Page 58 - Meeting with Children Manual

Section 4 P a ge | 56

Psychological Defense Mechanisms as They Commonly Emerge in
Developmental Sequence
DEFENSE MECHANISM DESCRIPTION
Infantile Defenses
Conservation When signaling (crying, cooing) fails to find relief, the child shuts down in
Withdrawal sleep

Childhood Defenses
Denial Failure to acknowledge an anxiety-inducing experience
Distortion Re-forming of an anxiety-inducing experience to fit existing beliefs
Regression Stress-induced abandonment of most current and sophisticated
development in favor of earlier levels of functioning
Adolescent Defenses
Fantasy Retreat into a false world internally (as fantasy) or externally (e.g., video
games, fiction, movies)
Passive Aggression Inaction that covertly expresses rage
Idealization Attributing to someone unrealistically positive qualities; failing to recognize
someone's weaknesses or faults
Acting Out Behavior that expresses a strong emotion without understanding or
acknowledgement that the feeling exists
Somaticization Expression of strong emotion indirectly through bodily (somatic)
complaints (e.g., gastric upset, headache)
Projection Disowning one's own strong emotion and attributing it instead to someone
else
Adult Defenses
Displacement Redirection of strong feelings from their actual source to another, less
threatening source
Dissociation Separation of strong emotion from self, sometimes expressed as "not me"
experience

Intellectualization Acknowledgement of an anxiety-inducing event without emotion

Reaction Formation Distorting an unacceptable emotion into its opposite (e.g., the thief who
becomes a police officer)
Compartmentalization Distancing oneself from threatening emotions by locking associated events
into accessible but separate experiences
Rationalization Imposing reason so as to excuse or make sense out of otherwise
unacceptable and threatening emotion
Garber, 2010 p. 98

As defenses get triggered, reactions do not always occur in the adult defense zone of
Garber’s table. Some defensive reactions in parents can look more like a child
tantrum. The challenge for us all is that as our clients can become triggered, we can
be triggered by their defensiveness, to the degree that our reaction can be damaging
to the feedback session.

Some principles:

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