Human beings deal with varied negative emotions by
making use of defense mechanisms. Defense
mechanisms are subconscious coping techniques
that are used to lessen the intensity of anything that
is unpleasant, threatening, or unacceptable. A very
common defense mechanism that is used in everyday
life is that of displacement. Displacement comes
about when a person directs or displaces their
negative emotions, impulses, frustrations, and
reactions onto a less threatening subject in order to
avoid negative consequences.
In this following PsycholoGenie article, we will
understand the very interesting concept of
displacement in greater detail and give you examples
of the same.
What are Defense Mechanisms
self defense
It was Sigmund Freud who first proposed the concept
of defense mechanisms and went on to explain how
they were an integral part of a person's unconscious
psyche. He said that without the aid of these
mechanisms, a person would constantly be dealing
with varied levels of negative emotions in all their
intensity, which could cause irreparable damage to
his mental health.
In order to protect oneself from the direct onslaught
of these emotions, defense mechanisms act as sort of
buffers or shock absorbers to lessen the pain and aid
a person in dealing with the negativity.
What is Displacement
Displacement comes about when a person directs his
negative emotions and frustrations onto another, less
threatening subject. However, the subject/object that
the emotions are targeted towards is not the source
of the frustrations, he is simply chosen because he is
less threatening and less harmful. Displacement
occurs because a person anticipates negative
consequences if the negative reaction is directed
towards the source, which is why, a less-threatening
source is chosen.
For displacement to occur, even the slightest trigger
suffices to bring about this negative reaction towards
the target. Moreover, when studied objectively, the
intensity of the reaction is usually not justified by the
cause or trigger―which is relatively mild in
comparison to the reaction that comes about.
So, by using this defense mechanism, a person gets
rid of his negativity and rising toxic emotions by
directing them onto another person, and thereby
gains some form of mental peace back.
For example, say you're about to go meet a friend,
and right before you leave your apartment, you have
a tiff with your landlord, setting in a sour mood.
When you reach the meeting place, your friend has
still not arrived and is 15 minutes late. When she's
finally there, she explains that she was stuck in traffic
for the last 30 minutes. You then proceed to give her
a earful saying that she has no consideration for
anyone else's time except her own self.
This is displacement at play―where, in spite of being
backed by a genuine reason, you still give her a earful
because you cannot say the negative things to your
landlord with the fear of being evicted.
Displacement often plays itself out as a chain reaction
and does not usually stop at one incident. For
example, when you shout at your friend, the friend
will in turn get angry at her boyfriend, and the
boyfriend at a waiter and the waiter at a stray dog.
Thus, the chain reaction continues and only a slight
trigger suffices to bring about the reaction.
Examples of Displacement
The following are certain displacement psychology
examples that you can go through to understand this
concept more clearly.
Example 1
The math teacher shouts at you in front of the whole
class for not completing your homework. While
entering home after school, you almost trip over on
one of your little brother's cars and you hit him hard.
Since you could not have said anything to the teacher,
you come home and displace your anger and
frustration out on your little brother who cannot hit
you back with the same intensity as you can.
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Example 2
kicking door
You get shouted at by your mother for not taking out
the trash, you displace the anger by slamming the
door hard on your way out because you can't talk
back to your mother.
Example 3
Your boss shouts at you for not having kept a report
ready on time, you can't shout back at your boss
fearing you will lose your job. Once home, you get an
opportunity to take the frustration out on your
husband because he has forgotten to pick up the milk.
Displacement is one of the most common defense
mechanisms that is comes about very subconsciously.
Now that you know what this entails, it will be easier
for you to identify the occurrence of the same if ever
and whenever you're in a situation like this.
Repression and Defense
Mechanisms
Freud believed the id was a source of childish or
uncivilized thoughts and feelings, many of which (like
lust or hatred for parents) were unacceptable to the
ego. That made some sort of repression necessary.
Freud felt this was one of his greatest insights and
most original contributions. In a 1925
autobiographical essay, he wrote:
I named this process REPRES-SION; it was a novelty,
and nothing like it had ever before been recognized
in mental life.
Freud described repression as pushing things under
the surface or simply turning away. If an instinctual
urge was threatening in some way, it had to be
stopped, and the way to do this was not to think
about it.
If an unthinkable thought was buried deeply enough,
there was no possibility of acting on it, so it caused no
anxiety or difficulty. That happened (Freud thought)
if repression was successful. The conscious mind was
spared the pain or discomfort of confronting
dangerous and uncomfortable parts of the psyche.
But if repression is incomplete, or threatens to fail
because a person is reminded of the forbidden
impulses, the result may be anxiety or dread. The
instinctual urge or drive then behaved like a cork
held under water. It threatened to rise to the surface
unless a person exerted constant pressure to keep it
down.
What was repression, as Freud described it?
Recall that a core concept of Freudian psychology is
that of the libido (pronounced li-BEE-do). Freud saw
the libido as a general life energy, generated by the id,
sexual in origin, but expressed in many different
ways.
Freud believed repression tied up libidinal energy.
This was suggested by the metaphor of a cork held
under water.
Freud believed a person had to expend mental energy
to keep something repressed, particularly when the
repression was failing. Therefore, a person
repressing important things was likely to feel both
anxious (because of the threat) and depressed or
lacking in energy (because of having libidinal
energies tied up in repression).
How did the libido relate to repression?
If repression threatened to fail, Freud suggested, a
person would perform mental maneuvers to avoid
confronting an unacceptable thought or action. The
maneuvers are known collectively as defense
mechan-isms.
The concept of repression changed after Freud's
death. Psychologists interpreted the idea as
forgetting painful memories. That was not Freud's
conception, except at the very beginning of his career,
as Boag (2006) points out.
Freud started out with a "forgetting painful
memories" version of repression in the 1880s.
However, by the end of his career, Freud did not see
repression as avoiding painful memories. Now it was
about preventing the expression of forbidden drives
or instincts.
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Freud believed people had to repress "phantasies" or
wish-fulfillment ideas generated by the id.
("Phantasy" was a spelling adopted by Freud's
