Defense Mechanisms: Definition, Examples, & Types

By Charlie Huntington, M.A., Ph.D. Candidate
​Reviewed by Tchiki Davis, M.A., Ph.D.
Defense mechanisms are the unconscious mental gymnastics we perform to protect ourselves from painful thoughts and experiences. Are defense mechanisms all bad? Read on to learn more.
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I am far from the first therapist who has faced his own mental health challenges, but sometimes I have a hard time believing how long it took me to admit to myself that I needed help. The farther I got down the path of training in therapy, the less I wanted to consider how desperately in need of therapy I was myself.
Why couldn’t I just say to myself, “Charlie, you have a mental health disorder, and you need professional treatment for it”? Needing help meant admitting that I didn’t have all the answers myself, that I was not powerful enough to simply heal myself. I also worried that maybe I wasn’t ready to help others if I was struggling myself. I was in denial about needing help because it was easier to be in denial than ask for help.
​
My denial was a defense mechanism – it kept me from facing the painful truth about my own humanity. We use defense mechanisms like this all the time to manage our experiences – it wouldn’t surprise me if you have used one yourself today. Is this (always) a bad thing? What are the other defense mechanisms? Read on to see the definition and many examples of defense mechanisms.
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What Are Defense Mechanisms? (A Definition)

According to Cramer (2015), there are three key aspects of all defense mechanisms. First, they are mental processes of which we are not consciously aware. Second, they help us avoid experiencing strong emotions that we would otherwise feel. Third, they protect our sense of self from threat – they keep our self-esteem and personal identity safe from experiences that seem to threaten those aspects of ourselves.
 
According to Anna Freud, the daughter of Sigmund Freud, defense mechanisms are also used to keep us from having to acknowledge our “instinctual drives” – the other primitive and socially unacceptable desires that each of us possess (Freud, 1936). This purpose is closely related to protecting our ego and staving off unpleasant emotions. Sometimes the supposed threat comes from within us, and sometimes it comes from an outside source (Freud, 1936).

Defense Mechanisms Example
​Perhaps a brief example at this point will make these characteristics more concrete. Suppose I feel a strong attraction to the romantic partner of one of my closest friends, but I have a hard time acknowledging this because I see it as a betrayal of my friend and an inappropriate attraction. My brain might naturally gravitate toward using a defense mechanism in this situation, because it would protect me from my own desire and the judgment of other people as well as allow me to continue to see myself as a good person who would never covet his friend’s romantic partner.

Why Defense Mechanisms Are Important

Why do we have defense mechanisms in the first place? The simple answer is that they fulfill a very important function of self-preservation. As humans, whenever we experience stress, we naturally look for ways to reduce or avoid that stress. Defense mechanisms are highly effective (until we become aware of them – more on that in a moment) at protecting us from psychological distress, even though their overuse actually makes things worse (Cramer, 2015).

Defense mechanisms, in this sense, are similar to a form of coping. The differences between the two are that coping mechanisms are consciously and voluntarily undertaken, while defense mechanisms are unconsciously and unintentionally undertaken (Cramer, 1998). Also, defense mechanisms, when they are successful, allow us to continue to see the world as we would like to see it, while coping strategies involve admitting that we needed to work hard or change something to handle the situation we were in (Miceli & Castelfranchi, 2001).

Interestingly, defense mechanisms generally don’t work if we are conscious of them. This means that we have to change our unconscious strategies over time. Defense mechanisms naturally evolve as we age, which has led scholars to say that certain defense mechanisms are typical of or appropriate for certain ages (Cramer, 2015).
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For example, among young children, denial is the most commonly used defense mechanism, but this drops off over the childhood years, as projection becomes more important, and then in the teenage years a person will use the defense of identification most often (Cramer, 2015).

Importance of Defense Mechanisms
These changes happen as a natural response to the child becoming aware of what they are doing, but not yet understanding the next, “more evolved” kind of projection (Cramer, 2015). I think an example will be helpful here, and I will draw on one of my favorite examples of projection: cheating at games or sports. A boy ages 5 to 8 is most likely to outright deny that he has cheated in a game of Monopoly (denial). A slightly older boy is most likely to say that it was actually his younger sibling who took money from the Monopoly bank when nobody was looking (projection). And an adolescent boy who wants to ensure that he wins might offer to serve as the banker for the game so he can more easily pass himself more funds (identification).

​As this example suggests, defense mechanisms become more complex or mature with age, and in fact, some psychologists suggest that when people’s defense mechanisms do not change over time, particularly in their younger years, it is indicative of problems in their socioemotional development (Cramer, 2003). For example, a child who is having trouble identifying their own emotions and voicing them may continue to use less mature defense styles beyond the age when most of their peers have moved on to other defense mechanisms (Helmes et al., 2008).

