Defense Mechanisms in the Counseling Process

Arthur J. Clark

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Year: 1998
• Print ISBN: 9780761906612, 9780761906605
• eBook ISBN: 9781452236520
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Psychotherapy
• Index: Psychology

What causes clients in therapy to resist change? What mechanisms and devices do they use to defend against therapeutic progress? How can a therapist identify and work with such defenses in their clients? Understanding defense mechanisms is essential to understanding clients, managing resistance, clarifying conflicted behavior, and engendering more adaptive functioning. In Defense Mechanisms in the Counseling Process, author Arthur J. Clark discusses various specific defense mechanisms that arise in the course of working with a client in counseling. He presents each mechanismÆs theoretical origins, psychopathology, and definitionsùand then the methods (organized according to the three-stage model of the counseling process) for "processing" it through discrete stages. Extensive examples throughout the book from diverse populations illustrate the defense mechanisms themselves, as well as the therapeutic change that can result in spite of them. He also provides an integrative case example, demonstrating the changes in clientsÆ defenses through the counseling process. Combining a theoretical and practical perspective, Defense Mechanisms in the Counseling Process is ideally suited for professionals and academics in clinical and counseling psychology, psychology, social work and group work.

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INTRODUCTION

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The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.

—Thomas Carlyle, 1841/1993, p. 41

Perhaps one of the clearest examples of defense mechanisms in counseling occurs with persons who deny or rationalize their chemical dependency despite obvious and urgent conflicts. In counseling, a client may state, “I don’t have any problems controlling my drinking” but is in treatment for multiple infractions for driving while intoxicated. Another individual who states that he has been free of substances during the week appears to be high from smoking marijuana on meeting with a counselor. Yet another client, recognizing that she has problems with controlling her use of alcohol, employs rationalization as a defense to justify her habit: “Hey, anybody with all my troubles needs a drink from time to time.” Although defense mechanisms are prevalent in treatment with individuals with alcohol and substance abuse issues, defenses also frequently occur with individuals in counseling from diverse backgrounds with a variety of presenting problems. Defenses protect persons from perceived threat, and for many clients, aspects of the counseling experience are destabilizing and threatening. Counselors need to be prepared to respond effectively to the inevitable emergence and persistence of client defenses that constitute both a challenge and an opportunity for therapeutic progress.

In addition to an awareness of the impact and significance of defense mechanisms in counseling, other aspects of the defenses contribute to a comprehensive understanding of their function and characteristics. A surprisingly large number of defenses and definitions of defense mechanisms have been proposed in the literature since Sigmund Freud’s earliest formulation of the construct, late in the 19th century. An examination of the specific properties of the defenses assists in clarifying a reasonable working number for counseling purposes. Attempts to assess defense mechanisms also have a lengthy history, although many psychometric instruments and procedures are not directly relevant to counseling. Any review of defense mechanisms must make a determination as to the selection of defenses to be included; specified here are 10 classic mechanisms that clients frequently employ in counseling. An understanding of the nature of defenses assists the counselor when processing client mechanisms in counseling through a coherent and systematic therapeutic model.

SIGNIFICANCE OF DEFENSE MECHANISMS IN COUNSELING

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Client use of defense mechanisms frequently restricts the development of open communication and trust in the counseling relationship. If a counselor indiscriminately challenges individuals’ defenses, the counseling alliance may be jeopardized, and those mechanisms become further entrenched. Yet if a counselor is reluctant to explore dynamics of client defenses, affect and conflicts relating to the mechanisms may remain fragmented and therapeutically inaccessible. Failure to adequately process defenses also precludes the opportunity to clarify clients’ subjective distortions inherent in the mechanisms. Individuals who rely on defenses to avoid or escape uncomfortable situations often encounter interpersonal difficulties, and social context is a key dynamic in the operation of the mechanisms. Counselors may understandably be hesitant about challenging clients’ defenses because of uncertainties about how to proceed once defenses are observed, as multiple defenses may be operating at the same time. It is possible, however, to identify and describe a comprehensive approach in working with client defenses that is both supportive and challenging.

Client Resistance

Persons using patterns of defense attempt to control disclosure to reduce threat and potential reproach. If a counselor challenges individuals by expanding discussion into threatening areas, clients typically become more adamant about the veracity of their assertions or emotionally withdraw. On the other hand, if the counselor acquiesces and supports clients’ distorted contentions, the focus of counseling becomes limited to the frames of reference of particular persons, regardless of their accuracy. As an example, a student employing the defense of rationalization asserts that his academic failure is due to an inadequate teacher, an outdated textbook, and a boring subject. When the counselor suggests that other possibilities, including effort and level of concentration, may contribute to the client’s scholastic failure, the individual refuses to consider these alternative perspectives. The other option of the counselor, to acknowledge client perceptions and avoid arousing threat, does not permit consideration of broader motivational forces. The counselor’s task is to develop trust and rapport within the counseling relationship for clients to become less resistant to exploring topics and issues that are threatening but also potentially growth enhancing.

