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The protective mechanisms of the human psyche are aimed at reducing negative and traumatic experiences and are manifested at the unconscious level. This term was coined by Sigmund Freud , and then more deeply developed by his students and followers, primarily by Anna Freud. Let's try to figure out when these mechanisms are useful, and in what cases they inhibit our development and it is better to react and act consciously.
site will tell you about 9 main types of psychological defense, which are important to realize in time. This is what the psychotherapist does most of the time in his office - he helps the client to comprehend the protective mechanisms that limit his freedom, the spontaneity of his response, and distort the interaction with the people around him.
1. Displacement
Repression is the elimination of unpleasant experiences from consciousness. It manifests itself in forgetting what causes psychological discomfort. Displacement can be compared to a dam that can break - there is always a risk that memories of unpleasant events will burst out. And the psyche spends a huge amount of energy to suppress them.
2. Projection
Projection is manifested in the fact that a person unconsciously ascribes his feelings, thoughts, desires and needs to the people around him. This psychological defense mechanism makes it possible to relieve oneself of responsibility for one's own character traits and desires, which seem unacceptable.
For example, unfounded jealousy may be the result of a projection mechanism. Defending against own desire infidelity, a person suspects of cheating on his partner.
3. Introjection
This is the tendency to indiscriminately appropriate other people's norms, attitudes, rules of behavior, opinions and values without trying to understand them and critically rethink them. Introjection is like swallowing huge chunks of food without trying to chew it.
All education and upbringing is built on the mechanism of introjection. Parents say: “Don't put your fingers in the socket, don't go out into the cold without a hat,” and these rules contribute to the survival of children. If a person in adulthood "swallows" other people's rules and norms without trying to understand how they suit him personally, he becomes unable to distinguish between what he really feels and what he wants and what others want.
4. Merger
In fusion, there is no border between "I and not-I". There is only one total "we". The fusion mechanism is most clearly expressed in the first year of a child's life. The mother and child are in fusion, which contributes to the survival of the little person, because the mother is very sensitive to the needs of her child and responds to them. V in this case it comes about the healthy manifestation of this defense mechanism.
But in the relationship between a man and a woman, fusion inhibits the development of a couple and the development of partners. It is difficult to show your individuality in them. Partners dissolve in each other, and passion leaves the relationship sooner or later.
5. Rationalization
Rationalization is an attempt to find reasonable and acceptable reasons for an unpleasant situation, a situation of failure. The purpose of this defense mechanism is to preserve high level self-esteem and convincing ourselves that we are not to blame, that the problem is not with us. It is understood that it is more useful for personal growth and development will take responsibility for what happened and learn from life experiences.
Rationalization can manifest itself as depreciation. Aesop's fable "The Fox and the Grapes" is a classic example of rationalization. The fox cannot get grapes in any way and retreats, explaining that the grapes are "green".
It is much more useful both for oneself and for society to write poetry, paint a picture or just chop wood than to get drunk or beat a more successful rival.
9. Reactive education
In the case of reactive education, our consciousness is protected from forbidden impulses, expressing opposite motives in behavior and thoughts. This protective process is carried out in two stages: first, an unacceptable impulse is suppressed, and then at the level of consciousness the completely opposite appears, while being rather hypertrophied and inflexible.
Freud believed that the EGO responds to the threat of a breakthrough of impulses in two ways: 1) by blocking the expression of impulses in conscious behavior, or 2) by distorting them to such an extent that their initial intensity noticeably decreases or deviates to the side.
All defense mechanisms have two general characteristics 1) they act on an unconscious level and are therefore a means of self-deception and 2) they distort, deny or falsify the perception of reality in order to make anxiety less threatening to the individual. It should also be noted that people rarely use a single defense mechanism — they usually employ different defense mechanisms to resolve or reduce anxiety. We will discuss some of the main defensive strategies below.
crowding out... Freud viewed repression as the primary defense of the ego, not only because it is the basis for the formation of more complex defense mechanisms, but also because it provides the most direct route to escape from anxiety. Sometimes described as “motivated forgetting,” repression is the process of removing from awareness the thoughts and feelings that cause suffering. As a result of the act of repression, individuals are unaware of their anxiety-provoking conflicts and also do not remember traumatic past events. For example, a person suffering from appalling personal setbacks may become unable to relate their traumatic experiences through repression.
