Defense mechanisms and coping
Prof. Dr. DOINA COZMAN
• The term “defense” was first used by Sigmund
Freud in 1894 in the writing “Defense
psychoneuroses”.
• In 1926, Sigmund Freud defines defense
mechanisms in the writing “Inhibitions, symptoms
and anxiety”: techniques employed by the Ego in order to
solve internal conflicts.
• His daughter Anna Freud further assesses 10
defense mechanisms in the work “Defense
mechanisms of the Ego” (1936)
Definitions
•Both S. Freud and A. Freud use the term “defense
mechanism” in a restrictive manner, for all the processes
that have the same unique purpose: to protect the Ego
against instinctual drives
Characteristics:
•Their exclusive target is (according to psychoanalists)
blocking inner drives, not external traumatic events (they only
appear between Id and Ego, not between Ego and external
reality).
•They are post-emotional and have a hierarchy according to degree of
maturity (a mechanism is more mature if it is more effective
in blocking instrinctual pressures of the Id).
Anna Freud
• regression
• repression
• reaction formation
• isolation
• dissociation
• projection
• introjection
• moral masochism
• defensive denial
• sublimation
• clivage
• counterinvestment
• denegation
• identification
• identification with the
aggressor
• projective identification
• intellectualization
• removal
• rationalization
• daydreaming
• refusal of reality
• apathic withdrawal
• humour
• M. Sillamy: D.M. are unconscious and used in order to diminish the
anxiety generated by inner conflicts between instincts and moral-social
laws
• Vaillant: D.M. are processes of mental regulation, with the purpose of
restoring psychological homeostasis:
– psychotic: delusional projection, psychotic denial;
– immature: projection, hypochondria, passive aggression, acting-out,
dissociation;
– neurotic: displacement, refulation etc;
– mature: altruism, sublimation, repression, humour.
• DSM III-R: D.M. are complexes of feelings, thoughts and behaviours
which are relatively involuntary and appear as a response to a perceived
psychological threat, with the purpose of decreasing or masking anxietygenerating conflicts or stress factors.
• Holmes: D. M. are strategies of decreasing or avoiding negative states:
internal conflict, frustration, anxiety, stress.
• Plutchik: “defense” is an unconscious process meant to dissimulate,
avoid or change threats, conflicts or dangers
DSM IV
•DSM IV (1996): D.M. are automatic psychic processes that protect the
individual from anxiety, from stress factors or from perception of danger. It is
postulated that the person becomes aware of them only when D.M. are
already activated.
•Classification on seven layers:
– Increased adjustment level: defenses that allow optimal adjustment to
stress, perceived gratification, awareness of feelings, thoughts and
consequences, appropriate balancing of conflicting motivations
(anticipation, affiliation, altruism, humour, self-affirmation, selfobservation, repression etc.);
– Mental inhibitions level: defenses that keep out of consciousness ideas,
feelings, memories, desires or fears that may become potential threats
(displacement, dissociation, intellectualization, refulation, affect
isolation, reaction formation etc.);
– Minor image distorsion level: defenses minimally distort self-image,
body image, image of others, with the purpose of regulating selfappraisal (self-deprecation, idealization, omnipotence);
DSM IV
– Denial level: defenses keep outside consciousness stress
factors, and distressing/unacceptable affects, drives or
responsibilities, erroneously attributed to external causes
(refusal, projection, rationalization)
– Major image distorsion level: autistic daydreamingprojective
identification, splitting (clivage);
– Action level: defenses using action or retreat in front of
stress factors (activism, withdrawal, whining with request for
help + rejection of help and passive aggression);
– Defensive disregulation: failure of the subject’s defensive
regulation to stress, which generates a break from objective
reality (delusional projection, psychotic negativism,
psychotic distorsion).
Ş. Ionescu
•Ionescu et al.: “D.M. are unconscious processes of the psyche that target the decrease or annulation of
unpleasant effects of real or imaginary threats, remodelling inner and/or outer reality, and whose
manifestations – behaviours, ideas, affects – may be conscious or unconscious”.
