Learn · Chapter 9 of 15
Defences and depth psychology
The earlier chapters covered feelings, interpretations and needs. Defences are what a person does, mostly without knowing it, when those become too much to bear. Name the defence and you know what the behaviour is protecting, and how healthy the person is under pressure.
The earlier chapters covered feelings, interpretations and needs. A defence is what a person does, automatically and mostly without knowing it, when a feeling becomes too much to bear. Defences tell you more about a person's overall health than anything else you can see. Everyone uses them. What matters is which level of defence, on the ladder below, someone falls back on under pressure, and how rigidly. The psychiatrist George Vaillant followed the same men for decades in the Grant Study, a Harvard study of adult life that began in 1938, and found that the maturity of their defences predicted their health, marriages and careers better than their childhood circumstances did.
Vaillant's ladder, from most to least distorting
Vaillant sorted defences into four levels by how much they bend reality. Level 1 bends it most and level 4 least. Most lines also say who pays the cost. Most defences named here have their own entry in the table further down.
- Psychotic. Reality itself is rewritten: delusional projection, gross denial.
- Immature. Other people are distorted: projection, splitting, idealisation, devaluation, acting out, passive aggression. The people around them pay.
- Neurotic. The person's own inner experience is distorted: repression, intellectualisation, isolation of affect, reaction formation, displacement. The person pays, mostly in symptoms and missed feeling.
- Mature. The feeling is acknowledged and channelled: humour, sublimation, suppression, anticipation, altruism. Almost no one pays.
How to spot a defence in real time
- Mismatch between content and feeling. Someone tells a devastating story in a level voice: isolation of affect. Someone tells a trivial one with outsized heat: displacement.
- Exaggeration. Love that is too sweet, independence that is too fierce, or morality that is too loud usually covers its opposite. That is reaction formation.
- What you feel. A feeling that is foreign to you and appears only with this person is often theirs, pushed into you through projective identification. Without knowing it, they treat you in a way that makes you feel what they cannot bear to feel. Use your countertransference, your own reaction to them, as data. It is the most underrated identification tool there is.
- Repetition. When the same story ends the same way with different people, look for repetition compulsion (recreating an old painful situation) or transference (treating someone now as if they were an important figure from the past).
- Listen for parts. Internal Family Systems, a therapy model developed by Richard Schwartz, hears a person as several voices: managers that plan and control, firefighters that numb or blow up when old pain is touched, and exiles that carry the pain. A sudden swing from polished control to bingeing or rage is often a firefighter taking over from a manager.
Defence mechanisms
Each entry starts with its level on Vaillant's ladder. A few say 'Primary' instead. That is the psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams' word for the most basic defences, which blur the line between self and other. 'Often confused with' names look-alikes to rule out. 'Evidence' says how well research supports the idea.
| Term | What it is | Often confused with | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Defence mechanisms (Vaillant's hierarchy) | Automatic, mostly unconscious mental operations that change how a person perceives a painful feeling, wish, fact or relationship so they can keep functioning. Vaillant ranked them in four levels (psychotic, immature, neurotic, mature) by how much they distort reality and what they cost; McWilliams sorts them into primary (boundary-level) and secondary (within the self). | Emotion regulation; Cognitive distortions | Moderate |
| Denial | Psychotic in its gross form; in everyday form a primary defence. The person refuses to accept a fact that is plainly available and acts as if it isn't so, rather than knowing it and setting it aside. | Suppression; Repression; Optimism bias | Clinical |
| Projection | Immature. The person disowns a feeling, wish or trait in themselves and experiences it as belonging to someone else. | Projective identification; Mind reading; False consensus effect | Clinical |
| Projective identification | Immature. The person disowns a feeling and then, through subtle pressure in how they treat you, gets you to actually feel it or act it out, while they stay oddly free of it. | Projection; Countertransference; Emotional contagion | Clinical |