Releasing anxiety through repression does not go unnoticed. Freud believed that repressed thoughts and impulses do not lose their activity in the unconscious, and a constant expenditure of psychic energy is required to prevent their breakthrough into consciousness. This continuous waste of ego resources can severely limit the use of energy for more adaptive, self-directed, creative behavior. However, the constant striving of repressed material for open expression can receive short-term gratification in dreams, jokes, slips of the tongue and other manifestations of what Freud called "psychopathology everyday life". Moreover, according to his theory, repression plays a role in all forms of neurotic behavior, in psychosomatic diseases (such as peptic ulcer), psychosexual disorders (such as impotence and frigidity). This is the main and most common defense mechanism.
Projection... As a defense mechanism, in its theoretical significance, projection follows repression. It is the process by which an individual attributes his own unacceptable thoughts, feelings and behavior to other people or the environment. Thus, projection allows a person to place blame on someone or something for their faults or failures. A golfer criticizing his golf club after a bad hit exhibits a primitive projection. On another level, we can observe a projection in a young woman who is not aware that she is struggling with her strong sex drive, but suspects everyone who meets her is intent on seducing her. Finally, classic example projection - a student who does not prepare properly for an exam attributes his low grade to dishonest testing, cheating other students, or blames the professor for not explaining the topic in lectures. Projection also explains social prejudice and the scapegoat phenomenon, since ethnic and racial stereotypes are convenient targets for attributing negative personality characteristics to someone else.
Substitution... In a defense mechanism called substitution, the manifestation of an instinctive impulse is redirected from a more threatening object or person to a less threatening one. A common example is a child who, after being punished by his parents, pushes his little sister, kicks her dog, or breaks her toys. Substitution also manifests itself in the increased sensitivity of adults to the slightest irritating moments. For example, an overly demanding employer criticizes an employee, and she reacts with outbursts of rage to minor provocations from her husband and children. She does not realize that, being the objects of her irritation, they are simply replacing the boss. In each of these examples, the true object of hostility is replaced by a much less threatening subject. Less common is this form of substitution when it is directed against oneself: hostile impulses addressed to others are redirected to oneself, which causes feelings of depression or self-condemnation.
Rationalization... Another way for the ego to deal with frustration and anxiety is to distort reality and thus protect self-esteem. Rationalization refers to the false reasoning that makes irrational behavior appear in a way that looks perfectly reasonable and therefore justifiable in the eyes of others. Foolish mistakes, bad judgments, and blunders can be justified by the magic of rationalization. One of the most commonly used forms of such protection is “green grape” rationalization. This name originates from Aesop's fable about a fox who could not reach the bunch of grapes and therefore decided that the berries were not yet ripe. People rationalize in the same way. For example, a man to whom a woman responded with a humiliating refusal when he asked her out, consoles himself that she is completely unattractive. Likewise, a student who fails to enroll in the dental department of a medical school may convince herself that she does not really want to be a dentist.
Reactive education... Sometimes the ego can defend itself against forbidden impulses by expressing opposite motives in behavior and thoughts. Here we are dealing with reactive formation, or reverse action. This protective process is realized in two stages: firstly, the unacceptable impulse is suppressed: then, at the level of consciousness, the completely opposite appears. The opposition is especially noticeable in socially approved behavior, which appears to be exaggerated and inflexible. For example, a woman who is anxious about her own expressed sexual attraction may become an unyielding fighter against pornographic films in her circle. She may even actively picket film studios or write letters of protest to a film company, expressing strong concerns about the degradation of modern cinema. Freud wrote that many men who ridicule homosexuals actually defend themselves against their own homosexual urges.
Regression... Another well-known defense mechanism used to protect against anxiety is regression. Regression is characterized by a return to childish, childish patterns of behavior. It is a way to alleviate anxiety by returning to an earlier period of life that is safer and more enjoyable. Easily recognizable manifestations of regression in adults include incontinence, discontent, and features such as “pouting and not talking” to others, babbling, opposing authority, or driving at recklessly high speeds.
Sublimation... According to Freud, sublimation is a defense mechanism that enables a person to adapt to change their impulses in such a way that they can be expressed through socially acceptable thoughts or actions. Sublimation is seen as the only healthy, constructive strategy for curbing unwanted impulses because it allows the ego to change the purpose and / or object of impulses without inhibiting their manifestation. The energy of instincts is diverted through other channels of expression - those that society considers acceptable. For example, if over time masturbation causes more and more anxiety in a young man, he may sublimate his impulses into socially approved activities such as football, hockey, or other sports. Likewise, a woman with strong unconscious sadistic tendencies can become a surgeon or a first-class novelist. In these activities, she can demonstrate her superiority over others, but in a way that will give a socially useful result.
