EGO DEFENSES

• Dr.V.Kamalakkannan
• Dept of Psychiatry
• PMCH&RC
 NARSISSISTIC:

• Denial:
• Avoiding the awareness of some painful
reality,
• -by negating sensory data
• -abolishes reality
• Distortion:
• Grossly misshaping external reality to suit
inner needs, hallucinations, megalomabnic
beliefs.
• Projection:
• Perceiving& reacting to unacceptable
impulses as if they were from outside self
• Psychotic levels
 IMMATURE DEFENSES:

• Acting out:
• Expressing an unconscious impulse thro
action, to avoid accompanying affect.
• Blocking:
• Temporarily/transiently inhibiting impulse.
• Closely resembles repression
• Hypochondriasis:
• Exaggerating/over emphasizing an illness
for evasion/regression,
• Reproach arising from bereavement,
loneliness/unacceptable impulse>somatic
illness
• Introjection:
• Internalizing qualities of an object,
• Stockholm syndrome.
• Passive aggression:
• Masochism,
• Sathyagraha
• Regression:
• Retreat to childhood
• Needed in sex, sleep /relaxation
• Schizoid Fantasy:
• Indulging in autistic retreat,
• Interpersonal intimacy is avoided,
• Somotisation:
• Converting psychic derivatives into somatic
manifestations.
 NEUROTIC:

• Controlling:
• Attempting to manage/regulate objects in
environment to minimize anxiety/resolve
inner conflicts
• Displacement:
• Shifting an emotion/drive cathexis from an
idea to another resembling idea,
• Symbolic representation of original idea
• Externalisation:
• Tending to perceive in external world and
in external objects, elements of ones own
personality.
• Birds of same feather flock together
• Inhibition:
• Consciously limiting/renouncing some ego
functions,
• To evade anxiety out of conflict.
• Intellectualization:
• Excessively using intellectual process to
avoid affective expressions/experiences,
• Undue focus on inanimates
• Isolation:
• Splitting an idea from affect.
• Social isolation=absence of object
relationship
• Rationalization:
• Dissociation:
• Reaction formation:
• Transferring unacceptable impulse to opposite.
• Repression:
• Voluntary with holding from consciousness.
• Sexualization;
• Endowing an object/function sexual
significance, that it did not had, in order to
ward of anxiety associated prohibited
impulse.
 MATURE DEFENSES:

Altruism:
Using constructive and instinctually gratifying
service to others to undergo a vicarious
experience,
Includes reaction formation-constructive,
• Anticipation:
• Realistically anticipating/planning for
future inner discomfort
• Asceticism:
• Eliminating the pleasurable effects of
experiences.
• There is a moral element in assigning
values to pleasures,
• Gratification is derived from renunciation.
•
• Humor:
• Using comedy to overlay expressed feeling
& thoughts without discomfort,
• Without producing discomfort to others.
• Sublimation:
• Achieving impulse gratification& retention
of goals,
• But altering a socially objectionable to
acceptable one.
• Suppression: