
• A person who uses passive-aggressive method to
  cope with stresses on them does this by
  'attacking' others through passive means. Thus
  the aggressive intent is cloaked by the passive
  method.
• When a person is asked to do something which they
  want to avoid for some reason (such as priority
  of other work). By appearing to agree but not
  making any real commitment, they can avoid the
  action. A more severe form of passive aggression
  is to agree to commitments and then not do
  anything to fulfill them. A toned down version is
  to do the minimum possible whilst putting on a
  grand show of appearing to be fully engaged.

51
Passive Aggression

• Example
• A person at a meeting is asked to complete a task
  with which they feel unable to comply. They talk
  at great length about it, discussing how
  important it is and all the various complexities
  that would be involved. At the end of the
  meeting, they still have not agreed to do
  anything.
• A sales person uses a persuasive sales patter.
  The customer agrees that this is just what they
  want, but when it comes to signing the order,
  they find reasons why they cannot buy today.
• A change manager asks people to change what they
  do. They agree but do not actually do what they
  agreed to do.

52
Passive Aggression

• Discussion
• Often used by subordinates who are unable to
  directly oppose their superiors, and so need to
  resort to subtle and indirect means.
• This can also happen in a culture where it is
  impolite to say 'no' to a person's face. So
  people say yes, even when they mean no. 'Yes' in
  some cultures can mean 'I understand' but not 'I
  will comply with your request for action'.
• Passive aggression may be rooted in childhood,
  where the impotent child cannot fight back
  against parents, teachers and other authority
  figures, and so resorts to truculence and
  withdrawal of commitment.

53
Projection

• Description
• When a person has uncomfortable thoughts or
  feelings, they may project these onto other
  people, assigning the thoughts or feelings that
  they need to repress to a convenient alternative
  target.
• Projection may also happen to obliterate
  attributes of other people with which we are
  uncomfortable. We assume that they are like us,
  and in doing so we allow ourselves to ignore
  those attributes they have with which we are
  uncomfortable.

54
Projection

• Description
• Neurotic projection is perceiving others as
  operating in ways one unconsciously finds
  objectionable in yourself.
• Complementary projection is assuming that others
  do, think and feel in the same way as you. Others
  can do things as well as you.
• Projection also appears where we see our own
  traits in other people, as in the false consensus
  effect. Thus we see our friends as being more
  like us than they really are.

55
Projection

• Example
• I do not like another person. But I have a value
  that says I should like everyone. So I project
  onto them that they do not like me. This allows
  me to avoid them and also to handle my own
  feelings of dislike.
• An unfaithful husband suspects his wife of
  infidelity.
• A woman who is attracted to a fellow worker
  accuses the person of sexual advances.

56
Projection

• Discussion
• Projecting thoughts or emotions onto others
  allows the person to consider them and how
  dysfunctional they are, but without feeling the
  attendant discomfort of knowing that these
  thoughts and emotions are their own.
• Ego perceives dysfunction from 'somewhere' and
  seeks to locate that somewhere. The super ego
  warns of punishment if that somewhere is
  internal, so the ego places it in a more
  acceptable external place - often in convenient
  other people.

57
Projection

• Discussion
• It turns neurotic or moral anxiety into reality
  anxiety, which is easier to deal with.
• Projection is a common attribute of paranoia,
  where people project dislike of themselves onto
  others such that they believe that most other
  people dislike them.
• Projection helps justify unacceptable behavior,
  for example where a person claims that they are
  sticking up for themselves amongst a group of
  aggressive other people.

58
Projection

• Discussion
• Empathy, where a person experiences the perceived
  emotions of others, may be considered as a
  'reverse' form of projection, where a person
  projects other people onto themselves.
  Identification may also be a form of reverse
  projection.
• Projection is one of Freud's original defense
  mechanisms.

59
Reaction Formation

• Description
• Reaction Formation occurs when a person feels an
  urge to do or say something and then actually
  does or says something that is effectively the
  opposite of what they really want. It also
  appears as a defense against a feared social
  punishment.
• A common pattern in Reaction Formation is where
  the person uses excessive behavior, for example
  using exaggerated friendliness when the person is
  actually feeling unfriendly.