He argued that the sublimation of sexual instincts was the main impetus for great achievements in Western science and culture. He said that the sublimation of sexual attraction is a particularly noticeable feature of the evolution of culture - thanks to her alone, an extraordinary rise in science, art and ideology, which play such an important role in our civilized life, has become possible.
Negation... When a person refuses to admit that an unpleasant event has occurred, this means that he turns on such a protective mechanism as denial. Imagine a father who refuses to believe that his daughter has been raped and brutally murdered; he behaves as if nothing like this had happened. Or imagine a child denying the death of a beloved cat and persisting in believing that it is still alive. Denial of reality also takes place when people say or insist: “This simply cannot happen to me,” despite the obvious evidence to the contrary (this happens when a doctor informs a patient that he has a fatal disease). According to Freud, denial is most common in young children and older individuals with reduced intelligence (although mature and normally developed people can sometimes use denial in highly traumatic situations).
Denial and the other defense mechanisms described are the pathways used by the psyche in the face of internal and external threats. In each case, psychological energy is expended to create a defense, as a result of which this flexibility and strength is limited. Moreover, the more effective the defense mechanisms are, the more distorted the picture of our needs, fears and aspirations they create. Freud noted that we all use defense mechanisms to some extent, and that this becomes undesirable only if we rely on them excessively. Grains of serious psychological problems fall on fertile soil only when our defenses, with the exception of sublimation, lead to a distortion of reality.
Crowding out. It is the process of involuntarily eliminating unacceptable thoughts, urges or feelings into the unconscious. Freud detailed the defense mechanism of motivated forgetting. It plays an essential role in the formation of symptoms. When the action of this mechanism for reducing anxiety is insufficient, other defense mechanisms are activated, allowing the repressed material to be perceived in a distorted form. The most widely known are two combinations of defense mechanisms: a) displacement + displacement. This combination contributes to the occurrence of phobic reactions. For example, the obsessive fear of the mother that her little daughter will fall ill with a serious illness is a defense against hostility towards the child, combining the mechanisms of repression and displacement; b) repression + conversion (somatic symbolization). This combination forms the basis of hysterical reactions.
Regression. Through this mechanism, an unconscious descent to an earlier level of adaptation is carried out, which makes it possible to satisfy desires. Regression can be partial, complete, or symbolic. Most emotional problems have regressive features.Normally, regression manifests itself in games, in reactions to unpleasant events (for example, at the birth of a second child, the first-born baby stops using the toilet, starts asking for a pacifier, etc.), in situations of increased responsibility, in case of illness (a patient requires increased attention and care). In pathological forms, regression is manifested in mental illness, especially in schizophrenia.
Projection. This is a mechanism for referring thoughts, feelings, motives and desires to another person or object, which the individual rejects at the conscious level. Fuzzy projection forms appear in everyday life. Many of us are completely uncritical of our shortcomings and easily notice them only in others. We tend to blame others for our own troubles. Projection can also be harmful because it leads to an erroneous interpretation of reality. This mechanism often works in immature and vulnerable individuals. In cases of pathology, projection leads to hallucinations and delusions, when the ability to distinguish fantasy from reality is lost.
Rationalization. This is a defense mechanism that justifies thoughts, feelings, behavior that are actually unacceptable. Rationalization is the most common psychological defense mechanism, because our behavior is determined by many factors, and when we explain it with the most acceptable motives for ourselves, then we rationalize. The unconscious rationalization mechanism should not be confused with deliberate lies, deceit, or pretense. Rationalization helps to maintain self-esteem, avoid responsibility and guilt. In any rationalization there is at least a minimal amount of truth, but it has more self-deception, and therefore it is dangerous.
Intellectualization. This defense mechanism involves the exaggerated use of intellectual resources in order to eliminate emotional experiences and feelings. Intellectualization is closely related to rationalization and replaces the experience of feelings with reflections about them (for example, instead of real love - talking about love).
Compensation. It is an unconscious attempt to overcome real and imagined deficiencies. Compensatory behavior is universal, since achieving status is an important need for almost all people. Compensation can be socially acceptable (a blind person becomes a famous musician) and unacceptable (compensation for short stature - by striving for power and aggressiveness; compensation for disability - by rudeness and conflict). They also distinguish direct compensation (striving for success in a knowingly losing area) and indirect compensation (striving to establish oneself in another area).