Defense Mechanisms Types

​We can break defense mechanisms into roughly two types: those that involve dissociation and those that involve cognitive distortions (Bowins, 2004). In dissociative defense mechanisms, one successfully avoids a distressing emotional experience, while in cognitively distorting defense mechanisms, we unconsciously replace thoughts that would hurt our egos with thoughts that make us feel better about ourselves. Let’s look in more detail at some examples of the primary types of defense mechanisms (Cramer, 2015):
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  • Defense Mechanisms: Projection​​
    • In projection, we see something undesirable about ourselves in somebody else instead of acknowledging that it is our own characteristic. For example, a husband who is considering being unfaithful to his wife, but feels guilty about it, might accuse his wife of being unfaithful. This way, he can feel good about himself for getting mad about somebody being unfaithful, without having to acknowledge his own feelings.
  • Defense Mechanisms: Sublimation
    • ​In sublimation, we take feelings we think are inappropriate in their actual context and act them out in a different context instead. To continue with the example of the husband, he might watch pornography instead of pursuing physical connection with another person, as this could seem like a more appropriate outlet for his urges.
  • Defense Mechanisms: Displacement
    • ​Displacement is directing one’s feelings from their original target to another. Ever heard the saying, “Don’t shoot the messenger”? People displace their anger toward the nearest target instead of the actual cause of the anger all the time.
  • Defense Mechanisms: Reaction Formation
    • ​In reaction formation, we express the opposite of what we are actually feeling, because that is more unconsciously acceptable to us. For example, a person experiencing lots of insecurity may act as though they are the most confident person in the world.
  • Defense Mechanisms: Rationalization
    • In rationalization, we come up with logical reasons for things that we did impulsively or without a clear reason. For example, I might justify eating another cookie or five by saying that I ate a light lunch.​
  • Defense Mechanisms: Repression
    • In repression, we simply suppress all memory of an experience. I think I successfully repressed a lot of anger when I was younger because I simply did not think it was acceptable for me to be angry.​

For more details regarding these defense mechanisms and an introduction to a few more defense mechanisms, I recommend watching the following video:

Video: 10 Psychological Defense Mechanisms

Defense Mechanisms List

As noted above, all defense mechanisms are not considered equal; rather, some are considered more adaptive than others (Cramer, 2000). The list of the most adaptive defense mechanisms includes altruism, humor, sublimation, and suppression. These behaviors involve the least distortion of the experience or emotions taking place and are the most likely to actually resolve the situation. These are important distinctions – since most defense mechanisms involve avoidance of emotions, those that do not deny our emotional realities, but rather try to do something productive with those feelings, are much more adaptive (Vaillant, 2000). In fact, the use of these defense mechanisms may be associated with better physical and mental well-being, healthier relationships, and more professional success (Vaillant, 2000).

Meanwhile, the list of the least effective defense mechanisms includes being passive aggressive, acting out, and withdrawing from a situation entirely. These are the defense mechanisms that cause the most collateral damage and do the least to resolve the situation. Instead, they often make things worse, even if they successfully avoid the emotion or experience that prompted the defense mechanism.

More Examples of Defense Mechanisms

Here are some of the things you might hear somebody say regarding defense mechanisms (Perry, 2014):
  • “She always uses humor to get through an awkward moment.”
  • “You should be mad at your boss, but instead you’re taking it out on me.”
  • “I just have to hold my tongue when my mother-in-law starts talking about that.”
  • “You just did that because you wanted to, not because you had a good reason.”
  • “Everybody else knows he’s an alcoholic but the man himself.”

Defense Mechanisms & Mental Health

There is a lot of research connecting the use of less effective defense mechanisms with negative mental health outcomes (e.g., Cramer, 2000). For example, people with serious mental health issues are likely to be avoiding fully acknowledging their situation, which can make things worse over time. While defense mechanisms may help in the short-term to stop the negative feelings associated with mental health disorders, they will prolong the period of time before a person actually gets help and changes. At the same time, defense mechanisms can also cause people to overstate their degree of suffering (Steptoe & Vogele, 1992). All of this makes identifying the defense mechanisms in a client’s psychology a key objective for many therapists (Cramer, 2000).
 
More generally, people who use immature defenses have been found to function less effectively overall and to face more interpersonal challenges (Vaillant, 2000). For people in therapy, improvement in their psychiatric symptoms is related to their using fewer immature defenses (Albucher et al., 1998). One way that clinicians know this is changing is that their clients show fewer instances of behaviors that are difficult to explain – these are often some kind of defense mechanism that has yet to be explored or resolved (Perry, 2014).

Articles Related to Defense Mechanisms

​Want to learn more? Check out these articles:

Books Related to Defense Mechanisms

If you’d like to keep learning more, here are a few books that you might be interested in.

Final Thoughts on Defense Mechanisms

By now, I imagine you might be pretty suspicious of defense mechanisms. Most of the examples seem negative, like we are just avoiding the realities inside and outside our heads. I want to argue the opposite: defense mechanisms are an essential tool for survival.
 
For example, try to imagine being a kid who had to fully acknowledge every single time they did something wrong or made a mistake. Little kids don’t know what they’re doing – they make mistakes all the time! Some degree of denial is important for a young child to protect their ego; otherwise, they might struggle to survive the stress of always getting things wrong. And as adults, although denial doesn’t serve us that well, tools like humor can help defuse painful situations. Nobody wants to be around a person with no sense of humor, right?
 
Indeed, just as the use of immature defenses is associated with psychological struggles, the use of mature defenses is associated with more adaptive functioning (Vaillant, 1977).
 
If you’re curious about using defense mechanisms in your own life, you might look at a list of the most mature ones and try to practice them in stressful situations. Some research indicates that the use of mature defenses is associated with a person’s level of emotional intelligence (Pellitteri, 2002); this suggests that practicing mature defense mechanisms might even help you build emotional awareness.

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