Defense Mechanisms

Defense mechanisms refer to patterns of thinking and behaving as ways to adapt and adjust to difficult life circumstances. Freud (1901) first described these thinking and behavior patterns as being abnormal because he believed that they were ways in which people deluded themselves to deal with conflicts between id impulses and superego constraints and punishments. More recent perspectives suggest that these mechanisms may be viewed as protective in that they develop in response to either perceived or real threats. These threats can arise from how the [Page 155]person interprets reality. Defenses allow the person to cope with these threats. The most common defense mechanisms are:

• Denial
• Repression
• Displacement
• Substitution
• Sublimation
• Projection
• Reaction formation
• Rationalization
• Isolation

In the school setting it is not unusual for teachers to encounter the defense mechanism of projection in aggressive or acting-out students. These students justify their aggression by “projecting” that it was provoked by the teacher because of how the teacher looked at them, or accusing the teacher of talking about them to others.