Defense

• defense

  (psychiatry) an unconscious process that tries to reduce the anxiety associated with instinctive...

• compensation

  (psychiatry) a defense mechanism that conceals your undesirable shortcomings by exaggerating...

• displacement

  (psychiatry) a defense mechanism that transfers affect or reaction from the original...

• conversion

  (psychiatry) a defense mechanism represses emotional conflicts which are then converted...

• denial

  (psychiatry) a defense mechanism that denies painful thoughts.

• idealization

  (psychiatry) a defense mechanism that splits something you are ambivalent about into...

• intellectualization

  (psychiatry) a defense mechanism that uses reasoning to block out emotional...

• isolation

  (psychiatry) a defense mechanism in which memory of an unacceptable act or impulse is...

• projection

  (psychiatry) a defense mechanism by which your own traits and emotions are attributed...

• rationalization

  (psychiatry) a defense mechanism by which your true motivation is concealed by explaining...

• reaction formation

  (psychiatry) a defense mechanism in which a person unconsciously develops attitudes...

• regression

  (psychiatry) a defense mechanism in which you flee from reality by assuming a more infantile...

• repression

  (psychiatry) the classical defense mechanism that protects you from impulses or ideas...

Also contains

• disturbance

  (psychiatry) a psychological disorder of thought or emotion; a more neutral term than...

• psychotherapy

  The branch of psychiatry concerned with psychological methods.

• anxiety

  (psychiatry) a relatively permanent state of worry and nervousness occurring in a variety...

• major depressive episode

  (psychiatry) a state of depression with all the classic symptoms (anhedonia...

• autism

  (psychiatry) an abnormal absorption with the self; marked by communication disorders and...

• overcompensation

  (psychiatry) an attempt to overcome a real or imagined defect or unwanted trait...

• acting out

  (psychiatry) the display of previously inhibited emotions (often in actions rather than...

• alienism

  An obsolete term for the study and treatment of mental illness.

• paramnesia

  (psychiatry) a disorder of memory in which dreams or fantasies are confused with rea...

• anorexia nervosa

  (psychiatry) a psychological disorder characterized by somatic delusions that you...

• echolalia

  (psychiatry) mechanical and meaningless repetition of the words of another person (as...

• resistance

  (psychiatry) an unwillingness to bring repressed feelings into conscious awareness.

• confabulation

  (psychiatry) a plausible but imagined memory that fills in gaps in what is rememb...

More Connections

• psychiatrist

  A physician who specializes in psychiatry.