According to Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, he defined the concept of Defense Mechanism as the unconscious behavior for avoiding or reducing one’s threatening perception, like fear and anxiety. There are various kinds of defense mechanism including denial, projection, reaction formation, fixation, sublimation, regression, displacement as well as projective identification. In this essay, three kinds of mechanism namely reaction formation, regression and displacement will be discussed.
First and foremost, is reaction formation. Reaction formation mainly refers to the action we did oppositely in order to emphasize one’s unacceptable impulses. This always appears in our daily life, like when we sense fear, we will act to be brave. For instance, from my personal observation, when I met friends who grow up in a single-parent family or their parents are suddenly divorced, they often tend to build a complete family in the future. Since they experienced and realized the distress of growing up in an incomplete family, like being teased by others or lack of concern from parent, they will then act differently from their parents. In every relationship, they will treat it seriously and regard each other as a life-long partner in order to build up a complete family in the future and avoid their kids being suffered from what they had experienced.
Besides, another type of defense mechanism is Regression. It refers to reverting back to immature behavior when one is faced with stress. The most common example is when a sibling was born, the older child may begin to suck his thumb, keep on crying and not willing to walk even he knows how to do so. Since parent’s attention will shift to the baby, the elder will then try to do different kinds of immature behavior in order to draw parent’s attention. In my own experience, as I am the only child in m family, at home, parents treat me as princess and spend most of their time with me. However, when having gathering with my relatives, since I am no longer the youngest one, all of my relatives, including my parents will shift their attention to my younger cousin and