Defence Mechanisms- Conflicts and Wars inside your head

Without a doubt, Frued has been a popular face and name in the Psychology world. He did put forth very intriguing theories about mind, what we we do, why we do. His psychosexual theory has been a topic of debate since a long long time. There were many scholars, many psychologist who did not agree with what he presented mainly due to its unfalsifiability. But he did gave very strong theories, one of which are the defence mechanisms, this is something which psychologists today find hard to deny.
In his Psychoanalytic theory, Freud explained three parts of the psyche structure, namely, Id, Ego, and Superego. Id, as explained by him, is the instinctual part of the mind which demands instant gratification, all the desires, hidden memories comes under Id, it runs from pleasure principle. All your desires, thoughts, which are stamped out as ‘unacceptable’ by the society come under Id and is there since you are a child. Ego operates on reality principle, which means ego helps in expressing the needs of Id in a more acceptable manner and in accordance with the real world. The Superego can be thought of as the moral aspect of the psyche, it tells whether fulfilment of a particular wish, desire is ethical or not. It is a sort of parental authority. So, in our waking subconscious attempts to repress these instinctual desires, we tend to use certain defence mechanisms to deal with anxiety which stems from awareness of the Id.

Displacement

In displacement, we tend to redirect anxiety provoking and unacceptable thoughts towards more appropriate and less threatening targets. For example: When a person cannot take out their anger on the source of anger itself, he takes it out on something, or someone less threatening. Let’s take example of a kid named, ABC, his father is physically abusive towards him at home, but since he cannot take out his anger on his father, he redirects his anger on someone else, he bullies someone at school, say a younger boy, named XYZ, so in attempt to re-channelize his anger, he turns to the other kid, and this is known as Displacement.

Sublimation

When you are constantly getting threatening thoughts, desires that are unacceptable, and you replace them with something more productive, more valuable, it is known as Sublimation. For example, a person feels an urge to be unfaithful to his/her partner, so, he/she repress these feelings and cover them up with something more productive, like devoting more and more time to work, doing additional projects.

Projection

In Projection, one tends to attribute his/her own unacceptable impulses to someone else. For example, you hate a person, but there is no known reason for you to hate that person, maybe its jealousy, so instead, your subconscious, in order to lower the discomfort, or anxiety related to hating a person simply because you are jealous, will use this defence mechanism and attribute this to the other person. In simple words, you think it’s not you, it’s the other person, that the other person, for whatever reasons, hates you.

Rationalization

Having anxiety provoking thougts and reasoning them away is what rationalization is about. I personally think it happens very frequently, and in all types of people. We tend to cover these thoughts up with reasoning, and rationality. For example, someone who did not get a promotion at the job and is disappointed may rationalize his feelings by convincing himself that he was not ready for more responsibility anyway.

Regression
Regression refers to retreating to a behaviour attributed to an earlier stage of development, like psychologically going back to the time when the person felt safer. For ex. A college student taking a teddy bear with himself to sleep after a traumatic event. The behaviours linked to the time when the person guarded and warm.

Reaction Formation

Reaction formation is the defence mechanism in which the person altogether denies the actual feelings and replace them with the opposite ones. Let’s take the same example, You hating a person out of jealousy, because this is not how you want to think of yourself, you subconsciouly deny the idea. Instead you now say, you love that person. The absolute opposite of what your actual feelings are.

These are some of the ego defence mechanisms which are used by us humans to suppress unwanted and anxiety provoking thoughts. The society and environment we are surrounded by, has some basic norms and ideas, which we, automatically get accustomed to, because we are a part of that society and whenever, we get in touch with the Id, the instant gratification, the pleasure, it is suppressed by the two other aspects of our psyche, Ego and Superego. All three of them, make up our behaviour, as we are, the way we act, our goals, desires and work together towards the fulfilment of the wishes and desires in appropriate ways.