Negation. It is a mechanism for rejecting thoughts, feelings, desires, needs, or reality that are unacceptable on a conscious level. Behavior as if the problem does not exist. The primitive mechanism of denial is more typical for children (if you hide your head under the covers, then reality will cease to exist). Adults often use denial in cases of crisis situations (incurable illness, approaching death, loss loved one etc.).
Bias. It is a mechanism for channeling emotions from one object to a more acceptable substitution. For example, the displacement of aggressive feelings from the employer to family members or other objects. Displacement manifests itself in phobic reactions, when anxiety from a conflict hidden in the unconscious is transferred to an external object.
The mechanism of psychological defense SUPPRESSION develops to restrain the emotion of fear, the manifestations of which are unacceptable for positive self-perception and threaten to become directly dependent on the aggressor. Fear is blocked by forgetting the real stimulus, as well as all objects, facts and circumstances associated with it. The suppression cluster includes mechanisms close to it: ISOLATION and INTROJECTION. Isolation is subdivided by some authors into DISTANCING, DE-REALIZATION and DEPERSANOLIZATION, which can be expressed by the formulas: "it was somewhere far and long ago, as if not in reality, as if not with me." In other sources, the same terms are used to refer to pathological disorders of perception.
Features of protective behavior are normal: careful avoidance of situations that can become problematic and cause fear (for example, flying on an airplane, public speaking, etc.), inability to defend their position in an argument, conciliation, humility, timidity, forgetfulness, fear of new acquaintances, pronounced tendencies to avoidance and submission are rationalized, and anxiety is overcompensated in the form of unnaturally calm, slow behavior, deliberate equanimity, etc.
"In the process of development technical system there is a gradual displacement of a person from it, that is, technology gradually takes over the functions previously performed by it, thereby approaching a complete (performing its functions without human participation) system.
The displacement of a person from the technical system actually means the consistent transfer of physical, monotonous labor to machines and the transition of a person to more and more intellectual types of activity, that is, it reflects the general progressive development of society.
There are two possible ways of ousting a person from the technical system. The first is the displacement of a person as an individual, the replacement of his activity with devices that perform the same operations. In the overwhelming majority of cases, this is the wrong, dead-end path. The second, more effective one - rejection of the "human" principle of work, technology designed for human capabilities and intelligence. This becomes possible only after the identification, simplification and "deintellectualization" of the functions performed.
Example. The function of orienting parts during punching, which is easily performed by an untrained worker, is difficult for a robot. On the other hand, a machine can take advantage of "machine" advantages - high speed and accuracy of movement, develop great efforts, work in environments inaccessible to humans. Therefore, the displacement of a person from the technical system is very often associated with the transition to new principles of action, new technologies. Particularly promising in providing flexibility production processes is the transition to the use of rotary-conveyor lines created in our country, new processing methods instead of “smart” robots and flexible automated production (HAP), which in most cases did not meet the expectations.
In fig. 4 shows the structure of a complete (i.e., not requiring human participation) system. It includes three functional levels: performing (1), management (2) and decision making (3). To perform their functions at each level there are working bodies (tools), converters and sources (energy or information).
Overwhelming majority existing systems incomplete. The missing parts are replaced by a person, but as the system develops, all large quantity functions are transferred to the machine, its completeness increases.
The development of technology began from the pre-systemic level, when a person did not have any tools except own hands, teeth, nails, etc., and then proceeded through the successive displacement of a person, first within one level, and then at higher levels, and was accompanied by the following events.
When displaced from the performing level: the emergence simple tools type of club, stone knife (1.1); simple mechanisms-energy converters such as lever, bow, block (1.2); the use of various sources of energy instead of muscle power - wind, water, steam engines (1.3); from the control level: the emergence of control devices for mechanisms - the rudder of the ship, the transition from balance gliders, in which control was carried out by moving the human body, to the use of air rudders-aileron (2.1); the emergence of mechanisms - command converters in control systems - servomotors, booster devices (2.2); the emergence of command sources - copying devices for lathes and milling machines, the simplest autopilots without feedbacks and logic circuits (2.3); from the decision-making level: the emergence of sensors replacing the human senses, allowing to increase the accuracy of the information received and also to receive information that is inaccessible to the human senses (3.1); the emergence of information converters - from the simplest binoculars to electronic systems(3.2); the emergence of systems for evaluating information and making decisions - automatic systems control (3.3).
