Rationalization

Rationalization

In psychology and logic, rationalization also known as making excuses is an unconscious defense mechanism in which perceived controversial behaviors or feelings are logically justified and explained in a rational or logical manner in order to avoid any true explanation, and are made consciously tolerable – or even admirable and superior – by plausible means. Rationalization encourages irrational or unacceptable behavior, motives, or feelings and often involves ad hoc hypothesizing. This process ranges from fully conscious (e.g. to present an external defense against ridicule from others) to mostly subconscious (e.g. to create a block against internal feelings of guilt).
People rationalize for various reasons. Rationalization may differentiate the original deterministic explanation of the behavior or feeling in question. Sometimes rationalization occurs when we think we know ourselves better than we do. It is also an informal fallacy of reasoning.

DSM definition

According to the DSM-IV, rationalization occurs "when the individual deals with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors by concealing the true motivations for his or her own thoughts, actions, or feelings through the elaboration of reassuring or self serving but incorrect explanations."

Cognitive dissonance

Main article: Cognitive dissonance
A rather different, but perhaps complementary, approach to rationalization comes from cognitive dissonance. 'In 1957. Leon Festinger...argued that when people become aware that their attitudes, thoughts, and beliefs ("cognitions") are inconsistent with one another, this realization brings with it an uncomfortable state of tension called cognitive dissonance '.
One answer to the discomfort of the situation is that 'their minds rationalize it by inventing a comfortable illusion'. Thus for example 'people who start to smoke again after quitting for a while perceive smoking to be less dangerous to their health, compared to their views when they decided to stop' - thereby averting their 'post-decisional regret' through their new rationalization.
In a similar way, acts of aggression will often be seen as 'reasonable, well justified, even necessary...rationalizing their self-interest in these ways'; so that, to cite 'Martin Luther King, Jr...."It seems to be a fact of life that human beings cannot continue to do wrong without eventually reaching out for some rationalization to clothe their act"'. The same may be said of the collective scale. 'When groups commit aggression, they, too, rationalize their acts with high-sounding words...rationalizing their own self-interested desires', so that, for example, 'The own God is the right God. The other God is the strange God....Our own soldiers take care of the poor families; the enemy rapes them'.
Such collective rationalizations come close perhaps to the communal illusions of which Freud wrote as 'derived from human wishes...Must not the assumptions that determine our political regulations be called illusions as well? and...may not other cultural assets of which we hold a high opinion and by which we let our lives be ruled be of a similar nature

Projection

Projection

Psychological projection or projection bias is a psychological defense mechanism where a person subconsciously denies his or her own attributes, thoughts, and emotions, which are then ascribed to the outside world, usually to other people. Thus, projection involves imagining or projecting the belief that others originate those feelings.
Projection reduces anxiety by allowing the expression of the unwanted unconscious impulses or desires without letting the conscious mind recognize them.
An example of this behavior might be blaming another for self failure. The mind may avoid the discomfort of consciously admitting personal faults by keeping those feelings unconscious, and by redirecting libidinal satisfaction by attaching, or "projecting," those same faults onto another person or object.
The theory was developed by Sigmund Freud - in his letters to Wilhelm Fliess, '"Draft H" deals with projection as a mechanism of defence - and further refined by his daughter Anna Freud; for this reason, it is sometimes referred to as Freudian Projection.

Counter-projection

When addressing psychological trauma, the defense mechanism is sometimes counter-projection, including an obsession to continue and remain in a recurring trauma-causing situation and the compulsive obsession with the perceived perpetrator of the trauma or its projection.
Jung writes that "All projections provoke counter-projection when the object is unconscious of the quality projected upon it by the subject.

Psychopathology

In psychopathology, projection is an especially commonly used defense mechanism in people with certain personality disorders: 'Patients with paranoid personalities, for example, use projection as a primary defense because it allows them to disavow unpleasant feelings and attribute them to others'.
According to Kernberg, all 'the primitive defenses, such as splitting, [projection] and projective identification, are commonly connected with primitively organized personalities, such as
Borderline personality disorder
Narcissistic personality disorder
Antisocial personality disorder
Psychopathy

Projective techniques

Drawing on the theory that 'the individual "projects" something of himself or herself into everything he or she does, in line with Gordon Allport's concept of expressive behaviour',[19] projective techniques have been devised to aid personality assessment. 'The two best-known projective techniques are the Rorschach ink-blots and the Thematic Apperception Test.

