Example Of Defence Mechanism

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When the id's desires come into conflict with the superego's admonishments, the ego may use any one or more of a series of defence mechanisms to deal with the struggle. Defence mechanism are psychological strategies used by the unconscious mind to distort, deny, or manipulate reality in order to defend against feelings of anxiety and unacceptable impulses to maintain one's self-schema. Sigmund Freud was one of the first founder of the concept of defence mechanism. Defence mechanism should not be confused of being as a conscious behaviour as they are completely unconscious and the person is completely unaware when using the defence mechanism (McLeod). The circumstances and the frequency with which the mechanism is used can determine if the defence …show more content…

In this essay I will choose some of these defence mechanism to explain them and give example of each on how we make use of these defence mechanisms to diagnose ourselves or the people that we have observed.
A common defence mechanism that the human brain uses to deal with the struggle is called regression. Regression is when a person is faced with unacceptable thoughts, stress, or impulses, they revert to an earlier stage of development or a movement back in psychological time takes place. For example, my niece starts to suck her thumb or maybe even wet her bed sometimes when she knows that she has to visit a doctor or spend some time in the hospital. This shows that when my niece is stressed, she uses regression to deal with the struggle as she goes back to an earlier stage of …show more content…

Denial basically involves being unaware of external events and refusing to accept fact or reality. It involves acting as if a painful event, feeling or thought did not exist. The person refuses to experience any situation that is just too much to handle. Being a characteristic of early childhood development, denial is considered as the most primary of the defence mechanism. Many people use denial in their everyday lives to avoid dealing with painful feelings or areas of their life they don’t wish to admit. For example, a relative of mine gets arrested and crashes his car very regularly due to his bad habit of drinking and driving, but still they force themselves into believing that they do not have a problem with alcohol. Here we can see that they are not ready to accept reality as it is too painful for them to accept it because of their

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