The repression of a person occurs most quickly and easily at the first level and with great difficulty goes on the third, because a person is a much more effective "information machine" than an "energy" one.
Understanding the patterns of successive displacement of a person from a technical system allows you to work on its improvement purposefully, avoiding typical mistakes connected with running ahead, that is, attempts to displace a person from more distant stages, without ensuring displacement from the previous ones, for example, automation of the control system (3,3), in which the main source of energy is still a person (1.3) ”.
Altshuller G.S., Zlotin B.L., Zusman A.V., Search for new ideas: from insight to technology, Chisinau, "Kartya Moldovenyaske", 1989, p. 33-35.
EXAMPLE of displacement... It takes place in the 1930s in San Francisco: “A friend of mine, who works in a women's dress factory, has been making the same seam on the left sleeve for eight years. And I've never seen a whole dress. Another friend works at a cannery and has also been making the same movement for five years now: he presses the key to open the box with a narrow tin plate. Finger on right hand he has it like a wooden one. And the third friend works at a sausage factory, where a ready-made sausage comes out of a live pig entering a car in an hour or half an hour. His duty is to clean the pig's patch with a special brush. "
Vertinsky A.N. , Dear long ..., M., "Pravda", 1990, p. 259.
In the United States, the number of "white collars" exceeded the number of "blue collars" in the middle of the 20th century.
I would like to note that the described tendencies can be observed not only in technical, but also in social systems.
The term "displacement" was coined by the German scientist Johann Herbart at the beginning of the 20th century. He argued that conflicting ideas are constantly in conflict. The victorious desires and ideas crowd out the defeated, but the defeated, albeit weakly, still influence the personality. With the development of psychology, repression as defense mechanism became widely used in psychoanalysis, the founder of which was Z. Freud.
Repression as a type of psychological defense
This can be protection from negative manifestations of the surrounding world, affecting the personality and carrying a traumatic factor. This is a process in which there is an involuntary movement into the unconscious of thoughts, memories, images, feelings and motives that are unpleasant for a person.
Repression is the most important way to resolve internal conflict through purposeful shutdown from the consciousness of an asocial motive or negative information. Affected pride, resentment or pride become a source of distorted motives for one's own actions, so that the truth can be hidden not only from others, but also from oneself. Real, but not entirely pleasant motives are easily replaced by others approved by society. Such games of the mind in the life of every person occur constantly, since the repression mechanism is also adaptive in nature.
Crowding out loss
Imagine a child who has lost his favorite toy, he is very sad and his parents unsuccessfully reassure him. Then the grandmother says that the toy is not gone forever and will definitely be found. Then the baby calms down, the thought of a hopeless loss changes to an optimistic mood, and very soon the child forgets about the old toy. If the process of repression had not taken place, then many people would be terribly depressed about their misdeeds, losses and unfulfilled desires, unable to find the strength to accept reality.
Many scientists have been studying the phenomenon of repression. But the most detailed and deeply this topic was developed by Sigmund Freud, who worked with patients suffering from neuroses. The fundamental hypothesis was that if you transfer the unconscious to the conscious and find out the very repressed (attraction, thoughts, desires, information) that generates the symptom, then the symptom will disappear. Freud saw repression as an attempt rejection of reality events disturbing the person. As a result, the distortion of reality, the substitution of events or their complete denial.
It is paradoxical that repression requires enormous energy costs... Therefore, neurotic individuals often experience lethargy, loss of strength, emotional exhaustion, and often get sick for a long time.
It was with the repression mechanism that S. Freud associated the symptoms of hysteria, frigidity, impotence and psychosomatic diseases. The scientist noted that this mechanism is more often observed in infantile personalities with hysterical features and in children. Freud identified two types of repression
- primary repression (prevention of the initial instinctive impulse)
- secondary, in which the latent manifestation of the impulse is held in the subconscious
Repression, along with other mechanisms of personality protection, is a kind of regulator of mental homeostasis. If for some reason it is absent or not fully developed, for example, in people with psychopathic reactions, then there is a likelihood of personality disintegration.
Repression as a defense mechanism leads not only to a distortion of one's own motives and manifestations, but also to a selective approach in the social sphere of individuals.