Denial

Denial

Denial (also called abnegation) is a defense mechanism postulated by Sigmund Freud, in which a person is faced with a fact that is too uncomfortable to accept and rejects it instead, insisting that it is not true despite what may be overwhelming evidence.[1] The subject may use:
simple denial: deny the reality of the unpleasant fact altogether
minimisation: admit the fact but deny its seriousness (a combination of denial and rationalization)
projection: admit both the fact and seriousness but deny responsibility by blaming somebody or something else.
The concept of denial is particularly important to the study of addiction. The theory of denial was first researched seriously by Anna Freud. She classified denial as a mechanism of the immature mind, because it conflicts with the ability to learn from and cope with reality. Where denial occurs in mature minds, it is most often associated with death, dying and rape. More recent research has significantly expanded the scope and utility of the concept. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross used denial as the first of five stages in the psychology of a dying patient, and the idea has been extended to include the reactions of survivors to news of a death. Thus, when parents are informed of the death of a child, their first reaction is often of the form, "No! You must have the wrong house, you can't mean our child!"[citation needed]
Unlike some other defense mechanisms postulated by psychoanalytic theory (for instance, repression), the general existence of denial is fairly easy to verify, even for non-specialists. On the other hand, denial is one of the most controversial defense mechanisms, since it can be easily used to create unfalsifiable theories: anything the subject says or does that appears to disprove the interpreter's theory is explained, not as evidence that the interpreter's theory is wrong, but as the subject's being "in denial". However, researchers note that in some cases of corroborated child sexual abuse, the victims sometimes make a series of partial confessions and recantations as they struggle with their own denial and the denial of abusers or family members. Use of denial theory in a legal setting therefore must be carefully regulated and experts' credentials verified. "Formulaic guilt" simply by "being a denier" has been castigated by English judges and academics. [2]
The concept of denial is important in twelve-step programs, where the abandonment or reversal of denial forms the basis of the first, fourth, fifth, eighth and tenth steps. The ability to deny or minimize is an essential part of what enables an addict to continue his or her behavior despite evidence that—to an outsider—appears overwhelming. This is cited as one of the reasons that compulsion is seldom effective in treating addiction—the habit of denial remains.
When a family intervention is conducted to help a person engaged in self-destructive behavior such as alcohol or drug abuse to accept help for his problem, denial is sometimes reduced or eliminated altogether. This is not always necessary, however, for the intervention to be successful in having the person accept help.
Understanding and avoiding denial is also important in the treatment of various diseases. The American Heart Association cites denial as a principal reason that treatment of a heart attack is delayed. Because the symptoms are so varied, and often have other potential explanations, the opportunity exists for the patient to deny the emergency, often with fatal consequences. It is common for patients to delay mammograms or other tests because of a fear of cancer, even though this is clearly maladaptive. It is the responsibility of the care team, and of the nursing staff in particular, to train at-risk patients to avoid such behavior

Types

Denial of fact

In this form of denial, someone avoids a fact by lying. This lying can take the form of an outright falsehood (commission), leaving out certain details to tailor a story (omission), or by falsely agreeing to something (assent, also referred to as "yessing" behavior). Someone who is in denial of fact is typically using lies to avoid facts they think may be painful to themselves or others

Denial of responsibility

This form of denial involves avoiding personal responsibility by:
blaming: a direct statement shifting culpability and may overlap with denial of fact
minimizing: an attempt to make the effects or results of an action appear to be less harmful than they may actually be, or
justifying: when someone takes a choice and attempts to make that choice look okay due to their perception of what is "right" in a situation.
Someone using denial of responsibility is usually attempting to avoid potential harm or pain by shifting attention away from themselves.
For example:
Troy breaks up with his girlfriend because he is unable to control his anger, and then blames her for everything that ever happened

Denial of impact

Denial of impact involves a person's avoiding thinking about or understanding the harms of his or her behavior has caused to self or others, i.e. denial of the consequences. Doing this enables that person to avoid feeling a sense of guilt and it can prevent him or her from developing remorse or empathy for others. Denial of impact reduces or eliminates a sense of pain or harm from poor decisions

Denial of awareness

This type of denial is best discussed by looking at the concept of state dependent learning.[3] People using this type of denial will avoid pain and harm by stating they were in a different state of awareness (such as alcohol or drug intoxication or on occasion mental health related). This type of denial often overlaps with denial of responsibility.

