Psychological Defense Mechanisms: What You Need to Know

Even the most mentally healthy person cannot avoid internal conflicts—contradictory emotions, desires, beliefs, and environmental influences constantly pull us in different directions. To keep life from feeling like total chaos, our minds have certain limiters in place—defense mechanisms.

Suppress, Split, and Defend

Sigmund Freud was the first to raise the question of defense mechanisms in 1894. He studied the mechanism of repression most thoroughly, which fit well into his three-part model of personality (“Id”—instinctual drives, “Ego”—the conscious part of the psyche and behavior management, “Super-Ego”—self-observation and moral judgment). According to Freud, destructive desires (from the perspective of the individual’s conscience) are “pushed out” from the conscious part of the psyche into the unconscious, so they don’t influence behavior and lead to unpleasant consequences.

Freud used a helpful analogy: the normal functioning of the psyche is like a lecture, and an unwanted impulse is a disruptive student making noise. The lecturer—our consciousness—kicks the troublemaker out of the room. This makes it easier to continue the lecture (or maintain mental balance), but it’s usually impossible to keep the troublemaker out forever without consequences—if repression is used too often or the repressed desires are too strong, tension builds up and can lead to neuroses.

Freud’s youngest daughter, Anna, was the first to try to create a “census” of the main defense mechanisms. She also developed the concept in more detail. Anna noted that different defenses arise at different stages of psychological development—some start working in early childhood (like denial, projection, and repression), while others develop as our worldview and sense of morality evolve, and are considered more “mature” (such as rationalization and intellectualization).

Many points of Freud’s theory are now considered outdated and inaccurate (for example, penis envy, psychosexual stages of development, and sexuality as the main “engine” of the psyche), but the existence of defense mechanisms in one form or another is recognized by most schools of psychology, even though their classifications have been repeatedly rethought.

Defense mechanisms can’t be detected by a brain scan or proven experimentally; they are simply a convenient explanatory model. But this model works well in therapeutic practice—specialists’ experience shows that patients tend to display the same typical “bugs,” no matter what you call them.

For example, in Gestalt therapy, defense mechanisms are called mechanisms of contact interruption, because this school defines healthy mental functioning through the connection between the individual and the environment. Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), which is the most distant from psychoanalysis and currently the most effective according to evidence-based medicine, offers its own analog—dysfunctional cognitive schemas, which arise as a side effect of our experiences and attempts to adapt to our surroundings. It’s like a conditioned reflex formed in an emotional situation—”once burned by milk, now you blow on water.” Different schools of psychotherapy approach solutions differently (a psychoanalyst will dig deep to the source of childhood trauma, while a CBT therapist will try to prove the irrationality of the old belief and “rewrite” behavioral habits), but the core problem is about the same.

It’s also now believed that defenses are aimed not only against forbidden desires, but also against stress, cognitive dissonance (when new information doesn’t fit our established worldview), and negative emotions in general. A person’s typical set of defense mechanisms partly shapes their character, and significant imbalances can contribute to mental disorders. Often, defense mechanisms that have gotten out of control require therapeutic work, but in any case, it’s useful to know about their existence and learn to notice them in yourself—this allows you to look at a crisis situation more objectively and understand how to change it for the better.

Common Defense Mechanisms

• Omnipotent Control – A person perceives themselves as the cause of everything that happens, even if they couldn’t possibly have influenced it (because it’s easier to accept than the idea that the world is uncontrollable). A classic example: young children whose parents are divorcing often blame themselves for the breakup.
• Dissociation – Detaching oneself from unpleasant experiences, so they start to feel like they’re happening to someone else. This defense is thought to underlie dissociative disorders—what’s commonly called “split personality”: in trying to cope with severe psychological trauma, a person creates a new “self,” which may have a different character, nationality, age, gender, or even intelligence level.
• Introjection – Unconsciously adopting external viewpoints, motives, and beliefs as your own. Our ideas of right and wrong are often shaped by upbringing and culture: for example, a woman raised in a patriarchal society may not truly want children, but still believe she can’t be fulfilled in life without becoming a mother.
• Denial – Complete refusal to acknowledge unpleasant information. A typical reaction to shocking news (like a terminal diagnosis) is simply not wanting to believe it and continuing to act as if nothing happened. This can be an adaptive strategy (denial allows the psyche to gradually adjust to grief, avoiding overload), but it can become dangerous when immediate action is needed to prevent a bigger catastrophe.
• Projection – Mistakenly perceiving your own internal processes as coming from outside. For example, someone who feels guilty deep down may start to think everyone around them is judging them, even if no one cares.
• Somatization – Tendency to convert psychological stress into physical symptoms: people who use this defense may develop a fever from worry or mysterious pains in the head, back, or other body parts. They may not understand the real cause and seek help from regular doctors. Sometimes even mental disorders can take this form—for example, “masked” depression, where a person doesn’t feel low mood but constantly complains of poor health.
• Repression – Motivated forgetting of events or feelings associated with stress and internal conflict. For example, a victim of abuse may not be able to remember the experience (in reality, they don’t want to remember, because it’s too painful or contradicts their worldview—such as if the abuser was a close relative or friend).
• Displacement – Unconsciously transferring an impulse or feeling from its original object to another. Classic example: an employee is scolded by their boss and then takes out their irritation on a subordinate or their child (because yelling back at the boss is risky).
• Intellectualization – Unconscious attempt to control emotions and impulses through rational interpretation “from the outside.” This defense allows you to act reasonably and keep your cool in tense situations, “save face,” and maintain self-control, which is often useful. However, people who overuse intellectualization can’t allow themselves to express emotions directly, even when it would be beneficial (for example, during a love confession or resolving issues with loved ones).
• Autoaggression – Redirecting negative emotions originally aimed at an external object onto oneself. This happens because there’s an internal ban on expressing aggression toward the original source. For example, a child’s anger at their parents (can’t express it because they depend on them) or a mother’s negative feelings toward her child (can’t express it because it’s strongly condemned by society).
• Rationalization – Trying to feel in control of your behavior by finding rational reasons or benefits. Two common versions: “I didn’t really want it anyway” when something doesn’t work out, or “there’s a silver lining” when things don’t go as expected. This is an effective way to come to terms with reality and not torment yourself over things you can’t change, but if you get carried away, you might believe you’re in control even when emotions are pushing you toward reckless actions.
• Regression – Returning to childish behavior patterns, seen in both older children and many adults under severe stress, anxiety, fatigue, or physical exhaustion. We all sometimes want to “be taken care of,” and there’s nothing wrong with that as long as a person doesn’t lose the ability to take responsibility in a crisis.
• Sublimation – Redirecting impulses into socially acceptable activities. Even those who’ve never studied psychology have probably heard of this defense: in popular culture, it’s something like “if an artist isn’t having much sex, their paintings get better.” In reality, there’s no solid scientific evidence that abstinence improves your creative output. In fact, a richer life overall helps you cope with a lack of sex. Moreover, even in psychoanalytic theory, sublimation isn’t always about sexual impulses. For example, you can redirect aggression (feeling a lot of anger and wanting to fight—so you play Mortal Kombat or write a story with vivid scenes of violence).

Understanding these defense mechanisms can help you recognize your own patterns and respond more effectively to life’s challenges.