60
Reaction Formation

• Example
• A person who is angry with a colleague actually
  ends up being particularly courteous and friendly
  towards them.
• A man who is gay has a number of conspicuous
  heterosexual affairs and openly criticizes gays.
• A mother who has a child she does not want
  becomes very protective of the child.
• An alcoholic extols the virtues of abstinence.

61
Reaction Formation

• Discussion
• A cause of Reaction Formation is when a person
  seeks to cover up something unacceptable by
  adopting an opposite stance.
• Freud called the exaggerated compensation that
  can appear in Reaction Formation overboarding
  as the person is going overboard in one direction
  to distract from and cover up something unwanted
  in the other direction.

62
Reaction Formation

• Discussion
• Reaction Formation goes further than projection
  such that unwanted impulses and thoughts are not
  acknowledged.
• Extreme patterns of Reaction Formation are found
  in paranoia and obsessive-compulsive disorder
  (OCD), where the person becomes trapped in a
  cycle of repeating a behavior that they know is
  somehow wrong.
• Reaction formation is one of Freud's original
  defense mechanisms.

63
Trivializing

• Description
• When we are faced with a disappointment over
  something that is important to us, we are faced
  with the problem of having our expectations and
  predictions dashed.
• As a response, we make light of the situation,
  telling ourselves that it is not that important
  anyway, thus trivializing what was previously
  important. 
• One way that we trivialize is to make something a
  joke, laughing it off.

64
Trivializing

• Example
• A girl rejects the advances of a boy. He tells
  his friends that she isn't that pretty anyway.
• A friend trips up and falls on his face. He gets
  up laughing.
• A person in a meeting is faced with a powerful
  counter-argument. They trivialize it by saying
  that it is nothing new. 
• I lose a lot of money gambling. I tell myself
  that I didn't need it anyway.

65
Trivializing

• Discussion
• The size of discomfort is proportional to the
  size of the problem. Trivializing makes small
  something that is really big, and hence allows me
  to ignore it.
• This is a common mechanism that is socially
  acceptable in many situations, particularly when
  we are applying it to ourselves, where it may
  appear to be modesty or not taking oneself too
  seriously. 

66
Trivializing

• Discussion
• Trivializing may also be used as an attack,
  making small something that others find
  important. This is used when that something makes
  us feel uncomfortable in some way such that we
  feel unable to cope with it just now.

67
Avoidance

• Description
• In avoidance, we simply find ways of avoiding
  having to face uncomfortable situations, things
  or activities. The discomfort, for example, may
  come from unconscious sexual or aggressive
  impulses.
• Avoidance may include removing oneself physically
  from a situation. It may also involve finding
  ways not to discuss or even think about the topic
  in question.

68
Avoidance

• Example
• I dislike another person at work. I avoid walking
  past their desk. When people talk about them, I
  say nothing.
• My son does not like doing homework. Whenever the
  subject of school comes up, he changes the topic.
  He also avoids looking directly at me.

69
Avoidance

• Discussion
• Avoidance is a simple way of coping by not having
  to cope. When feelings of discomfort appear, we
  find ways of not experiencing them.
• According to the dynamic theory, avoidance is a
  major defense mechanism in phobias.
• Procrastination is another form of avoidance
  where we put off to tomorrow those things that we
  can avoid today.

70
Denial

• Description
• Denial is simply refusing to acknowledge that an
  event has occurred. The person affected simply
  acts as if nothing has happened, behaving in ways
  that others may see as bizarre.
• In its full form, it is totally subconscious, and
  sufferers may be as mystified by the behavior of
  people around them as those people are by the
  behavior of the sufferers.

71
Denial

• Example
• A man hears that his wife has been killed, and
  yet refuses to believe it, still setting the
  table for her and keeping her clothes and other
  accoutrements in the bedroom.
• People take credit for their successes and find
  'good reason' for their failures, blaming the
  situation, other people, etc.
• Alcoholics vigorously deny that they have a
  problem.

