Mental Health Nursing I
NURS1300
Defense Mechanisms Handout
Defense Mechanisms
Repression
Denial
Suppression
Rationalization
Intellectualization
Identification
Introjection
Compensation
Reaction formation
Displacement
Projection
Conversion
Undoing
Dissociation
Regression
Sublimation
Definition
Unconscious and involuntary forgetting of painful
ideas, events, and conflicts
Unconscious refusal to admit an unacceptable idea or
behavior
Voluntary exclusion from awareness of anxietyproducing feelings, ideas, and situations
Attempts to make or prove that one’s feelings or
behaviors are justifiable
Using only logical explanations without feelings or an
affective component
A conscious or unconscious attempt to model oneself
after a respected person
Unconsciously incorporating wishes, values, and/or
attitudes of others as if they were your own
Covering up for a weakness by overemphasizing or
making up a desirable trait
A conscious behavior that is the opposite of an
unconscious feeling
Discharging pent-up feelings to a less threatening
object
Blaming someone else for one’s difficulties or placing
one’s unethical desires on someone else
The unconscious expression of intrapsychic conflict
symbolically through physical symptoms
Doing something to counteract or make up for a
transgression or wrongdoing
The unconscious separation of painful feelings and
emotions from an unacceptable idea, situation, or
object
The personality loses developmental achievements
and reverts to an earlier level of behavior
Transformation and channeling of unacceptable
impulses, desires, and behaviors into socially
accepted behaviors