defense mechanisms

Meaning: In Freud's psychodynamic theory, defense mechanisms are unconscious strategies the ego uses to reduce anxiety when the id's impulses, the superego's moral demands and reality conflict. They distort awareness of the threat instead of solving it. Common ones: repression (pushing a threatening memory or urge out of awareness), denial (refusing to accept a fact), projection (attributing your own unacceptable impulse to someone else), displacement (redirecting an impulse to a safer target), reaction formation (acting opposite to the true feeling), regression (returning to earlier behavior), rationalization (a logical-sounding excuse), and sublimation (channeling an impulse into an acceptable activity).

On the MCAT: A vignette describes a behavior and you name the mechanism. A man angry at his boss yells at his dog: displacement. A student who fails an exam says the class was pointless: rationalization. Ask what happened to the feeling: hidden, redirected, reversed, or reassigned.

Common confusion: Displacement moves your own emotion to a new target, while projection assigns your own unacceptable feeling to another person. Repression is unconscious, whereas suppression is a deliberate, conscious decision not to think about something. Defense mechanisms are not necessarily pathological, and sublimation is usually seen as adaptive.