•They synthesize 29 D.M.:
– The 10 D.M. described by Anna Freud, plus:
– activism
– Affiliation
– affirmation of the self through emotion expression
– altruism
– Anticipation
– Adolescent ascetism
– Splitting
– counterinvestment
– denegation
– identification
– Identification with the aggressor
– Projective Identification
– Intellectualization
– removal
– Rationalization
– daydreaming
– Refusal of reality
– Apathic withdrawal
– humour
The background of the defense mechanism (D.M.) concept:
1.What is it? – process, operation, strategy, means, etc?
2.What is its finality? – decrease of internal conflict of psyche,
of anguish/anxiety, restoring of psychological homeostasis,
protection against anxiety etc?
3.What is the defense reported to? – inner or external threats?
4.What is the defense exerted through? – suppressing of one
element of the conflict, remodelling of reality, temporary
distortion of reality, dissimulation?
5.What level does is act on? – conscious or unconscious?
Coping mechanisms and stress
• Coining the notion of “coping” was controversial and difficult; it may
mean ‘dealing with’, facing a situation, controling
• French authors use the term strategy of adjustment behaviour
• It ultimately refers to mechanisms of stress prevention and adaptation to
stress
• Lazarus and Folkman: C. is the ensemble of cognitive and behavioural
efforts directed towards controlling, decreasing or tollerating internal or
internal distress that threatens or exceeds individual resources. It may
entail three stages:
– Anticipation or warning: prevention or postponing may still occur,
the person can prepare for confrontation and assess the strategy and
cost of confrontation
– Confrontation or impact: the response of the subject to the stressful
stimulus occurs, and the situation is reassessed and redefined
– Post-confrontation: the person assesses the meaning of what
happened
Coping mechanisms and stress
• Bloch et al.: stress adaptation is the active process through
which, based on self-assessment of activities and motivations,
the subject faces a stressful situation and manages to control it
• Paulhan, Bourgeois: types of coping strategies:
– Emotion-centered: focused on regulating emotional
disturbances
– Problem-centered: management of the problem that
generated the distress
– Avoidance coping: allows the individual to decrease
emotional distress through passive strategies: refusal,
resignation, escape
– “Vigile” coping: active means of searching resources,
information, social support in order to confront and
manage the situation
• Mircea Miclea: “Coping is any mechanism of stress prevention,
management and adjustment, any tradeoff between subject
and environment with the purpose of decreasing the intensity
of stress, not just living with stress, assimilating it, but also
removing it through firm action”
• Coping mechanisms may enter the stage in anticipation, at the
moment when stress is induced or after the action of the
stressor
• Coping mechanisms may be classified as:
– behavioural: all behaviours meant to prevent or decrease
stress
– A wide number and variety of behaviours, in a given
context, may gain adaptive or profilactic function (ex.: fight
or flight, seeking social support, perseverance, systematic
training, abandoning yourself in daily activities).
– They decrease stress only when their cost does not exceed
benefits (on the contrary, they generate distress themselves)
• cognitive: the sum of information processing means that help
decrease stress.
 Stress is decreased by acting on the way the information is
perceived: primary and secondary appraisals are performed
and a chain of assessments of the stressful situation may
follow; cognitive coping modulates them
 C.C. sets it at the moment of primary appraisal of the
situation, or after it took place (repression, intellectualization)
 C.c.: correcting primary appraisals, performing resource
reassessment, problem solving planning, magical thinking,
rationalizing failure etc.
 neurobiological: stress reaction has a neurobiological
component and means of optimizing biochemical stress
reactions may be generated spontaneously by the organism
(ex.: massive endorphin release, NK cell proliferation), or
deliberately induced (ex.: drug use, smoking, drinking,
medication, relaxation techniques etc.)