72
Denial

• Discussion
• It is a form of repression, where stressful
  thoughts are banned from memory.
• Denial can pay a high cost in the psychic energy
  needed to maintain the denial state.
• Repression and Denial are two primary defense
  mechanisms which everybody uses.
• Children find denial easier, as with age, the ego
  matures and understands more within.
• Denial is one of Freud's original defense
  mechanisms.

73
Fantasy

• Description
• When we cannot achieve or do something that we
  want, we channel the energy created by the desire
  into fantastic imaginings.
• Fantasy also provides temporary relief from the
  general stresses of everyday living.

74
Fantasy

• Example
• A man who is attracted to a beautiful woman but
  who realizes that she is unattainable fantasizes
  about seducing her (or being seduced by her).
• A boy who is punished by a teacher creates
  fantasies of shooting the teacher (remember the
  movie 'If').
• A student who flunks university exams imagines
  that they could have passed the exams 'if they
  really wanted to'.

75
Fantasy

• Discussion
• Fantasy can range from harmless imaginings to
  delusional obsessions, where a person loses track
  of reality as they switch for long periods into
  their fantasy world. For most of us, however, it
  is a welcome and temporary relief and adds
  harmless spice to our everyday worlds.

76
Rationalization

• Description
• When something happens that we find difficult to
  accept, then we will make up a logical reason why
  it has happened.
• The target is usually something that we have
  done, such as being unkind to another person or
  something causes us discomfort, such as when a
  friend is unkind to us.
• We rationalize to ourselves. We also find it very
  important to rationalize to other people, even
  those we do not know.

77
Rationalization

• Example
• A person evades paying taxes and then
  rationalizes it by talking about how the
  government wastes money.
• A man buys a expensive car and then tells people
  his old car was very unreliable, very unsafe,
  etc.
• A parent punishes a child and says that it is for
  the child's 'own good'.
• I trip and fall over in the street. I tell a
  passer-by that I have recently been ill.

78
Rationalization

• Discussion
• When a person does something of which the moral
  super ego disapproves, then the ego seeks to
  defend itself by adding reasons that make the
  action acceptable to the super ego. Thus we are
  able to do something that is outside our values
  and get away with it without feeling too guilty.
• This is related to our need to explain what
  happens. Our need for esteem also leads us to
  rationalize to others.

79
Rationalization

• Discussion
• Rationalization happens with bullies and victims.
  The bully rationalizes what they have done by
  saying that their victim 'deserved it'.
• Self-Serving Bias uses rationalization when it
  leads to taking more credit for success than we
  deserve and blame others for our failures.
• Rationalization is one of Freud's original
  defense mechanisms.

80
Regression

• Description
• Regression involves taking the position of a
  child, rather than acting in a more adult way in
  response to stressful situations, with greater
  levels of stress potentially leading to more
  overt regressive acts.
• Regressive behavior can be simple and harmless,
  such as sucking a pen (as a Freudian regression
  to oral fixation), or may be more dysfunctional,
  such as crying or using petulant arguments..

81
Regression

• Example
• A wife refuses to drive a car even though it
  causes the family much disorganization. A result
  of her refusal is that her husband has to take
  her everywhere.
• A child suddenly starts to wet the bed after
  years of not doing so (this is a typical response
  to the arrival of a new sibling).
• A college student carefully takes their
  teddy-bear with them (and goes to sleep cuddling
  it).

82
Regression

• Discussion
• Regression is a form of retreat, going back to a
  time when the person felt safer and where the
  stresses in question were not known, or where an
  all-powerful parent would take them away.
• In a Freudian view, the stress of fixations
  caused by frustrations of the persons past
  psychosexual development may be used to explain a
  range of regressive behaviors.

83
Regression

• Including
• Oral fixation can lead to increase smoking or
  eating, or vocal actions including verbal abuse.
• Anal fixation can lead to anal retentive
  behaviors such as tidying and fastidiousness. OCD
  can occur including those that lead to cruelty,
  extreme orderliness, or miserliness
• Phallic fixation can lead to conversion hysteria
  (the transformation of psychic energy into
  physical symptoms) which is disguised sexual
  impulses.

