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In psychology, displacement (German: Verschiebung, lit. 'shift, move') is an unconscious defence mechanism whereby the mind substitutes either a new aim or a new object for things felt in their original form to be dangerous or unacceptable. Example: If your boss criticizes you at work, you might feel angry but can't express it directly to your ...
In the first definitive book on defence mechanisms, The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence (1936), [7] Anna Freud enumerated the ten defence mechanisms that appear in the works of her father, Sigmund Freud: repression, regression, reaction formation, isolation, undoing, projection, introjection, turning against one's own person, reversal into the opposite, and sublimation or displacement.
Narcissistic defenses are among the earliest defense mechanisms to emerge, and include denial, distortion, and projection. [4] Splitting is another defense mechanism prevalent among individuals with narcissistic personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, and antisocial personality disorder—seeing people and situations in black and white terms, either as all bad or all good.
Displacement activities occur when an animal or human experiences high motivation for two or more conflicting behaviours: the resulting displacement activity is usually unrelated to the competing motivations. Birds, for example, may peck at grass when uncertain whether to attack or flee from an opponent; similarly, a human may scratch their ...
Emotional detachment is a manipulative coping mechanism, which allows a person to react calmly to highly emotional circumstances. Emotional detachment, in this sense, is a decision to avoid engaging emotional connections, rather than an inability or difficulty in doing so, typically for personal, social, or other reasons.
However, in times of high stress or significant challenges, some may resort to defense mechanisms like denial, displacement, or rationalization to manage their emotions. These coping strategies can provide temporary relief but may also prevent individuals from fully addressing the underlying issues. [1]
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. In The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence (1936), his daughter, Anna, classed sublimation as one of the major 'defence mechanisms' of the psyche.
Freud considered that there was "reason to assume that there is a primal repression, a first phase of repression, which consists in the psychical (ideational) representative of the instinct being denied entrance into the conscious", as well as a second stage of repression, repression proper (an "after-pressure"), which affects mental derivatives of the repressed representative.