translators to refer to id impulses, not pleasant
daydream-type fantasies.) Murdering a parent or
lusting for a parent would be examples of id
phantasies.
If the urge from the id broke through into
consciousness, it might cause dangerous or
unacceptable behavior. That made repression
necessary. Again: Repression was directed at
censoring forbidden wishes and phantasies, not
actual memories.
This is not how repression is usually defined in
today's popular media. It is also not how repression
was defined in the scholarly literature about
repression over the last 20 or 30 years.
When Holmes (1994) asserted there was "no
evidence" for repression, he meant, "Research shows
that painful memories are no more likely to be
forgotten than other memories."
When Loftus and Ketchum (1994) wrote The Myth of
Repressed Memory, they were not referring to
forbidden id impulses. They were pointing out that
memories recovered in therapy are often inaccurate.
Defense Mechanisms
Freud's description of defense mechanisms can be
evaluated as insightful observations. No Freudian
theory is needed to understand mental gymnastics
aimed at avoiding unpleasant thoughts or conflicts.
Freud was a keen observer and identified many
interesting defense mechanisms. He said defense
mechanisms in general were aimed at protecting
pretenses of the ego.
A pretense is something we pretend or want to
believe about ourselves, for example, that we are
honest. A person might engage in a defense
mechanism like rationalization if they stole
something, to keep from seeing themselves as
dishonest.
Perhaps the simplest defense mechan-ism is denial–
refusing to admit the truth of something. Denial, like
many other defense mechanisms, is especially clear
in little children. A child breaks a vase in full view of
everybody and immediately exclaims, "I didn't do it!"
In adults, denial is common when a person suffers the
sudden and unexpected loss of a loved one. People
confronted with sudden death of a loved one
commonly say, "It can't be true." Psychiatrists who
work in Emergency Rooms of major hospitals see this
reaction so often that they expect it.
Denial is commonly seen in alcoholism. Alcoholics are
notorious for denying they have a problem when
everybody else can see it. Perhaps the same is true of
many other problems that are not pleasant to realize
about oneself.
What is denial? How do children show it? How is
rationalization distinguished from lying?
A common defense mechanism is rationalization.
Rationalization occurs when people construct false
explanations for their behavior, without realizing the
explanations are false.
As Freud described it, rationalization was supposed
to be an automatic self-protective reaction. It was
carried out by the unconscious part of the ego.
Therefore rationalization would be a defense
mechanism in the Freudian sense only when a person
is unaware of lying. This distinguishes rationalization
from ordinary deception, which occurs when people
know the truth but try to fool other people.
Rationalization probably happens all the time when
we try to explain behavior originating from
unconscious sources. One of the "pretenses of the
ego" is that we control our own behavior, so if our
behavior originates from outside con-scious control,
we will tend to rationalize it by explaining how we
intended it.
This was shown clearly by the split brain
experiments. A special apparatus could send
messages only to the (non talking) right hemisphere,
so the left hand would do something and the talking
part of the brain would not know why. But it would
confabulate an explanation instantly.
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In other words, the talking half of the brain would
always have an explanation for the activity of the left
arm, directed by the non-talking half of the brain, but
the explanation would be false. One could say, "This
prevents the discomfort of realizing half your brain is
out of communication with the other half" but these
patients were fully aware of their status as split-brain
patients.
More likely, rationalization is a habit gained from
long experience. We cannot possibly know all the
reasons a thought might pop into our heads. But we
need a narrative, an explanation, so we try to make
up something plausible. Either that or we give a non-
explanation like, "It just occurred to me."
The defense mechanism called intellec-tualization
occurs when a person adopts a cool, scientific
attitude toward something threatening to cause
emotional upset. A friend who taught gross anatomy
at a medical school told me how he saw it in action
every term.
Each first-year medical student had a cadaver to
work on, so the room looked like a morgue. But (he
explained) the students quickly learned to regard the
bodies as nothing but laboratory material for
dissection. Whether or not they realized it, this
professional attitude probably helped them combat
feelings of dread and fear.
Projection is a defense mechanism that occurs when
people avoid a negative evaluation of themselves by
seeing their own unpleasant thoughts or actions in
other people. A student who cheats will tell you
"everybody cheats." A man who cheats on his wife
acts genuinely surprised to find out some men are
faithful.
Many college students experience projection in the
context of a fading romance. The person who wants
to end the relationship accuses the other of "acting
funny" or "wanting to break up" when it is actually
the person who makes the accusation who feels that
way.
What is projection? What are common examples
of it?
Displacement is a defense mechanism in which
libidinal energy is supposedly redirected from a
desired (but unavail-able) goal to a substitute. One
girl found herself sleeping with a big stuffed dog–a
gift from her father–after she broke up with her
boyfriend. She even kissed the stuffed animal good
night. When she got back with her boyfriend, the
animal returned to the corner of her room.
Displaced aggression is another common variety of
displacement. Instead of killing a teacher who gives
you a bad grade (which Freud would probably
suspect as an id phantasy) one might kick a can or
punch a wall.
What is displacement, as Freud explained it?
Reaction formation is an intriguing defense
mechanism, if you accept Freud's logic. In reaction
formation a person defends against unacceptable
thoughts or impulses by converting them to their
opposite on the surface.
The ego thereby fortifies itself at its point of greatest
weakness. Freud said reaction formation has a
compulsive or excessive quality.
For example, a student once wrote an essay in which
he described, with shock and sorrow, having a fist
fight with his father, who he deeply resented for
abandoning his mother. The student peppered his
essay with statements about how much he loved his
father. The strong impression was that he was
struggling with that idea, fighting off the exact
opposite emotion.
What is reaction formation?
Sublimation is a defense mechanism that Freud
thought occurred when libidinal energy is channeled
into socially acceptable, approved activities. Freud
had a background in chemistry, where sublime
means to pass from a solid to a vaporous state.
The defense mechanism of sublimation causes earthy
id impulses to be channeled into refined and civilized
behavior. Alfred Adler called sublimation "the healthy
defense mechanism" because if it worked like Freud
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said, it produced socially beneficial outcomes for comic book or science fiction heroes, soap opera
humanity. characters, political parties, or favorite sports heros.

