Defense Mechanism is defined as a psychological plan often used unconsciously by particular people who are trying to withstand stressful life patterns and maintains schema. Defense mechanism could also be adopted by people who protect themselves from some unacceptable feelings. Its main aim is to deal with anxiety that stems typically from a devastating experience. In essence, the defense mechanism has ended up giving either healthy or unhealthy results for the people who practice it. This is, in most cases largely dependent on how often the defense mechanism is used and also the situation surrounding it at the time of use. Regarding the psychoanalytical theory, it is evident that defense mechanisms are highly manipulative of the unconscious mind whereby it tries to do an individual act against their own emotions. Sigmund Freud is a significant proponent who came up with these defense mechanisms, particularly ego defenses (Santana et.Al, 2017). This paper focuses on defense mechanisms and the effects on individuals.
Denial can be described as a defense mechanism which involves an individual preventing the external events from becoming known. This is a situation whereby the individual chooses to deny the experience of a situation that is too much for him or her to bear. For instance, drug and substance abusers may refuse to admit to themselves the adverse effects of the drug abuse to their health. Secondly, there is Displacement as a defense mechanism. This deals with a person satisfying an impulse that usually involves being aggressive by using another object as a substitute. For instance, a person who has been frustrated by a colleague or a boss back at the office may end up going home and venting his or her anger on an innocent cat by kicking it, (Cramer, 2015).
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Projection is another example of a defense mechanism whereby a person tends to describe his or her unacceptable thoughts, motives and even feelings to somebody else. For instance, an individual in the office, when the boss chooses someone else for job promotion and not you, you start believing that your boss hates you yet in a real sense, you are the one who is harboring the hatred.
Some of the advantages of defense mechanisms include the following: Individuals can hide their failures of which they are not ready to tell others. This advantage is specifically associated with the denial mechanism whereby adults at a more significant percentage practice it. It helps in postponing dealing with a problem that has been caused by the failure in a person’s life. The second advantage is the fact that it allows an individual to protect him or herself from venting his or her anger to the real target which could in most cases be harmful since it can result to severe injuries. This is in relation to the displacement mechanism. Additionally, defense mechanisms help to relieve individuals from having unacceptable and negative feelings about themselves. This can be mainly associated with the projection type of defense mechanism where the negative thoughts are attributed to other individuals.
However, defense mechanisms despite being advantageous, they also have some various disadvantages. They include the following; It affects the personality and even behavioral patterns of an individual which changes. This is associated with the denial mechanism where an individual keeps on postponing facing daily life challenges. He or she ends up becoming introverted, and this may lead to serious mental health complications. Secondly, defense mechanisms are disadvantageous in that it enables one to run away from facing problems head on but rather hurt innocent people by venting their anger on someone or something that is not the original stimulator. Additionally, defense mechanisms are disadvantageous through projection mechanism in that it allows individuals to avoid things concerning themselves that they are supposed to work on changing. Instead, they attribute the negative thoughts to other individuals forgetting their flaws.
References
Cramer, P. (2015). Understanding defense mechanisms. Psychodynamic Psychiatry , 43(4), 523-552.
Santana, M. R. M., Zatti, C., Spader, M. L., Malgarim, B. G., Salle, E., Piltcher, R., ... & Freitas, L. H. (2017). Acute stress disorder and defense mechanisms: a study of physical trauma patients admitted to an emergency hospital. Trends in psychiatry and psychotherapy , 39(4), 247-256.
