Do Now:

• What do you think about yawning?

• Is your nose itchy?

• Come on…just a little bit itchy?

Personality Adjustment and ConflictThe Healthy Personality

Self Defense Mechanisms

Who controls what happens in your life?

How strong is the power of suggestion?How strong is the power of suggestion?

• Psychological issues can impact biology• Extreme examples: voo-doo, sudden death

syndrome, etc.• Somatoform Disorders: condition in which

psychological issues are expressed in bodily symptoms in the absence of any real physical problem.

• Mild examples: man feels morning sickness due to wife’s pregnancy, etc.

• Psychological issues can impact biology• Extreme examples: voo-doo, sudden death

syndrome, etc.• Somatoform Disorders: condition in which

psychological issues are expressed in bodily symptoms in the absence of any real physical problem.

• Mild examples: man feels morning sickness due to wife’s pregnancy, etc.

Hey, we only have a week to

go!

Yes, but mine’s going to be gone

after that.

What are Conversion Disorders?

• Serious psychological trauma that converts itself into a real dysfunction.

• Severe examples: hysterical blindness, false pregnancy, hysterical paralysis. These physical symptoms DO exist, but are rare.

• Hypochondrasis: more common conversion disorder. Over concern about health. Can begin from childhood when great attention was paid to them when they were sick, and not under healthy conditions

• Munchausen’s By Proxy: attempting to get attention by making your own child sick.

• Serious psychological trauma that converts itself into a real dysfunction.

• Severe examples: hysterical blindness, false pregnancy, hysterical paralysis. These physical symptoms DO exist, but are rare.

• Hypochondrasis: more common conversion disorder. Over concern about health. Can begin from childhood when great attention was paid to them when they were sick, and not under healthy conditions

• Munchausen’s By Proxy: attempting to get attention by making your own child sick.

Defense MechanismsDefense Mechanisms

• Defense mechanisms helpus cope with unbearable thoughts, feelings and wishes.

• The idea of this comes from Freud

Why do we use defense mechanisms?Why do we use defense mechanisms?

• How do we keep our personalities from getting beat up while we are building them?

• Defense Mechanisms do for anxiety, what endorphins do for physical pain – reduce impact

• They can be helpful – lead our lives in difficult times

• They can be dangerous – distort reality, keep us from taking action in bad situations

What is repression, suppression and denial?What is repression, suppression and denial?• Repression: first line of defense• Pushing out of bad memories without

acknowledging them – they can be forgotten for years.

• Often found in child abuse victims• Suppression: pushing bad memories away while

being aware you are doing it.• Denial: Totally denying a problem exists – both

repression and suppression are forms of denial

What is displacement?

• Venting our feelings on someone other than ourselves

Separation of emotion from its real object and redirection of the intenseemotion toward someone or something that is less offensive or threatening in order to avoid dealing directly with what is frightening or threatening

I hate this pie!!!

I can’t believe Bertha broke up

with me.

What is Reaction Formation?

•Expressing the opposite of what we really feel

•Sometimes someone with very vocal and strong opinions about a topic actually practices the opposite of what they preach.

What is reaction formation?What is reaction formation?

The process of expressing the opposite of what we feel

You have cooties!You smell!

She’s really pretty, I wonder if she likes me?

Wow, he’s talking to me!!

What is intellectualization?• The process of removing our feelings about an

event and discussing it in a calm rational and unemotional way

…and then it burned down, can you believe that? Yup, lost

everything. Can I have more iced tea?

What is regression?

• The process of going backwards in thoughts and behavior to a period when we were taken care of as children.

Amnesia and Dissociative Fugue

• Amnesia: forgetting event due to psychological trauma

• Retrograde and Anterograde: • Retrograde: Forgetting everything in the past• Anterograde: Forgetting new memoriesDissociative Fugue: Flight from home – forget

identity but NOT skills

What is projection?What is projection?

• The process of attributing our own thoughts to someone else.

Everyone’s staring at me because they are jealous of my wonderful fashion

sense!

What is sublimation

• The process of channeling emotional energy into constructive or creative activities“Drive past any school playground and find the kid sitting by himself looking

miserable…that’s your future successful writer”

• Sublimation is probably the most useful and constructive of the defense mechanisms as it takes the energy of something that is potentially harmful and turns it to doing something good and useful.

What is rationalization?

• The process of explaining a problem so as not to take any blame

Victims of domestic violence are often told “You deserved it” or “I didn’t want to hit you, but you asked for it”. This is a form of rationalization. Victims also sometimes exhibit the defense mechanism “Identification with Aggressor”

Identification with aggressor

Taking on characteristics of someone who • has mistreated us in order topsychologically avoid abuse.• Stockholm Syndrome: The behavior of kidnap victims who,

over time, become sympathetic to their captors. The name derives from a 1973 hostage incident in Stockholm, Sweden.

The behavior is considered a common survival strategy for victims of interpersonal abuse, and has been observed in battered spouses, abused children, prisoners of war, and concentration camp survivors

Summary• There is a strong connection between mind and body• Psychological defense mechanisms are used to

protect us– • Using them in moderation helps to protect our sense

of well-being to recover from: personality defects, mistakes, emotional pain or problems.

Reign Over Me Test

Choose two (2) characters from Reign Over Me and discuss:

• A defense mechanism they used and why?• A definition of the defense mechanism• Which of their defense mechanisms proved

helpful at first?• Which was the most damaging?• If you could write a conclusion for the film;

what would it be?