Why did Adler call sublimation "the healthy How might Freud explain a fanatical devotion to
defense mechanism"? comic books or sports teams?

Undoing is a ritualistic effort to undo damage and
reduce guilt over some action in the past. Nobody can
change the past, so the act of undoing is usually
symbolic.
An example of undoing occurs when a girl sends a
pleasant Valentine's Day card to an ex-boyfriend with
whom she broke up. The girl who sends the card feels
guilty about having hurt the other person's feelings.
The message is, "I am really not such a bad person."
A boy who received such a card thought his ex-
girlfriend was being sadistic, trying to make him hurt.
But Freud would probably say her unconscious
purpose was to convince herself that she was not
such a bad person.
Regression occurs when a person under stress
reverts to behavior characteristic of a younger age.
Under severe stress, people may curl up in the fetal
position like a tiny unborn baby. A less extreme form
of regression occurs when adults, under stress, show
childish behavior.
What is regression as Freud described it?
Are the defense mechanisms "real"? On a behavioral
level, they are familiar to most of us from everyday
experience. Freud attributed them to protecting the
pretensions of the ego, and it is true they are all the
result of some challenge, by definition.
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Reference:

What is the goal of "undoing"? Boag, S. (2006) Freudian repression, the common view, and pathological
science. Review of General Psychology, 10 74-86.

Isolation occurs when somebody takes a problem or
conflict and shuts it off in a corner of the mind,
isolating it from day to day thought processes. A
person who is using isolation may give no external
clue to the conflict, except for a tendency not to react
when you expect a reaction.
Freud, S. (1925/1959) An Autobiographical Study. London: Hogarth.
Holmes, D. S. (1994, June 4-6). Is there evidence of repression? Doubtful.
Harvard Mental Health Letter.
Loftus, E. & Ketcham, K. (1994). The Myth of Repressed Memory. New
York: St. Martin's Press.

Why might isolation be hard to detect in another

person?

A conversion reaction occurs when somebody

converts psychological problems into a physical
ailment. For example, a person who witnesses a
horrible incident may go blind for psychological
reasons, although the person's eyes are still good.

What is a conversion reaction?

See the story of Anna O. in Chapter 13 for many

examples of conversion reactions. (Today this is
called a somatization disorder.)

Identification is a defense mechanism that occurs

when a person avoids painful thoughts and emotions
by identifying with some symbolic sources of
strength. For example, people who are weak or have
troubled lives often become fanatically devoted to