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Narrator: Listen to part of a discussion in a psychology class. The professor is discussing defense
   mechanisms.
Professor:
Okay, we know from our earlier study of Freud that defense mechanisms protect us from bringing  Q29
painful thoughts or feelings to the surface of our consciousness. We do this because our minds simply
can’t tolerate these thoughts. So, defense mechanisms help us to express these painful thoughts or
feelings in another way, while we repress the real problem. The function of defense mechanisms is to
keep from being overwhelmed. Of course, the avoidance of problems can result in additional emotional
issues. And there’s a huge distinction between repression and suppression. Anybody want to explain
the difference?
Student 1 :
I’ll try it. I thin repression is an unconscious resp0nse to serious events or images but suppression is  Q30
more conscious and deals with something unpleasant but riot usually, well, terrible experiences.
Professor:
I couldn’t have said it better. Now remember that the thoughts or feelings that we’re trying to repress
may include, just to mention a few, anger, depression,, competition, uh... fear, envy, hate, and so on.
For instance, let’s suppose that you’re very angry with your professor, Not me, of course. I’m referring to  Q34
another professor. So, you’re very angry because he’s treated you unfairly in some way that... that
could cause you to lose your scholarship. Maybe he failed you on an examination that didn’t really cover
the material that he’d gone over in class, and an F grade in the course is going to be unacceptable to
your sponsors. So, this would be very painful, as I’m sure you’d agree. And I’d say it would qualify as a
serious event.
   So let’s take a look severai different types of defefise mechanisms that you might employ to  Q29
repress the feelings of disappointment, rage perhaps, and.., and even violence that you’d feel toward
the professor. Most of them are named so the mechanism is fairly obvious and one of the most common
mechanisms is denial, which is ...
Student 2: If I want to deny something, I’ll just say I’m not angry with the professor.
Professor:
Exactly. You may even extend the denial to include the sponsors, and you could tell your friends that
they’d never revoke your scholarship. And this mechanism would allow you to deny the problem, even
in the face of direct evidence to the contrary. Let’s say, a letter from the sponsor indicating that you
won’t receive a scholarship for the next term  Okay on that one? Okay. How about rationalization? Student 2: Well, in rationalization, you come up with some reasons whythe professor might have
   given an unfair test.
Professor: And how would you do that?
Student 2: Well, you might defend him. You could say that he gave the test to encourage students
   to learn information on their own. Is that what you mean?
Professor:
Sure. Because you’d be rationalizing... providing a reason that justifies an otherwise mentally
intolerable situation. Okay, another example of rationalizing is to excuse the sponsor for refusing to hear your
side of the situation. You might say that sponsors are too busy to investigate why students are having
problems in their classes. And you might do that while you deny your true feelings that sponsors really
should be more open to hearing you out.
Student 3: So when you deny something, I mean when you use denial, you’re refusing to
   acknowledge a situation, but.., when you use rationalization, you’re excusing the behavior?
Professor:
Excellent summary. So, now let me give you another option. If you use a reaction formation as a
defense mechanism, you’ll proclaim the opposite of your feelings. In this case, what would you say
about the professor?
Student 4: I’d say that I like the professor when, in fact, I hate him for destroy.., depriving me of
   my opportunity.
Professor:
And you might insist that you have no hard feelings and even go so far as to tell your friends that he’s
an excellent teacher. You see, a reaction formation turns the expression of your feelings into the
opposite reaction, that is, on the surface.
   And that brings us to projection, which is a defense mechanism that tricks your mind into believing
that someone else is guilty of the negative thought or feeling that you have.
Student 1: Can you give us an example of that one?
Professor:
Okay. Feelings of hate for the professor might be expressed by telling classmates about another
student who hates the professor, or, uh  or even suggesting that the professor has strong feelings of
hate for you but you really like the professor yourself. So you would project, um  attribute your
feelings... to someone else. Get it?
Student 1: So if I hate someone, I’d believe that another person hates him or that he hates me.
Professor: But you wouldn’t admit that you hate him yourself.
Student: Okay. That’s projection.
Professor:
Now displacement serves as a defense mechanism when a less threatening person or object is  Q32
substituted for the person or object that’s really the cause of your anxiety. So, instead of confronting the
professor about the unfair test, well, you might direct your anger toward the friend who studied for the test
with you, and you could blame him for wasting your time on the material that wasin the book and notes.
   Of course, there are several other defense mechanisms like fantasy, which includes daydreaming
or watching television maybe to escape the problems at school. Or regression, which includes immature
behaviors that are no longer appropriate, like, uh, maybe expressing temper in the same way that a
preschooler might respond to having a toy snatched away. And your textbook contains a few more that
we haven’t touched on in class.
   Just one more thing, it’s good to understand that the notion of unconscious thoughts and the
mechanisms that allow us to manage them, that this is a concept that goes in and out of fashion. Many
psychologists rejected defense mechanisms altogether during the 70s and 80s, and then in the 90s,  Q33
cognitive psychologists showed a renewed interest in research in this area: But I must warn you, that
although they found similar responses, they tended to give them different names. For instance, denial
might appear in a more recent study as positive illusion, or scapegoating might be referred to instead of
displacement. But when you get right down to it, the same categories of behavior for defense
mechanisms still exist in the research even if they’re labeled differently. And, uh, in my view, if you compare
Freud’s traditional defense mechanisms with those that are being presented by more modern
researchers, you’ll find that Freud is easier to understand and gives us a broader perspective. And, if
you understand Freud’s categories, well, you’ll certainly be able to get a handle on the newer terms.
What is exciting about the modern studies is the focus on coping skills and what’s being referred to as
healthy defenses. So next time, we’ll take a look at some of these processes.