Spot the defense
When a reaction doesn't fit what happened, ask what feeling it might be keeping out.
Key takeaways
- A defense keeps a painful feeling out of view. It happens before you notice, which is why it is hard to see. Denial, projection, rationalization and displacement are the common ones.
- Defenses aren't the enemy. In a study that followed men for decades, mature ones like humor and setting a worry aside until you can act on it went with better lives.
- When a reaction doesn't fit the event, ask what you would feel if you let yourself, and name it.
Keeping a feeling out
Sigmund Freud noticed that his patients often seemed to know something and not know it at the same time. Some feelings were too painful to look at directly, guilt, shame, envy, fear or longing, and the mind found ways to keep them out of view. He called these ways defenses.
His daughter Anna Freud, an analyst in her own right, set them out in The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense (1936). Much of Sigmund Freud's wider theory hasn't held up when tested. This part has lasted: psychologists still study defenses and rate them in research today.
A defense isn't a decision. It happens before you notice, and it feels like simply seeing things as they are. That's what makes it hard to spot in yourself, and easy to spot in other people.
The common ones
A few defenses turn up again and again:
- Denial: "I'm fine. It doesn't bother me", about something that clearly does.
- Projection: seeing in others what you won't see in yourself. "She's so competitive," from someone who badly wants to win.
- Rationalization: a good-sounding reason in place of the real one. "I didn't apply because the commute would be awful."
- Displacement: taking a feeling out on a safer target, like snapping at your partner after your boss criticized you.
- Reaction formation: showing the opposite of what you feel, like being extra sweet to someone you resent.
- Intellectualizing: talking about something painful in calm, abstract terms so you don't have to feel it.
Question 1 of 3
Which of these look like a defense at work?
- An hour after hearing she was passed over for promotion, Lena tells everyone she never wanted the extra stress anyway.
- Lena calls a friend and says she's crushed about the promotion.
- The evening his dad cancels a visit again, Omar shouts at his roommate about the dishes.
- Jo is sure everyone at the party is judging her, though she spent the evening silently rating their outfits.
- Ben notices he's been short with everyone since his diagnosis, and tells them why.
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Defenses aren't the enemy
The psychiatrist George Vaillant spent decades running the Grant Study, which followed a group of Harvard men from the late 1930s through the rest of their lives. He rated how each man handled hard times, and found that some defenses were far healthier than others.
Men who leaned on mature defenses tended to have better health, relationships and work as they aged. Those defenses included humor, anticipation (thinking ahead about a problem), suppression (deliberately setting a worry aside until you can act on it), turning a feeling into something useful, and helping others. Men who leaned on projection, denial and acting out tended to do worse.
So the aim isn't to have no defenses. Everyone needs some. It's to notice when a defense is costing you, and trade it for a better one.
Question 2 of 3
Kai's biopsy result is due on Friday. Which of these is the most mature way to carry the wait?
Asking what it's for
When a reaction doesn't fit
- Notice the tell
A reaction bigger than the event. An answer that came too fast. A strong feeling about someone else. A "doesn't bother me" you hear yourself say a bit too often.
- Ask
If I let myself feel this, what would I feel? Usually it's something simple: hurt, envy, fear, shame, wanting something.
- Name it
Say it plainly to yourself. "I was hurt." "I'm jealous." You don't have to do anything about it yet.
- Choose a better defense
What would be a more grown-up way to carry it? Say it straight, set it aside until a set time, laugh about it, or put it to use.
This is for looking at yourself, not for diagnosing other people. "You're just projecting," said in an argument, is usually a defense too. And go gently. Defenses exist because the feeling underneath hurts. If what comes up is very big, or tied to something traumatic, look at it with a therapist rather than alone.
The fox and the grapes
The most famous rationalization in literature is about 2,500 years old. This is Aesop's fable in George Fyler Townsend's 1867 translation:
“A famished Fox saw some clusters of ripe black grapes hanging from a trellised vine. She resorted to all her tricks to get at them, but wearied herself in vain, for she could not reach them. At last she turned away, hiding her disappointment and saying: "The Grapes are sour, and not ripe as I thought."”
Question 3 of 3
Sources and further reading
- Freud, A. (1937). The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence. London: Hogarth Press. (First published in German, 1936.)
- Vaillant, G. E. (2000). Adaptive mental mechanisms: Their role in a positive psychology. American Psychologist, 55(1), 89-98.
- Aesop's Fables, translated by George Fyler Townsend. Project Gutenberg.
Finish the lesson
0 of 3 questions done. Answer the rest to finish.