The mechanisms of defense indicate, in Psychanalyse, the processes used by the Me from the adaptive point of view.
Mechanisms of defense psychoanalyze
The mechanisms of defense are not conscious strategies. They represent psychic processes aiming at denying oneself Pulsion S considered to be irreconcilable with Ego, or dangerous, as well as affects related to these impulses.Ego defends oneself especially against the anguish.
The individual unconsciously sets up means to deform reality and to reject certain emotions except conscience. Thus, a mechanism of defense is then used to decrease the anxiety or depresses it felt by this last; it thus relieves temporarily.
Generally, their use is banal, flexible and normal. One sees their contribution to the character traits then. However, a rigid use, unsuited to the situations and constant characterizes the personality disorders then.
The mechanism of defense, such as it is initially theorized, applies to unconscious Représentation S. In this case, the Symptom which form is Compromise-formation (or " Reaction-formation ")between the conscious desires and the unconscious desires.
Among the normal symptoms , let us quote the Rêve, the Lapsus the parapraxes.
But certain mechanisms imply on the contrary a failure of the Refoulement. The concept of defense extends beyond the register from the neurosis. According to the psychoanalysis, a mechanism can mean a more or less massive, and more or less harmful defense for the subject which employs it.
Sublimation
Sublimation is the capacity to satisfy the impulse without achieving the original goal. The sexual desire can find discharge without there being sexuality. Sublimation is with work in the social processes, like the Art or the Sports.Among defenses, sublimation occupies a particular status, since it does not require repression. A conscious impulse can find sublimation. It thus is not about a defense strictly speaking.
The Sublimation is one of the four destinies of the impulse at Freud. It is thus not a mechanism of defense of ego strictly speaking.
Psychopathology of the mechanisms of defense
However, when the conflict between the various psychic authorities (That, Me, Ego ideal, Surmoi) or between some of these authorities and reality intensifies, or if the mechanisms too rigid or are badly adapted, psychic operation loses its flexibility and the mechanisms of defense are expressed then in the form of psychopathological behaviors.
Mechanism of high adaptive level:
Humor
it is highest of the achievements of defenses. Answer underlining the amusing and ironic aspects conflicts, makes it possible to take a distance compared to the things
Sublimation
The impulse is channeled towards another way (cultural)
Anticipation
Answer to the perception of a future event. Allows about preparing there
Repression
Transitory answer to the conflict (or stress) while avoiding thinking of the problem, the confrontation with the problem will be done at the one right moment. (different from avoidance or setting to the variation)
Altruism
Answer to the conflict (or stress) by devotion to the need for the others. To distinguish from the self-sacrifice and of the pseudo altruism, show.
Autoobservation
Reflection on its own thoughts, acts, motivations.
Affiliation
Search of assistance and support of others when one saw a situation which generates anguish.
Assertion of oneself
Answer to the emotional conflict or stress while communicating without turning feelings and thought, in a way which is neither aggressive nor manipulator.
Mechanisms nevrotic
Repression
It is the first mechanism described by Sigmund Freud, in 1895. It is about an active process which maintains out of the conscience the unacceptable Représentation S. It is organized on three levels:-
Primal repression: one antiquated time of the history of the subject, bearing inaugural repression on a particularly awkward representation (seduction by an adult, images of the primitive scene…) without this representation not becoming conscience. This primary education repression determines to some extent the future orientation of other repressions.
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repression itself: it consists of a double movement. On the one hand, primary education repression attracts the representations which are close for him and on the other hand, the authorities interdictrices (Super-ego combined with Ego) push back these representations in the Inconscient.
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return of the repressed: the representations which were driven back in the Inconscient can bind between them. On the occasion, certain representations - deteriorated, disguised - can reappear in the conscious one in the form of dreams or phantasms (a traditional and salutary return of driven back made possible by the need for a valve), under the form of Lapsus or parapraxes, and finally, in the form of symptoms then announcing the failure of the process of repression.
Symptom-formation
Insulation
It is Sigmund Freud which in 1894 described for the first time the operation of this mechanism of defense. The insulation makes it possible to completely separate the representation of the Affect, which is found free. The private representation of any association can then remain in the conscious one. The insulation, as well as other mechanisms, is with work after the failure of a repression.
Displacement
Following the insulation, the released affect can be moved on another representation.In certainly a way, this defense of the Primary process with work in is very manifest content and conscious. For example, the somatic Conversion in the hysterical Névrose is a specific displacement of an affect on the body. Repression is then partly missed because the symbolic system of this symptom makes it possible to go up by the process of Régression until the representation inconsiliable and driven back.
Displacement is the mechanism of defense privileged in the Obsessional neurosis (or neurosis of constraint) where the sexual representation inconsiliable is substituted for another on the associative ways (even Associationisme or English Empirisme).
Introjection
Introjection is the passage of the outside to the inside: the neurotic adapts something of pleasant which he recognizes outside.
Undoing
The subject does not assume certain apparent representations at the time of acts or thoughts. It then all will implement to consider that these acts or thoughts never existed. It is a very regressive mechanism of defense because it relates not on a representation but to an act even, i.e. on reality. One finds examples of cancellation in certain rites animists and much of obsessional activities: the acts of obsessional, repeated inlassablement aim at the cancellation of other acts or thoughts.