Denial of cycle

Many who use this type of denial will say things such as, "it just happened". Denial of cycle is where a person avoids looking at their decisions leading up to an event or does not consider their pattern of decision making and how harmful behavior is repeated. The pain and harm being avoided by this type of denial is more of the effort needed to change the focus from a singular event to looking at preceding events. It can also serve as a way to blame or justify behavior (see above).

Denial of denial

This can be a difficult concept for many people to identify with in themselves, but is a major barrier to changing hurtful behaviors. Denial of denial involves thoughts, actions and behaviors which bolster confidence that nothing needs to be changed in one's personal behavior. This form of denial typically overlaps with all of the other forms of denial, but involves more self-delusion. Denial at this level can have significant consequences both personally and at a societal level.

Sublimation

Sublimation

In psychology, sublimation is a mature type of defence mechanism where socially unacceptable impulses or idealizations are consciously transformed into socially acceptable actions or behaviour, possibly converting the initial impulse in the long term. Freud defines sublimation as the process of deflecting sexual instincts into acts of higher social valuation, being "an especially conspicuous feature of cultural development; it is what makes it possible for higher psychical activities, scientific, artistic or ideological, to play such an important part in civilised life". [1] Wade and Tavris present a similar view stating that sublimation is when displacement "serves a higher cultural or socially useful purpose, as in the creation of art or inventions."[2]. Sublimation allows us to act out socially unacceptable impulses by converting them into a more acceptable form. For example, a person experiencing extreme anger might take up kick-boxing as a means of venting frustration. Freud believed that sublimation was a sign of maturity (indeed, of civilization), allowing people to function normally in culturally acceptable ways

Psychoanalytic theory

In Freud's psychoanalytical theory, erotic energy is allowed a limited amount of expression, owing to the constraints of human society and civilisation itself. It therefore requires other outlets, especially if an individual is to remain psychologically balanced.
Sublimation is the process of transforming libido into "socially useful" achievements, including artistic, cultural and intellectual pursuits. Freud considered this psychical operation to be fairly salutary compared to the others that he identified, such as repression, displacement, denial, reaction formation, intellectualisation and projection. Freud's daughter, Anna, in the The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence (1936) classes sublimation as one of the major 'defence mechanisms' of the psyche.
Whilst reading The Harz Journey by Heinrich Heine, Freud got the idea of sublimation. The story is about Johann Friedrich Dieffenbach who would cut off the tails of dogs that he found in his childhood and later became a surgeon. Freud concluded sublimation is if one does an action repeatedly throughout his life many times, but first starts doing it sadistically, he will end up doing a similar activity to the benefit of mankind

Sexual Sublimation

Sexual sublimation, also known as sexual transmutation, is the attempt, especially among some religious traditions, to transform sexual impulses or "sexual energy" into creative energy. In this context, sublimation is the transference of sexual energy, or libido, into a physical act or a different emotion in order to avoid confrontation with the sexual urge, which is itself contrary to the individual's belief or ascribed religious belief. It is based on the idea that "sexual energy" can be used to create a spiritual nature which in turn can create more sensual works, instead of one's sexuality being unleashed "raw. The classical example in Western religions is clerical celibacy.
As espoused in the Tanya[citation needed], Hasidic Jewish mysticism views sublimation of the animal soul as an essential task in life, wherein the goal is to transform animalistic and earthy cravings for physical pleasure into holy desires to connect with God.
Different schools of thought describe general sexual urges as carriers of spiritual essence, and have the varied names of vital energy, vital winds (prana), spiritual energy, ojas, shakti, tummo, or kundalini. It is also believed that undergoing sexual sublimation can facilitate a mystical awakening in an individual.

Sublimation according to Jung

C. G. Jung believed sublimation to be mystical in nature, thus differing fundamentally from Freud's view of the concept. For Freud, sublimation helped explain the plasticity of the sexual instincts (and their convertibility to non-sexual ends). The concept also underpinned his psychoanalytical theories which showed the human psyche at the mercy of conflicting impulses (such as the super-ego and the id). Jung criticized Freud for obscuring the alchemical origins of sublimation and for attempting instead to make the concept appear scientifically credible:
Sublimatio is part of the royal art where the true gold is made. Of this Freud knows nothing, worse still, he barricades all the paths that could lead to true sublimatio. This is just about the opposite of what Freud understands by sublimation. It is not a voluntary and forcible channeling of instinct into a spurious field of application, but an alchymical transformation for which fire and prima materia are needed. Sublimatio is a great mystery. Freud has appropriated this concept and usurped it for the sphere of the will and the bourgeois, rationalistic ethos.
This criticism extends from the private sphere of his correspondence (as above) to specific papers he published on psychoanalysis:
Freud invented the idea of sublimation to save us from the imaginary claws of the unconscious. But what is real, what actually exists, cannot be alchemically sublimated, and if anything is apparently sublimated it never was what a false interpretation took it to be.