| Splitting | Immature. People, including oneself, are experienced as all good or all bad with no stable blend, and the label can flip completely after one event. | All-or-nothing thinking; Ambivalence; Idealise-devalue-discard cycle | Clinical |
| Idealisation | Immature. The person attributes exaggerated perfection, power or goodness to someone, a group or an idea. | Halo effect; Limerence; Selfobject needs | Clinical |
| Devaluation | Immature. The person attributes exaggerated badness, stupidity or worthlessness to someone or something, often something they need or once admired. | Contempt; Counterdependence; Envy | Clinical |
| Omnipotent control | Immature. The person feels and acts as if they can control people and outcomes at will, treating others as extensions of their own will. | Illusion of control; Coercive control; Conscientiousness | Clinical |
| Acting out | Immature. The person discharges a feeling or impulse through behaviour instead of feeling it, thinking about it or putting it into words. | Insufficient self-control schema; Passive aggression; Emotional flooding | Clinical |
| Passive aggression | Immature. Hostility is expressed indirectly, through failure, delay, forgetting or compliance that doesn't deliver, so the aggression can always be denied. | Procrastination; Silent treatment; Stonewalling | Clinical |
| Schizoid fantasy | Immature. The person retreats into an inner world of daydream instead of engaging with a conflict or need. | Schizoid personality; Avoidant personality; Dissociation | Clinical |
| Repression | Neurotic. An unacceptable feeling, wish or memory is kept out of awareness, while its effects leak out in symptoms, slips and odd blanks. | Suppression; Denial; Dissociation | Mixed |
| Displacement | Neurotic. A feeling is redirected from the person or thing that caused it onto a safer target. | Projection; Secondary anger; Scapegoating | Moderate |
| Reaction formation | Neurotic. An unacceptable impulse becomes its exaggerated opposite: hate into sugary kindness, desire into disgust, dependence into fierce independence. | Moralisation; People-pleasing; Altruism | Clinical |
| Intellectualisation | Neurotic. An emotional situation is handled by thinking and talking about it in concepts and analysis, so the feeling never arrives. | Isolation of affect; Rationalisation; Alexithymia | Clinical |
| Rationalisation | Neurotic. A plausible, self-serving explanation is supplied for behaviour or feelings whose real motive the person doesn't want to see. | Motivated reasoning; Cognitive dissonance; Intellectualisation | Moderate |
| Isolation of affect | Neurotic. A painful event is remembered and reported in full while the feeling that belongs to it is cut off. | Emotional numbing; Intellectualisation; Dissociation | Clinical |
| Undoing | Neurotic. A guilty or hostile thought or act is cancelled by doing something that symbolically reverses it. | Repair attempts; OCD; Reaction formation | Clinical |
| Somatisation | Immature. Emotional distress is experienced and communicated as bodily symptoms rather than as feelings. | Health anxiety; Secondary gain; Alexithymia | Clinical |
| Regression | Usually immature. Under stress the person falls back to an earlier, more childlike way of functioning. | Ego states; Dependent personality; Learned helplessness | Clinical |
| Compartmentalisation | Neurotic. Contradictory values, behaviours or parts of life are kept in separate mental boxes so they never meet. | Splitting; Moral disengagement; Suppression | Clinical |
| Identification with the aggressor | Neurotic. A person who has been frightened or hurt takes on the attitudes or behaviour of the one who hurt them, either treating others the same way or reading and complying with the aggressor's wishes. | Trauma bonding; Fawn response; Introjection | Clinical |
| Introjection | Primary. The qualities, attitudes or voice of another person, usually an important early figure, are taken in and become part of the inner world without being noticed. | Harsh superego; Identification with the aggressor; Conditions of worth | Clinical |
| Turning against the self | Neurotic. Anger or criticism meant for someone else is redirected onto oneself. | Personalisation; Guilt; Masochistic character | Clinical |
| Moralisation | Neurotic. A situation charged with feeling is turned into a question of duty, principle or right and wrong, so one's own wishes and fears disappear behind the moral frame. | Rationalisation; Should statements; Moral foundations | Clinical |
| Sublimation | Mature. A forbidden or frustrated impulse (aggression, sexuality, envy, grief) is channelled into valued, satisfying activity. | Displacement; Workaholism; Reaction formation | Clinical |