84
Repression

• Description
• Repression involves placing uncomfortable
  thoughts in the subconscious mind.
• The level of 'forgetting' in repression can vary
  from a uncomfortable thoughts to a high level of
  amnesia.
• Repressed memories do not disappear. They can
  have an accumulative effect and reappear as
  un-attributable anxiety or dysfunctional
  behavior.
• They may appear through subconscious means and in
  altered forms, such as dreams or slips of the
  tongue ('Freudian slips').

85
Repression

• Example
• A child who is abused by a parent later has no
  recollection of the events, but has trouble
  forming relationships.
• A woman who found childbirth particularly painful
  continues to have children (and each time the
  level of pain is surprising).
• An optimist remembers the past with a rosy glow
  and constantly repeats mistakes.
• A man has a phobia of spiders but cannot remember
  the first time he was afraid of them.
• A person greets another with 'pleased to beat
  you' (the repressed idea of violence toward the
  other person creeping through).

86
Repression

• Discussion
• Repression (sometimes called motivated
  forgetting) is a primary ego defense mechanism
  since the other ego mechanisms use it in tandem
  with other methods. Thus defense is often
  'repression ....'.
• Repression is unconscious. When we deliberately
  and consciously try to push away thoughts, this
  is suppression.
• In Freudian terminology, repression is the
  restraining of a cathexis by an anti-cathexis.

87
Repression

• Discussion
• It is not all bad. If all uncomfortable memories
  were easily brought to mind we would be faced
  with a non-stop pain of reliving them.
• Repression is one of Freud's original defense
  mechanisms and, to him, the goal of treatment,
  i.e., of psychoanalysis, was to bring repressed
  memories, fears and thoughts back to the
  conscious level of awareness.

88
Symbolization

• Description
• Symbolization is a way of handling inner
  conflicts by turning them into distinct symbols.
• Symbols are often physical items, although there
  may also be symbolic acts and metaphoric ideas.

89
Symbolization

• Example
• A soldier explains his decision to join the army
  as 'defending the flag'.
• A man asks for the woman's hand, symbolizing the
  'hand in marriage'.

90
Symbolization

• Discussion
• Symbols are often displacements of deeper
  desires, where the person has turned an unwanted
  or stressful thought into a concrete or
  metaphoric thing.
• Dreams are highly symbolic, and Freud made
  significant efforts to interpret them, believing
  that understanding the symbols would lead him and
  his patients to uncover the original root causes
  of their problems.

91
Aim Inhibition

• Description
• Sometimes we have desires and goals that we
  believe or realize that we are unable to achieve.
  In aim inhibition, we lower our sights, reducing
  our goals to something that we believe is
  actually more possible or realistic.
• Aim inhibition may well include elements of
  rationalization and displacement, although the
  prime force is the creation of achievable goals.

92
Aim Inhibition

• Example
• A person who sexually desires another person but
  is unable to fulfill that desire (for example the
  other person is married) convinces themselves
  that all they really want is to be friends.
• A person who wants to be a veterinarian does not
  get sufficient exam grades, so becomes a vet's
  assistant instead.

93
Aim Inhibition

• Discussion
• The gap between wanting and not having causes the
  tension that aim inhibition seeks to relieve.
• Aim inhibition is generally not particularly
  harmful and can be quite helpful in enabling us
  to live lives that would otherwise feel
  unfulfilled. It can also lead us to accept less
  than we might potentially otherwise gain.

94
Altruism

• Description
• Avoid your own pains by concentrating on the
  pains of others. Maybe you can heal yourself and
  feel good by healing them and helping them to
  feel good.

95
Altruism

• Example
• A self-made millionaire who grew up in poverty
  sets up a charitable foundation and gains great
  pleasure from how it helps others get out of the
  poverty trap. She receives social accolade and
  public recognition for her good deeds, which she
  carefully and modestly grateful.

96
Altruism

• Discussion
• Altruism and other pro-social action may seem
  rather strange as a 'coping' behavior. According
  to the dictionary it is 'unselfish concern for
  the welfare of others'. Yet beneath the surface
  we all have our ills and seek to cope with them
  as best we can. If we have strong values about
  being unselfish and putting others first,
  altruism is a perfect mechanism for avoiding, and
  perhaps even curing our own problems.

