Anxiety and Defense Mechanisms

 Freud and Anxiety

Freud (1923), saw personality (or Psyche) as formed of what he calls "id" (Latin of "it"), "ego" (Latin of "I"), and the "superego" which is related to conscience, parental rules, and society rules and ethics. 

The ego faces reality and deals with it. It also has to deal with the biological needs of the body represented by the "id", and to conform with and handle society issues represented by the "superego".

When the ego faces conflicting demands of the id (biological needs and desires), and the superego (societal rules, judgments, and restrictions).it might feel threatened, overwhelmed, and collapse under the weight imposed on it by this all.

This feeling signals that the ego safety and survival, and hence, the whole being safety and survival are endangered and threatened. This feeling is called anxiety

Freud mentioned three types of anxiety:

Realistic Anxiety:

We can also call it fear. It represents the natural fear we might feel when faced with a dangerous situation, as encountering a hungry lion in the wild.

Moral Anxiety:

When we feel threatened from within, from our internalized social world of superego. This is where feelings of guilt, shame, and fear of punishment comes from.

Neurotic Anxiety:

The fear of being overwhelmed by impulses of the id. You then might feel you're going to lose control over reality, lose temper, or even lose your entire mind.

Neurotic is the Latin word for nervous.

This is the type of anxiety which fascinated Freud most.

Ego Defense Mechanisms

The ego deals with demands of reality, the id, and the superego to the best it can do. But when anxiety becomes overwhelming, however, the ego defends itself by blocking impulses that are threatening to its integrity and wholeness or distorting them into more acceptable less threatening forms.

Freud, his daughter Anna, and his disciples, have discovered some of these mechanisms like denial, repression, intellectualization, displacement, projection, reaction formation, altruistic surrender, undoing, introjection, identification with the aggressor, regression, rationalization,  and sublimation.

Denial

When we face a situation that is far beyond our ability to deal with, we may deny the existence of the that situation all along. A very dangerous and subconscious process, as no one denies reality and get away with it for long. 

Anna Freud describes "denial in fantasy" When a child transforms his evil father into a loving teddy bear, or when a helpless child imagines himself a superhero.

Repression

Our Phobias could be repression of past traumas. Someone having irrational fears of swimming perhaps doesn't recall his experience of near drowning as a kid. Someone who cannot explain his fears from dogs doesn't remember that far day in his childhood when a dog bit him.

For it to be a true defense mechanism, it has to be completely unconscious, that's why our phobias appear irrational to us and others.

Intellectualization

Also called "isolation", is separating emotion from a difficult or threatening impulse. Treating something that should be a big deal as if it were not. Someone who is completely calm during an emergency situation, only to fall into pieces afterwards, when the situation is over.

Displacement

Id says, "I hate dad, he beats me."

Superego says, "but he's a great daddy."

Ego says, "all men suck."

She cant admit she hate her father, she hates all men instead. Or, he can't admit he hates his mother, he hates all women. He displaces his hatred to all women.

Turning against the self

Is a form of displacement directed against our own self. Anger, hatred, aggression, that we are supposed to feel toward someone else is displaced instead, unconsciously, into our own dear self. This was used by Freud to explain feelings of guilt, inferiority, and depression.

Depression as a form of anger we refuse to acknowledge, directed to the self, is a widely accepted concept.

Projection

Anna Freud called this "Displacement outward".

The tendency to see our own unacceptable desires in someone else.

This is the reverse of turning against the self. The desires are still there, but they are someone else's now. 

Altruistic Surrender

Some other form of projection that may, for the first glance, look the opposite, where the person attempts to fulfill his own needs, vicariously, through others.

The extreme example is the person who lives his whole life for another and through him.

Reaction Formation

 Anna Freud called it "believing the opposite". 

Changing an unacceptable impulse into its opposite. An abused child may run to the abusing parent, and instead of being angry, he showers him or her with love and affection.

Undoing

Magical gestures or rituals that are meant to cancel out unpleasant thoughts or feelings after they've already occurred. 

We normally do this consciously when we try to make amends for some rude behavior, but some do it defensively and unconsciously, not in the sense of amendment or asking forgiveness, but just to feel good about themselves after causing people around them too much pain and suffering. When others aren't fooled by their acts of cancelling, they go around telling people how they're surrounded by a bunch of ungrateful family members, for example, or friends, who never appreciate their good deeds.

Introjection

Or, sometimes called, "Identification"

Taking into your own personality characteristics of someone else, because doing so solves some emotional difficulties. A child imitating his parent, a teenage imitating her favorite celebrity. In doing so they tend to alleviate fears, feel stronger or more accepted, and building an identity.

This is the mechanism by which we develop superego.

Identification with the aggressor

A form of identification that represents adoption, not of positive or general traits, but of negative traits. If you are afraid of of someone, you can partially conquer this fear by becoming him.

Stockholm Syndrome

Is a more dramatic form of identification with the aggressor, when, after the hostage crises in Stockholm, captives were sympathizing with their captors.

Regression

Is to move back in psychological age under stress. When severely stressed or frightened, we sometimes behave childishly.

According to Freud, when we are overwhelmed with severe stress, we retreat to that time of life when we felt safe and secure.

Rationalization

The process of justification of attitudes, beliefs or behaviors that might otherwise be unacceptable by applying false justifying reasons.

Sublimation

Substitution of an impulse not accepted by superego or society with a more acceptable, socially appreciated one. Like sublimation of aggressive impulses through games and sports.

Freud thought defense mechanisms are all useful in protecting the ego from pressure of inner impulses and society. His followers thought some of them are useful as altruism and sublimation.