Ego Defence Mechanisms - Assignment Example

Ego Defense Mechanisms In a bid to protect ourselves from anxiety, humans apply different defensive mechanisms including denial, repression, projection, reaction formation, sublimation, displacement, intellectualization, and regression (Volney, 1992). It is important to note that these defense mechanisms are a mix of repression or denial and rationalization strategies. In this paper I will briefly discuss one defense mechanism that mostly applies to my life and tits importance or impacts on my life.

While I realize that I commonly apply many of the defense mechanisms mentioned above, the two that I commonly apply are sublimation and repression. Repression involves unconsciously blocking impulses, feelings and thoughts that one considers unacceptable. The central theme with repression relates to the fact that the unconscious is involved so that the individual has limited control of the process (Wilderdom, 2003). Sublimation involves the transformation of impulses into constructive activity rather than a destructive one (Volney, 1992).

In Feud’s view, sublimation is a most adaptive mechanism (Wilderdom, 2003). Of the two mechanisms, I mostly apply sublimation.In many instances I have applied sublimation when I get angry or frustrated. While I often feel like yelling at someone or everyone in such instances, I always struggle to engage in an activity like sports to dispense my anger. There is one occasion that is worth mentioning with respect to my application of sublimation. I had been instructed by my aunt to look after her younger children as she went on a trip.

I did my best to ensure that each of the two children aged 6 and 8 were comfortable and lacked nothing. Being so playful, I had to maintain a keen eye on the two even as I performed some household chores which shared a lot of my concentration. Unfortunately, the younger child who was also his mother’s heart ended up falling on the ground from a shrub that he had climbed as they were playing. The little boy ended up with a dislocation at the shoulder. When my aunt returned to find an ailing son, he became mad at me and accused me of paying no attention to his children.

She emphasized that I only loved to get entertained and ignored the most important details in life. She would not hear my explanation of what had happened and I got extremely angry for being wrongly accused. I felt like yelling at her and hitting her hard with my fist. I also felt like leaving my aunt’s residence right away. In a bid to quench my anger, I decided to leave the house and went to play volleyball with my friends. I hit the ball when it came my direction and eventually had my anger relieved on the ball.

The application of sublimation in my life, as a defense mechanism, has been quite positive considering that even when I get frustrated, I never go to the extent of being destructive. Instead, I prefer to channel my energies toward a constructive course. This way, I have managed to avoid greater problems by overreacting to events. ReferencesWilderdom, 2003, Defence Mechanisms in Psychodynamic Theory, available athttp://wilderdom.com/personality/L8-6DefenceMechanismsPsychoanalyticTheory.html [Accessed 12 October, 2012] Volney G.

, 1992, Freud on Sublimation, State University of New York Press, New York.