97
Altruism

• Discussion
• Direct altruism may be found when a person seeks
  to help others with the same problem that the
  person has, thus seeking an indirect way of
  effecting a direct cure on oneself. Altruism may
  also be less direct and aimed at helping others
  in a range of circumstances. This may appear when
  the more direct approach would still be too
  painful.

98
Attack

• Description
• 'The best form of defense is attack' is a common
  saying and is also a common action, and when we
  feel threatened or attacked (even
  psychologically), we will attack back.
• When a person feels stressed in some way, they
  may lash out at whoever is in the way, whether
  the other person is a real cause or not. They may
  also attack inanimate objects.

99
Attack

• Example
• Someone criticizes me in a discussion. I angrily
  criticize them back. 
• A person is having problems with their computer.
  They angrily bang the keyboard.

100
Attack

• Discussion
• Attack appears as a subconscious response in the
  fight-or-flight reaction, where we unthinkingly
  respond to a sudden threat with an aggressive
  response.
• Attack is often also used in displacement, where
  aggressive feelings are redirected onto a
  substitute target.

101
Dissociation

• Description
• Dissociation involves separating a set of
  thoughts or activities from the main area of
  conscious mind, in order to avoid the conflict
  that this would cause.
• Dissociation can also appear as taking an
  objective, third-person perspective, where you
  'go to the balcony' and look down on the
  situation in order to remove emotion from your
  perspective (this is sometimes called
  'dissociation of affect').

102
Dissociation

• Example
• A religious person preaches kindness to all, yet
  is cruelly strict to children, without realizing
  that there is a conflict between the two.
• A politician seeks legislation on government
  integrity, yet also has some shady private
  dealings. When challenged, they seem surprised
  that these are conflicting interests.

103
Dissociation

• Discussion
• Dissociation is of practical value where it keeps
  separate different parts of your life. However,
  as with the examples above, it can lead to moral
  dilemmas and professional suicide.
• Dissociation occurs in conditions such as
  hysteria and schizophrenia. In hysteria, a large
  piece of the conscious mind is separated, whilst
  in schizophrenia there are a number of smaller
  portions separated from one another.
• Dissociation is very close to compartmentalization
  .

104
Introjection

• Description
• Introjection occurs as a coping mechanism when we
  take on attributes of other people who seem
  better able to cope with the situation than we do.

105
Introjection

• Example
• I have to give a presentation but feel scared. I
  put on the hat of Abraham Lincoln and imagine I
  am confidently giving an important address to the
  nation.
• A child is threatened at school. They take on the
  strong-defender attributes that they perceive in
  their father and push away the bully.
• A business leader sets high moral standards
  within the company. Many others follow her lead.

106
Introjection

• Discussion
• We often use admired and respected others for the
  models from which to draw out introjected
  qualities.
• When we introject aspects of another person, it
  is possible that we also bring in attributes that
  are less helpful as we take on their persona.
  Thus a person taking on the strength of a more
  senior manager may also take on unwanted
  aggression and distain.

107
Somatization

• Description
• Somatization occurs where a psychological problem
  turns into physical and subconscious symptoms.
• This can range from simple twitching to skin
  rashes, heart problems and worse.

108
Somatization

• Example
• A policeman, who has to be very restricted in his
  professional behavior, develops hypertension.
• A worried actor develops a twitch.

109
Somatization

• Discussion
• When the subconscious mind is suffering from a
  problem which is not addressed and cannot be
  considered, it grabs attention by attacking the
  physical body.
• This can have useful consequences, for example, a
  person who is overstressing themselves may get a
  physical problem that forces them to slow down.

110
Somatization

• Discussion
• The symptoms created can be a problem for normal
  doctors, as there is no physical cause of the
  problem.
• The reverse effect can happen where a placebo
  actually causes a person to recover.

111
Suppression

• Description
• This is where the person consciously and
  deliberately pushes down any thoughts that leads
  to feelings of anxiety. Actions that take the
  person into anxiety-creating situations may also
  be avoided.
• This approach is also used to suppress desires
  and urges that the person considers to be
  unworthy of them. This may range from sexual
  desires to feelings of anger towards other people
  for whatever reason.