Indiscriminate Counselor Processing

A counselor may undermine the counseling relationship through intrusive or premature interventions. Excessive threat occurs when a counselor attacks or “strips” clients’ defenses. A counselor may intentionally decide to forcefully challenge client defenses in an effort to disrupt what is perceived as a dysfunctional pattern. In other instances, a therapist may become impatient with individuals who persist in relying on their defenses and may imprudently begin to apply pressure to induce behavior change. In either case, through strategic choice or intolerant responses, a counselor can overwhelm and discourage clients through an outright assault on their defenses. A counselor’s ill-advised actions may produce client duress and disequilibrium to the point of emotional decompensation. A counselor may also assume a role by de- fault and avoid addressing maladaptive patterns of client defense mechanisms. Attacking or avoiding individuals’ defenses is untherapeutic and may represent the presence of unresolved personal issues for a therapist. A counselor is also susceptible to engaging defense mechanisms to the detriment of clients. Supervision, self-reflection, and, when abusive or avoidance behaviors persist, personal counseling can be effective in limiting indiscriminate processing in the counseling experience.

Avoidance of Conflict Examination

In counseling, the counselor frequently presents a threat when attempting to identify or clarify individuals’ conflicted and contradictory behavior. Employing various defense mechanisms, clients may divert direct examination of potentially therapeutic issues, including central assumptions and convictions. Critical client dynamics avoided through the use of client defenses may remain obscure and unaddressed as sources of psychological and physiological dysfunction. Shedler, Mayman, and Manis (1993) provide research support indicating that psychological defense involving the process of inhibiting thoughts and feelings is a cumulative stressor and increases susceptibility through time to a variety of illnesses. A client, for example, experiences distress relating to expression of feelings and, using the defense of isolation, controls and inhibits affect. At the same time, however, conflict relating to expression of feelings remains unassessed and unchanged, and the person experiences high blood pressure. Further, some individuals maintain a sustained pattern of defense even after the resolution of those conflicts that initially prompted the employment of the mechanisms (Freud, 1965). It is also a possibility that what initiates an individual’s behavior is reinforced or perpetuated by other motivational forces. Gordon Allport (1961) referred to this process as functional autonomy, and the concept may be applicable to persons who do not reverse their defense use despite diminution of circumstantial threat. Therapeutically, the counselor must attempt to develop a relationship that enables clients to clarify conflicts and contradictions inherent in the use of their defenses.

Client Subjective Distortions

Defense mechanisms operate largely outside individuals’ awareness and mitigate intolerable affect and conflict. Defense responses are an automatic reaction to threat, rather than more considered attempts to cope with sources of difficulty more directly. A function of the mechanisms is that persons construct safeguards that are immediately responsive to their subjective perspectives. Defenses are distorting to the degree that they are contradictory and inconsistent in relation to client behavior or in relation to various environmental conditions. For example, a client using the defense of projection attributes unacceptable behavior to others that is actually characteristic of the individual. Other persons may, in fact, possess none of the specific qualities attributed by the client, and a contradiction exists between the two realities that is accounted for by the individual’s distorted perceptions. The objective in counseling is to clarify client distortions and inconsistencies and to encourage persons to construct more coherent and adaptive perceptions.

Interpersonal Dysfunction

An individual’s defense use can evoke adverse interpersonal consequences that result in troubled relationships. In a continuation of the previous example, a client employing projection attributes hostility to another individual who in actuality is not angry. The client responds to the targeted person presumed to be hostile in an aggressive manner, and an argument results. In other instances, individuals may resent a client’s using deceptive maneuvers that are perceived as self-serving, rather than dealing more directly with situations. As an example, a client uses the defense of rationalization and justifies arriving late for organizational meetings, voicing a variety of somewhat plausible statements. The client’s pattern of self-justifications, however, is perceived as “excuse making” by her irritated coworkers, resulting in disputes and disagreements. The counselor’s task is to collaborate with clients in recognizing the adverse effects that defenses typically evoke in interpersonal relationships and subsequently in developing alternative and more purposeful actions.