Condensation
The work of condensation is particularly apparent at the time of the dream. Only one representation will replace several others of them. It is what makes us say to the alarm clock, for example: “I was in my apartment, but it was not really my apartment”. It is also with work in the parapraxes, the word games…
Turning round upon the subject's own self
This instinctual destiny consists in turning over against oneself the Pulsion. It is particularly visible in the secondary Masochisme of an obsessional neurosis when the person turns over against her even her own aggressiveness by car punishments, or car mutilations.This instinctual destiny thus modifies the object of the impulse in the clean person.
It is also called aggression-passive.
Inversion in its opposite
The inversion in its opposite is another instinctual destiny, with repression, the inversion on the clean person and sublimation. The original impulse is then reversed on the level of its goal.
Recall of the determinants of the Impulse: Source, Push, Goal and Object.
Example: Sadism in masochism, retention in expension…
Anticathexis
For Freud, according to the economic point of view, the anticathexis is a bound energy on a representation in the préconscient-conscious system (GCV-Cs) which will make failure with the representation driven back in the unconscious one (Ics) which will seek to return to the conscience. Thus it creates for itself an equal power struggle.The energy used in the anticathexis of another representation in the GCV is that which pushed the representation driven back initially; it was thus reinvested (moved) on another representation, which one calls the anticathexis.
The invested representation of energy resulting from repression, will become a substitute representation, in the case of the conversion hysteria (by investment of a body representation), just like of the phobia (by the substitute formation) or an obsessional neurosis (by the reaction-formation).
Denial
The denial is the refusal to admit a truth: the neurotic will say at all, on the contrary , where it feels threatened.Freud gives a particularly relevant example of it: a neurotic reports to him that he dreamed of a woman. He says more to remember the identity of this woman, but to be certain in any case who it is not a question of her mother. Such a compromise-formation at the same time is denied a representation (incestueux dream) and reveals it.
Identification
The identification is an elaborate mechanism . It consists in being recognized as someone else, to be caught for him . Ego seizes itself in an image which it finds with the outside.Nevertheless, from many different identifications are distinguished by Freud itself.
To open the field, there is also the “mimetic Désir” of the model-obstacle of Rene Girard who claims to face Freud on the ground of the desire and Marx on that of the value.
Reaction-formation
The reaction-formation leads the subject to act contrary to what it wishes. For example, a desire of dirtiness, making following the anal erotism, will lead to a compulsion to wash the hands.
Substitute formation
The representation of a struck desire of interdict is driven back in the Inconscient. Only point of view of the pleasure principle, there thus exists a lack that the Me will try to compensate, which it will do in substituent with this initial Représentation of a desire, another representation which discreetly (by the means of associations of ideas) will evoke the initial desire. This mechanism is for example with work at the time of fright mystical: seemingly, it there has nothing sexual in this demonstration but is however preserved a Affect related to the sexual pleasure. It is one of the modes of return of the repressed (see low “Repression”).
Compromise-formation
The compromise-formation constitutes it also a mode of return of the repressed but this last will be sufficiently deformed not to be recognized. There will be compromising between the unconscious desires (interdicts) and prohibitions. This mechanism is particularly apparent in the dreams, in certain symptoms (the systematic need for a counter-phobic object), like in certain artistic works.
Regression
Vis-a-vis certain conflituelles relations, the subject seeks to solve the conflict while returning to a early Stade. Its Libido will turn over at a stage where it had found a Gratification.
Identification with the aggressor
Mechanism describes by Sándor Ferenczi and Anna Freud. Its most banal expression is found in the childish plays: to play the wolf, doctor… To become that which makes fear makes it possible to remove it. They are in the case evoked “a simple” inversion the roles. This mechanism can be more radical and consist of a true introjection of the dangerous object.
Different mechanisms
Projection
To allot to others its own reasons or unacceptable impulses.
Cleavage of Ego
Ego does not manage to maintain its unit. Rather than to maintain a dialog, an internal conflict, it is divided into several fragments which do not communicate between them.For example, in the case of the Fetishism, the fetishist is cleaved: part of itself recognizes the Angoisse of castration, another part does not recognize it.
The splitting of the ego is characterized, in the psychosis, by the multitude of personalities which it generates, result extremely different from the Dédoublement of personality.
The neurotic, it is necessary to admit, has recourse to the splitting of the ego, but in a way largely less marked. Isn't repression, resulting in the formation from unconscious which does not communicate with the conscious one, a form of cleavage?
Splitting of the object
Just as me can be to it split in several ends, the instinctual object can not be recognized more in its integrity, but separate: there will be splitting of the object. For Bion, the pathological projective identification can lead to the formation of odd objects.
Unfolding of the Images
Refusal
The refusal can be included/understood like psychotic equivalent of the denial.
Projective identification
Mechanism of defense identified and described by Melanie Klein and which is with work during the schizo-paranoid Position. The child projects himself fantasmatiquement inside the mother to exert his absolute power there (it also fantasmée): possession even destruction of the body of the mother, controls objects previously projected in the mother (penis of the father, other children…). It is necessary that the mother, on an unconscious level, can accept this type of phantasm. If a rigid interdict is posed by the mother against these phantasms, there will be réintrojection in the child of partial objects and threatening (worrying center, avid vagina) - as many objects which will impoverish the Me.
Imagination
The subject seeks satisfaction in itself by creating an imaginary life, imaginary friends, etc This type of mechanism is often observed in the personalities of the schizoid type is a solitary and strange personality.
References
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