Vocabulary

Question 1

Unattainable or unacceptable goal, emotion, or object is replaced by one more attainable or acceptable.

Answer 1

Substitution

Question 2

Potentially maladaptive feelings or behaviors are diverted into socially acceptable, adaptive channels; e.g a person who has angry feelings channels them into athletics.

Answer 2

Sublimation

Question 3

Key mechanism; expressed clinically by amnesia or symptomatic forgetting serving to banish unacceptable ideas, fantasies, affects, or impulses from consciousness.

Answer 3

Repression

Question 4

Enables one to make up for real or fancies deficiencies; e.g. a person who stutters becomes a very expressive writer, a short man who assumes a cocky, overbearing manner.

Answer 4

Compensation

Question 5

Loved or hated external objects are symbolically absorbed within self (converse o projection); e.g., in sever depression, unconscious unacceptable hatred is turned towards self.

Answer 5

Introjection

Question 6

Primitive defense; attributing one’s disowned attitudes, wishes, feelings, urges to some external object; e.g. an example of a normal projection vs. a pathological projection would be believing a spouse is angry at the kids when one is angry at them self.

Answer 6

Projection

Question 7

Overestimation of an admired aspect or attribute or another, may be conscious unconscious.

Answer 7

Idealization.

Question 8

Repressed urge is expressed disguised as a disturbance of body function, usually of the sensory, voluntary nervous system (as pain, deafness, blindness, paralysis, convulsions, tics).

Answer 8

Conversion

Question 9

Deterioration or existing defenses

Answer 9

Decompensation

Question 10

A person uses words or actions to symbolically reverse or negate unacceptable thoughts, feelings, or actions; e.g a person compulsively washing hands to deal with obsessive thoughts.

Answer 10

Undoing

Question 11

Primitive mechanism in which psychic representation of a person (or parts of a person) is/are figuratively ingested.

Answer 11

Incorporation

Question 12

Third line of defense; not unconscious. Giving believable explication for irrational behavior; motivated by unacceptable unconscious wishes or b defenses used to cope with such wishes.

Answer 12

Rationalization

Question 13

A mental representation stands for some other thing, class of things, or attributes. this mechanism underlies dream formation and some other symptoms (such as conversion reactions, obsessions, compulsions) with a link between the latent meaning of the symptom and the symbol; usually unconscious.

Answer 13

Symbolization

Question 14

directing an impulse, wish or feeling toward a person or situation that is not its real object, thus permitting expression in less threatening situation; e.g. a man angry at his boss kicks the dog.

Answer 14

Displacement

Question 15

A defensive mechanism frequently used by persons with borderline personality organization in which a person attributes exaggerated negative qualifies to self or another. It is the split of primitive idealization.

Answer 15

Devaluation

Question 16

A process which enables a person to split mental functions in a manner that allows him to express forbidden or unconscious impulses without taking responsibility for the action, either because he is unable to remember the disowned behavior, or because it is not experienced at his own; e.g. pathologically expressed as fugue states, amnesia, dissociative neurosis or normally expressed as daydreaming.

Answer 16

Dissociation

Question 17

Defensive mechanism associated with borderline personality organization in which a person perceives self and others as “all good” or “all baby.” It is a process in which introjects or opposite qualify are kept apart resulting in ego weakness that cannot neutralize aggression. This process leads to a detective lack of impulsive control. Splitting serves to protect the good objects. A person cannot integrate the good and bad in people.

Answer 17

Splitting

Question 18

Person adopts addicts, ideas attitudes, behaviors that are opposites of those he harbors consciously or unconsciously; e.g., excessive moral zeal masking strong but repressed asocial impulses or being excessively sweet to mask unconscious anger.

Answer 18

Reaction Formation

Question 19

Primitive defensive; inability to acknowledge true significance of thoughts, feelings, wishes behavior, or external reality factors that are consciously intolerable.

Answer 19

Denial

Question 20

Defense to deflect hostile agression or other unacceptable impulses from another to self.

Answer 20

Turning against self.

Question 21

Universal mechanism whereby a person patterns himself after a significant other. Plays a major role in personality development, especially super ego development.

Answer 21

Identification

Question 22

Mastering anxiety by identifying with a powerful aggressor (such as an abusing parent) to counteract feelings of helplessness and to feel powerful oneself. Usually involves behaving like the aggressor; e.g. abusing others after one has been abused oneself.

Answer 22

Identification with the Aggressor.

Question 23

Unacceptable impulse, idea, act is separated from its original memory source, thereby removing the original emotional charge associated with it.

Answer 23

Isolation of Affect

Question 24

Emotional conflict is dealt with throughout actions rather than feelings; e.g. instead of taking about feeling neglected, a person with get into trouble to get attention.

Answer 24

Acting Out

Question 25

A form of projection utilized b person with borderline personality organization. For exam: Unconsciously perceiving other’s behavior as a reflection of one’s own identity.

Answer 25

Projective Identification

Question 26

Partial or symbolic return to more infantile patterns or reaction or thinking. Can be in service to ego;, dependency during illness.

Answer 26

Regression

Question 27

Loss of motivation to engage in (usually pleasurable) activity avoided because it might stir up conflict over forbidden impulses; e.g writing, learning, or work blocks or social shyness.

Answer 27

Inhibition