| Humour (mature defence) | Mature. The absurd or ironic side of a painful situation is seen and openly shared, so the feeling is acknowledged, not hidden. | Manic defence; Devaluation; Denial | Clinical |
| Anticipation | Mature. Some of the distress of a coming difficulty is felt in advance, in measured doses, and planned for realistically. | Rumination and worry; Catastrophising; Generalised anxiety | Clinical |
| Suppression | Mature. A feeling or problem is consciously set aside for now, known to be there, with the intent to return to it. | Repression; Expressive suppression; Denial | Clinical |
| Altruism (mature defence) | Mature. One's own distress or need is handled by meeting the same need in others, with real satisfaction. Anna Freud's altruistic surrender, living one's wishes through others, is its less healthy cousin. | Codependency; Self-sacrifice schema; People-pleasing | Clinical |
| Manic defence | Immature in effect; a Kleinian concept. Depressive feelings of loss, guilt, dependence and helplessness are warded off with triumph, contempt, control and frantic activity. | Hypomanic character; Bipolar disorder; Workaholism | Clinical |
| Counterdependence | Immature. Needing anyone is treated as weakness and total self-sufficiency is presented: "I don't need anyone." | Dismissive-avoidant attachment; Devaluation; Self-efficacy | Clinical |
Depth concepts
Depth psychology is the family of approaches, starting with Freud and Jung, that look for causes outside a person's awareness. The names in brackets are the clinicians who proposed each idea, most of them psychoanalysts writing in the twentieth century. Many of these ideas rest on clinical observation more than experiments, as the Evidence column shows.
| Term | What it is | Often confused with | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| The unconscious | Mental activity that shapes feeling, perception and action without the person being aware of it. In the depth sense, some of it is kept out of awareness because knowing it would hurt. | Repression; Dual-process thinking | Moderate |
| Id, ego, superego | Freud's model of the mind as three agencies in tension: the id (drives and wants), the superego (conscience and ideals, absorbed from parents and culture) and the ego (the part that reckons with reality and brokers between the other two). | Ego states; Schema modes | Clinical |
| Harsh superego (inner critic) | A conscience that has turned cruel: it punishes rather than guides, holds standards no one could meet, and attacks the whole person rather than the act. | Unrelenting standards schema; Guilt; Perfectionism | Clinical |
| Ego ideal | The image of who one should become, built from early idealised figures and from the lost sense of infant perfection. Falling short of it produces shame rather than guilt. | Harsh superego; Self-discrepancy | Clinical |
| Transference | Experiencing a person in the present through the template of an important earlier relationship, usually a parent, so that feelings, expectations and behaviour from then are applied to now. | Projection; Countertransference; Internal working model | Moderate |
| Countertransference | Your own emotional and bodily reaction to another person. Freud saw it as interference; later analysts showed it is often information about what the other person is doing, evoking, or cannot feel themselves. | Transference; Projective identification; Emotional contagion | Clinical |
| Repetition compulsion | The tendency to recreate painful early situations again and again, in new relationships and settings, instead of remembering and grieving them. | Life script; Trauma bonding | Clinical |
| Shadow | The parts of oneself that do not fit the self-image and are therefore disowned: often aggression, envy, sexuality, ambition or weakness, but also unused strengths. | Projection; Contempt; Repression | Clinical |
| Persona | The role a person presents to the world, shaped to what their position and society expect. Necessary and normal; the problem is identifying with it so fully that there is no one behind it. | False self; Impression management; Self-monitoring | Clinical |
| Anima and animus | Jung's inner image of the 'other' (in his framing, the feminine in a man and the masculine in a woman), projected onto real people and shaping fascination and falling in love. Many modern Jungians treat it as the image of whatever qualities a person has not developed, regardless of gender. | Limerence; Idealisation | Weak |
| Individuation | The lifelong process of becoming one's whole self: integrating the shadow, separating from the persona and from collective expectations, and coming into relation with the deeper self. | Differentiation of self; Midlife transition; Spiritual bypassing | Clinical |