Confrontation vs. Avoidance in stress management
Confrontation/avoidance is a conceptual pair that provides the vector of
coping:
– Confrontation: the totality of behavioural, cognitive or
neurobiological strategies oriented towards the stresssor/ stressful
information/ stress reaction. These strategies set out to directly
tackle problems / trauma and to seek optimal solutions in order to
decrease their impact. The individual confronted with an issue has a
resolutive attitude
– Avoidance: the totality of behavioural, cognitive or neurobiological
strategies that set out to ellude the stressor, by selectively
processing negative information:
1) Blocking out of negative traumatic information (ignore, deny, repress,
avoid, blindside)
2) Distorting information: reappraisal in a context that tones down
negative valence, avoids “danger signals” and directs the subject’s
cognitive resources towards the processing of neutral or positivevalence information
By combining the vector of the coping mechanism with its nature, Miclea
suggests a more comprehensive classification of coping mechanisms:
FUNCTIO
NING
BEHAVIOURAL
Coping mechanism
COGNITIVE
NEUROBIOLOGICAL
confrontati
on
Behaviours of stressor
removal
(optimistic action, seeking
social support, any
intervention in the
environment which is
meant to decrease the
intensity or severity of
stressors)
Prioritary processing
of information related
to stressors (ex.
Paying attention to
stress cues/warning
signs, rumination,
logical assessment of
problem)
Preventing the
biological reaction to
stress or the direct
aggression of the
biological stressor (ex.
Hormones, prescription
drugs)
avoidance
Behaviours of escape
from the stressful
situation (ex. Drug use,
running away,
distractions, indecision,
postponing confrontation
etc.)
Blocking the
(selective) processing
of negative valence
information (Ignoring
warning signs, underassessment of stress
intensity, regression,
rationalization)
Neutralizing the effects
of the biological
stressor, in the context
of avoiding to remove it
(ex. Glucocorticoids –
in inflamations)
Defense mechanisms
Oriented towards blocking
instinctual inner drives
Post-affective
Hyerarchical organization
They block expression of
affects
Rigid, ritualized
Oriented towards the past
They involve automatisms
They distort reality
Generated at the Ego-Id
interface
Unconscious processes
Coping mechanisms
Oriented towards controlling
external or internal stressors
They may be activated in any stage
of the stress reaction
Situational effectiveness
They allow expression (assertion) of
affects
Flexible
Oriented towards present and future
They involve purpose and
perspective
They allow confrontation with
reality
Generated in contact with reality
Conscious and subconscious
processes
Examples of defense mechanisms
• Defensive denial (refusal)
After the primary appraisal of the stimulus, defensive denial with its
cognitive processes prevents the development of the mental
representation of the stimulus as trauma. It is a forceful and effective
defense that shields the subject when overwhelming traumatic
perception occurs
• Repression
Strategies that entail avoiding the retrieval of traumatic information in
working memory, generating selective retrieval with partial or complete
blocking of traumatic memory. Important: the internal representation
of trauma has taken place, but its access in consciousness is blocked.
Repression may be conscious or not:
- conscious: the subject elludes both the trauma per se, and the events
(even positive ones) associated with the trauma, which may help
remember it
- unconscious: partial or total amnesy of an event paired with a strong
negative emotion = posttraumatic amnesy
• Projection
The trauma is acknowledged within consciousness, but its negative valence and the
responsibility is assigned to more or less defined external factors (fate, destiny, the
others). Projecting personal shortcomings or failures upon others allows a positive
reappraisal of negative individual features; the subject thus elludes self-blame and
the distress of responsibility, while self-esteem and self-image remain unaffected.
• Rationalization
Positive reappraisal of the stressful situation and disfunctional coping behaviour.
Personal responsibility and shortcomings are owned up to, but are reappraised and
justified, in order to buffer emotional impact. The justifications are distorted
theoretical constructs meant to expiate the individual in front of themselves and
others. It should not be erroneously understood as ‘explanation’, which is the
search of the accurate causality chain that generated a specific situation.
• Intellectualization/isolation
Two meanings:
- The conflictual mental representation (memory, thought process) remains
conscious, while the affect assigned to it is eliminated
- Two components are artificially separated, although they have an actual connection,
because acknowledging this connection generates a level of anxiety
Thus, intellectualization consists of cognitive strategies for the appraisal of
traumatic information in the context of dissociating it from its emotional
consequences.