Psychological Defence Mechanisms

Pushing material out of consciousness

• Is the most significant of the mechanisms

• Threatening impulses are repressed into the unconscious: they don't disappear but the individual is unaware of them. However, they can emerge as symtoms of anxiety or other problems.

Reverting back to childhood

Reacting in the opposite way to real emotions

Channel into socially acceptable behaviour

Projecting own shortcomings onto others

Refusing to accept it happened

• When an individual, child or adult, refuses to accept that a particular incident has happened

• EG, the surviving partner of a long and happy marriage may continue to act as though their husband or wife was still alive

Anger displaced onto a more acceptable target

Removing emotional development