112
Suppression

• Example
• An older man has sexual feelings towards a
  teenager and quickly suppresses the thought.
• I want to kick the living out of an idiot at
  the office. Instead, I smile at them and try to
  feel sorry for their Freudian plight.
• I am about to take a short-cut down an alleyway.
  There are some people down there. I decide to
  take the longer, but more 'interesting' route.

113
Suppression

• Discussion
• By avoiding situations or thoughts that lead to
  anxiety, the person minimizes their discomfort.
  However, as the feelings are still held in the
  subconscious, they continue to gnaw and create a
  sense of underlying and wearying low-level
  discomfort.
• For example, a person has been unkind to another
  and then avoids thinking about it, as this would
  lead to uncomfortable feelings of shame and the
  dissonance of knowing they had acted outside of
  common human values.
• Suppression is conscious. Repression is
  subconscious.

114

• Description
• Conversion as a defense mechanism occurs where
  cognitive tensions manifest themselves in
  physical symptoms. The symptom may well be
  symbolic and dramatic and it often acts as a
  communication about the situation. Extreme
  symptoms may include paralysis, blindness,
  deafness, becoming mute or having a seizure.
  Lesser symptoms include tiredness, headaches and
  twitches.

115

• Example
• A person's arm becomes suddenly paralyzed after
  they have been threatening to hit someone else.

116
Conversion

• Discussion
• Conversion is a subconscious effect that can be
  as scary for the person as it is for those around
  them. It is different from psychosomatic
  disorders where real health changes are seen
  (such as the appearance of ulcers). It also is
  more than malingering, where conscious
  exaggeration of reported symptoms are used to
  gain attention.

117
Defense Mechanisms

• Sigmund Freud describes how the Ego uses a range
  of mechanisms to handle the conflict between the
  Id, the Ego and the Super ego, which is why these
  mechanisms are often called 'Ego defense
  mechanisms'. 

118
Defense Mechanisms

• Anxiety and tension
• Freud noted that a major drive for most people is
  the reduction in tension, and that a major cause
  of tension was anxiety. He identified three
  different types of anxiety.

119
Defense Mechanisms

• Reality Anxiety
• This is the most basic form of anxiety and is
  typically based on fears of real and possible
  events, such as being bitten by a dog or falling
  from a ladder.
• The most common way of reducing tension from
  Reality Anxiety is taking oneself away from the
  situation, running away from the dog or simply
  refusing to go up the ladder.

120
Defense Mechanisms

• Neurotic Anxiety
• This is a form of anxiety which comes from an
  unconscious fear that the basic impulses of the
  ID (the primitive part of our personality) will
  take control of the person, leading to eventual
  punishment (this is thus a form of Moral
  Anxiety).

121
Defense Mechanisms

• Moral Anxiety
• This form of anxiety comes from a fear of
  violating values and moral codes, and appears as
  feelings of guilt or shame.

122
Defense Mechanisms

• When anxiety occurs, the mind first responds by
  an increase in problem-solving thinking, seeking
  rational ways of escaping the situation.
• If this is not fruitful (and maybe anyway), a
  range of defense mechanisms may be triggered. In
  Freud's language, these are tactics which the Ego
  develops to help deal with the Id and the Super
  Ego.

123
Defense Mechanisms

• All Defense Mechanisms share two common
  properties
• They often appear unconsciously.
• They tend to distort, transform, or otherwise
  falsify reality.
• In distorting reality, there is a change in
  perception which allows for a lessening of
  anxiety, with a corresponding reduction in felt
  tension.

124
Freud's Defense Mechanisms

• Denial
• Displacement
• Intellectualization
• Projection
• Rationalization

• Reaction Formation
• Regression
• Repression
• Sublimation

125
Self-Harming

• Description
• The person physically deliberately hurts themself
  in some way or puts themselves at high risk of
  harm.
• From harmlessly tapping one's head ('I'm so
  stupid') to drawing one's own blood and acting in
  reckless, near-suicidal ways. Self-harm is
  generally considered to be more about the more
  extreme end of this spectrum, where sustained
  bodily harm is caused.