| Defense | Description | Example |
|---|
| Repression | The complete exclusion from consciousness of anxiety-producing thoughts, feelings, or impulses; most basic defense mechanism. | Three years after being hospitalized for back surgery, a man can remember only vague details about the event. |
| Displacement | The redirection of emotional impulses toward a substitute person or object, usually one less threatening or dangerous than the original source of conflict. | Angered by a neighbor’s hateful comment, a mother spanks her daughter for accidentally spilling her milk. |
| Sublimation | A form of displacement in which sexual urges are rechanneled into productive, nonsexual activities. | A graduate student works on her thesis 14 hours a day while her husband is on an extended business trip. |
| Rationalization | Justifying one’s actions or feelings with socially acceptable explanations rather than consciously acknowledging one’s true motives or desires. | After being rejected by a prestigious university, a student explains that he is glad because he would be happier at a smaller, less competitive college. |
| Projection | The attribution of one’s own unacceptable urges or qualities to others. | A married woman who is sexually attracted to a co-worker accuses him of flirting with her. |
| Reaction formation | Thinking or behaving in a way that is the extreme opposite of unacceptable urges or impulses. | Threatened by his awakening sexual attraction to girls, an adolescent boy goes out of his way to tease and torment adolescent girls. |
| Denial | The failure to recognize or acknowledge the existence of anxiety-provoking information. | Despite having multiple drinks every night, a man says he is not an alcoholic because he never drinks before 5 p.m. |
| Undoing | A form of unconscious repentance that involves neutralizing or atoning for an unacceptable action or thought with a second action or thought. | A woman who gets a tax refund by cheating on her taxes makes a larger-than-usual donation to the church collection on the following Sunday. |
| Regression | Retreating to a behavior pattern characteristic of an earlier stage of development. | After her parents’ bitter divorce, a 10-year-old girl refuses to sleep alone in her room, crawling into bed with her mother. |