Reaction Formation

Reaction Formation

In psychoanalytic theory, reaction formation is a defensive process (defense mechanism) in which anxiety-producing or unacceptable emotions and impulses are mastered by exaggeration (hypertrophy) of the directly opposing tendency

Theory

Reaction formation depends on the hypothesis that
"[t]he instincts and their derivatives may be arranged as pairs of opposites: life versus death, construction versus destruction, action versus passivity, dominance versus submission, and so forth. When one of the instincts produces anxiety by exerting pressure on the ego either directly or by way of the superego, the ego may try to sidetrack the offending impulse by concentrating upon its opposite. For example, if feelings of hate towards another person make one anxious, the ego can facilitate the flow of love to conceal the hostility."
Where reaction-formation takes place, it is usually assumed that the original, rejected impulse does not vanish, but persists, unconscious, in its original infantile form. Thus, where love is experienced as a reaction formation against hate, we cannot say that love is substituted for hate, because the original aggressive feelings still exist underneath the affectionate exterior that merely masks the hate to hide it from awareness.
In a diagnostic setting, the existence of a reaction-formation rather than a 'simple' emotion would be suspected where exaggeration, compulsiveness and inflexibility were observed. For example,
"[r]eactive love protests too much; it is overdone, extravagant, showy, and affected. It is counterfeit, and [...] is usually easily detected. Another feature of a reaction formation is its compulsiveness. A person who is defending himself against anxiety cannot deviate from expressing the opposite of what he really feels. His love, for instance, is not flexible. It cannot adapt itself to changing circumstances as genuine emotions do; rather it must be constantly on display as if any failure to exhibit it would cause the contrary feeling to come to the surface.
Reaction formation is sometimes described as one of the most difficult defenses for lay people to understand; this testifies not merely to its effectiveness as a disguise, but also to its ubiquity and flexibility as a defense that can be utilized in many forms. For example,
"solicitude may be a reaction-formation against cruelty, cleanliness against coprophilia"
and it is not unknown for an analyst to explain a client's unconditional pacifism as a reaction formation against their sadism. In addition,
"[h]igh ideals of virtue and goodness may be reaction formations against primitive object cathexes rather than realistic values that are capable of being lived up to. Romantic notions of chastity and purity may mask crude sexual desires, altruism may hide selfishness, and piety may conceal sinfulness."
Even more counter-intuitively, according to this model
"[a] phobia is an example of a reaction formation. The person wants what he fears. He is not afraid of the object; he is afraid of the wish for the object. The reactive fear prevents the dreaded wish from being fulfilled.
The concept of reaction formation has been used to explain responses to external threats as well as internal anxieties. In the phenomenon described as Stockholm Syndrome, a hostage or kidnap victim 'falls in love' with the feared and hated person who has complete power over them. Similarly paradoxical reports exist of powerless and vulnerable inmates of Nazi camps creating 'favourites' among the guards and even collecting objects discarded by them. The mechanism of reaction formation is often characteristic of obsessional neuroses. When this mechanism is overused, especially during the formation of the ego, it can become a permanent character trait. This is often seen in those with obsessional character and obsessive personality disorders. This does not imply that its periodic usage is always obsessional, but that it can lead to obsessional behavior.

Sexuality

A heterosexual individual who is fearful or hateful toward those who identify themselves as homosexual and bisexual may be seeking to counteract deep-seated and often untouched homosexual desires. A reaction formation is used to exaggerate heterosexual behavior outwardly, to relieve inward anxiety regarding homosexual desires.

Relationship assessment

When an individual cannot deal with the demands of desires (including sex and love) and reality, anxiety follows. Freud believed that anxiety is an unpleasant inner state that people seek to avoid. In an attempt to protect ourselves from this anxiety, people employ reaction formation unconsciously in their daily lives. Reaction formation involves adopting opposite feelings, impulses or behavior. Someone adopting a reaction formation defense strategy would treat a spouse or loved one in the same manner in which they’d treat a hated enemy. Another example would be that two people really fond of each other fight all the time to suppress their desire of love for each other. This may also occur when there is a failure of acceptance that the other person is really important to them. To suppress their feelings for that person, they may resort to reaction formation and try to hate or fight with their loved ones to avoid the anxiety of not having them around.