Displacement of true motives
Let's take a look at a simple example. A young woman is studying at the institute and at the same time has a hobby that requires a lot of time. In this regard, she fails to provide adequate comfort for her husband and child. Because of this, according to the wife's version, the husband sometimes comes home in the morning and is often irritable and rude towards her. Nevertheless, the woman is trying to improve and create an idyll in the relationship and calls her husband "beloved, loving me."
Positive self-concept in this variant it suffers a double blow. In reality, a woman is offended and lonely, but her consciousness does not leave an iridescent illusion about a beautiful and friendly family. Stronger resentment and melancholy for her would be the realization that she is not loved. The need to rebuild reality from scratch scares the ego. Therefore, a woman ignores the bad and disturbing thoughts, but it is not possible to eliminate the anxiety at all. And now it all depends on how long the consciousness will cherish the obvious self-deception.
A psychologist worked with this family and identified the stages in the development of the crisis. Initially, the wife developed anxiety for her husband's life, as a result of which the inevitable feeling of the death of a loved one arose. The woman was sincerely worried and believed that only a fatal outcome could destroy a family. She periodically replayed episodes of an accident involving her husband in her head. Various secret rituals and inventions were invented specifically in order to save her husband on the way.
Sometimes a woman smelled female perfume from her husband's shirt and joked about it. She did not for a second seriously imagine the possibility of treason. One day it happened like this - my husband cheated, saying that he was late at work, but he was not really there. The woman found out about this, the thought of the accident did not visit her, but there was no thought of treason either. She was seized by a strong anxiety and when her husband came, she demanded to tell everything. His answer was unexpected and overwhelming, as it turned out, the man was cheating all the time. It was a real blow as it was time to rebuild your life.
The "moment of truth" came, which crushed the long and painful repression, but at the same time the soul was healed, since the consciousness cleared up and the real picture of the world for specific people cleared up.
Many facts from personal life:
Neurotic personalities do not realize this at all and do not notice their negative traits- resentment, anger, irony, etc. They do not see anything bad in this, treating them as normal manifestations that do not require change and even worthy of pride.
Methods for eliminating crowding
To become a harmonious personality, it is necessary to try in every way to comprehend the repressed, transforming it into a conscious one. One of the methods used in psychology is to write autobiography... Detailed description of the past - great way to remember and realize everything repressed in order to rethink, re-experience and make sure that the oppressive past does not interfere with living a full-fledged present. To begin with, you should go through all the losses, the death of loved ones. You need to build relationships with loved ones, realize true reason their hostility. Realize the desire to rule over real growth instead of tyrannizing household members.
The main challenge in the fight against crowding out is awareness the very same repressed by means of psychoanalytic procedures used in psychology. But it is also important to prevent the emergence of this mechanism - vigilance. To do this, you can keep a diary, noting your opinion on the current event or discussion in it.
The stronger the position of an adult, the less it will penetrate into our unconscious, therefore, more will remain in the conscious. Because of this, so many repressions occur precisely in childhood, since in childhood there can be no adult position by definition. The stronger in spirit a person is, the more he is able to comprehend and digest, even if the information is very painful. If a person is often offended, but at the same time tries to give himself an indifferent look, then the offense is repressed. This, in turn, leads to inhibition of personal growth or even blocks it. If a person is offended, but the offense is present in the mind, then it will be easier and faster to forgive it.
Determining whether resentment is repressed or not is very simple. If, when remembering a person, the thought comes that there is no desire to communicate with him, or a wave of negativity overwhelms him (without a specific reason), therefore, the resentment is repressed. In this case, you need to take a piece of paper and a pen and remember all the episodes in life associated with this person. This method will surely give a result and the reason for the repressed resentment will most likely be found. Now you need to sincerely forgive the person and let go of the offense, even if this is not always easy. If, when recalling a specific person, appear positive emotions or a complete absence of emotions, then there are no repressed grievances. In psychology, this process is called reflection.
The displacement mechanism is also not the best way affects memory. Individuals who have a lot of repressed are extremely forgetful and have memory problems.
It is possible and necessary to fight the repression mechanism. This will require a fair amount of emotional reserves, because you will have to re-experience not the best moments of your life. But only after this will a person be able to free himself from illusions and go his own way.
Psychology as a science is constantly developing, helping humanity to better understand and accept itself. The topic of defense mechanisms and repression is fairly well understood. But scientists continue their research and experiments, expanding the horizons of knowledge.