| Complex (Jungian) | A cluster of memories, images and feelings organised around an emotional core, often an early experience, which, when touched, takes over the person's reactions with a predictable mood and script. | Triggers; Early maladaptive schemas; Narcissistic injury | Clinical |
| Puer aeternus (eternal youth) | Staying psychologically young: living in possibility, avoiding commitment and limits, believing real life will start later. The female form is puella aeterna. | Hypomanic character; ADHD in adults; Dismissive-avoidant attachment | Clinical |
| Inflation | The ego identifies with something larger than itself (a role, a mission, an idea, or an archetype like the hero or saviour) and takes on its grandeur as personal. | Hubris syndrome; Grandiose narcissism; Bipolar disorder | Clinical |
| Archetypes | Universal patterns or roles (the hero, the mother, the trickster, the wise old man, the child) that Jung believed were inherited and that shape how people imagine themselves and others. | Family roles; Life script | Weak |
| Object relations | People carry internal versions of early relationships, each made of a self-image, an image of the other and a feeling linking them, and these internal pairs shape what they expect and recreate with others. | Attachment theory; Internal working model | Clinical |
| Paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions (Klein) | Two states of mind people move between. In the paranoid-schizoid position the world is split into good and bad and threat comes from outside. In the depressive position others are whole and mixed, one sees one's own part in harm, and the main anxiety is concern for others, with guilt and a wish to repair. | Splitting; Major depression; All-or-nothing thinking | Clinical |
| False self (Winnicott) | A self built around compliance with what others need, formed when a child's spontaneous gestures went unmet and the child learned to anticipate and fit instead. It protects the true self by hiding it, often so well the person cannot find it. | Persona; People-pleasing; Masking | Clinical |
| Selfobject needs (Kohut) | Three things everyone needs from others to keep a stable sense of self: mirroring (to be seen and enjoyed), idealising (to look up to someone and borrow calm and strength) and twinship (to feel essentially alike). Unmet early, they show up later as hunger, rage or collapse. | Narcissistic supply; Anxious-preoccupied attachment; Approval-seeking schema | Clinical |
| Oedipal dynamics | The child's desire for one parent and rivalry with the other, and eventual acceptance of being outside the parents' relationship. In modern use, any recurring pattern of rivalry, exclusion and competition in three-way relationships, especially with authority. | Triangulation; Jealousy; Status motive | Weak |
| Primary and secondary gain | Primary gain is the internal relief a symptom gives, such as avoiding an unbearable conflict. Secondary gain is the outside benefit that follows (attention, care, exemption, leverage), which can keep the symptom going. | Self-handicapping; Somatisation | Clinical |
| Resistance | Whatever a person does, usually without knowing it, to avoid becoming aware of or changing something painful, even while consciously wanting help or change. | Psychological reactance; Passive aggression; Ambivalence | Clinical |
| Character armour (Reich) | The habitual attitudes, mannerisms and chronic bodily tensions that protect a person against anxiety and feeling. The defence lives in how someone is, not only in what they say. | Isolation of affect; Persona; Emotional numbing | Weak |
| Containment (Bion) | One person takes in another's unbearable feelings, holds them without being overwhelmed or retaliating, and gives them back in a form that can be thought about. | Co-regulation; Psychological safety; Codependency | Clinical |
| Internal Family Systems: managers, firefighters, exiles (Schwartz) | The mind as a system of sub-personalities ('parts'), each with its own feelings and agenda, plus a core Self that is calm, curious and compassionate when the parts step back. Exiles carry old pain and shame; managers work to stop it surfacing; firefighters douse it, by any means, once it breaks through. | Ego states: Parent, Adult, Child; Schema modes; Dissociation | Clinical |
| Intersubjectivity and relational psychoanalysis (Stolorow, Mitchell) | Experience is always formed between two subjectivities, so what happens in a relationship is co-created and can't be wholly assigned to either person. Your reading of someone is partly made by you: your history, your organising principles, and how you are with them. | Transference; Projective identification; Naive realism | Clinical |