Use of the Counseling Process

Without a coherent framework for processing client defense mechanisms in counseling, the counselor’s interventions may prove to be ineffective, and essential strategic questions and issues can remain unresolved. An initial concern emerges about how the counselor determines the functional quality of client defenses. Once specific mechanisms are detected, a major counseling issue then becomes whether maladaptive defenses should be relinquished, worked around, or in some way replaced with more effective strategies (Vaillant, 1997). Another matter relates to how the counselor may involve clients in modifying their defenses while respecting the idiosyncratic functioning of individuals. A further concern is the sequence of client defense change and what specific techniques and strategies promote therapeutic progress. These significant counseling issues may begin to be addressed by conceptualizing the counseling process into sequential stages (Sampson, Weiss, Mlodnosky, & Hause, 1972). Within each of the three major stages of counseling, counseling interventions may be intentionally employed to identify and modify client defenses in adaptive directions.

CONCEPTUALIZATIONS AND PROPERTIES OF DEFENSE MECHANISMS

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Classic Conceptualizations of Defense Mechanisms

Sigmund Freud’s understanding of the nature and significance of defense mechanisms changed through many years of scattered commentary on the constructs. At various times, he made reference to as many as 17 relatively distinct defenses (Vaillant, 1992). In “The Neuro-Psychoses of Defence” (1894/1962b) and “Further Remarks on the Neuro-Psychoses of Defence” (1896/1962a), Freud described conversion, displacement, isolation, projection, repression, and retreat or withdrawal from reality as separate defenses. He theorized that varied symptoms “arose through the psychical mechanism of (unconscious) defence—that is, in an attempt to repress an incompatible idea which had come into distressing opposition to the patient’s ego” (p. 162). Subsequent to 1896, however, nearly all the defense mechanisms introduced by Freud were used interchangeably with repression, as repression became synonymous with defense (Mahl, 1969). After 30 years, Freud (1926/1959) made a major change in his conceptualization of defenses when he reintroduced the term:

It will be an undoubted advantage, I think, to revert to the old concept of “defence,” provided we employ it explicitly as a general designation for all the techniques which the ego makes use of in conflicts which may lead to a neurosis, while we retain the word “repression” for the special method of defence. (p. 163)

Sigmund Freud was already in his late 60s when he reformulated the defense mechanisms in his 1926 publication. To that point, Freud had not written a definitive analysis of the defenses, and it was left to his daughter, Anna Freud (1936/1966), to fulfill this task in The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense. She lists the following defense mechanisms in this volume: regression, repression, introjection, reaction formation, isolation, undoing, projection, turning against self, reversal, and sublimation. Freud does not, however, clearly differentiate reversal from reaction formation or isolation from intellectualization (Suppes & Warren, 1975). The status of sublimation as a defense is questionable because of its unique function of pursuing creative activity in response to threat, presenting more of a coping, rather than a defensive, process.

Further Conceptualizations of Defense Mechanisms

A multitude of defense mechanisms have been proposed during the past hundred years, and there is little consensus on identifying the defenses because researchers and practitioners have held different perspectives on the number and nature of the constructs. Since Sigmund and Anna Freud’s accountings of the defense mechanisms, the number of identified defenses from various enumerations has escalated to more than 50 (Cramer, 1991; Laughlin, 1979). Proposals for specific sets of defense mechanisms generate a variety of selections with a number of rather obscure defenses sometimes suggested. Bond, Gardner, Christian, and Sigal (1983) list 24 defense mechanisms, including inhibition, pseudoaltruism, and as-if clinging behavior. In a comprehensive text on ego defense mechanisms, Laughlin (1979) identifies 22 major ego defenses that are more clearly delineated and professionally accepted and 26 minor ego defenses. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV; American Psychiatric Association, 1994a) contains a glossary of 27 defense mechanisms and coping styles divided into seven levels on a defensive functioning scale. Certain defenses, such as denial, projection, and repression, appear on virtually every published list. A defense mechanism that was not identified by either of the Freuds but that has gained wide acceptance in the literature is rationalization, first conceptualized by Ernest Jones (1908).

Defining Properties of Defense Mechanisms

In addition to lack of consensus on a universally accepted list of defenses, there is also disagreement on even a more basic consideration: What are the criteria for a mechanism of defense? No definitive definition of a defense mechanism prevails in the literature, and various sources provide diverse and sometimes conflicting meanings (American Psychiatric Association, 1994a, 1994b; English & English, 1958; Rycroft, 1995). In attempting to clarify this central question from a counseling perspective and to arrive at yet another definition of a defense mechanism, it is helpful to consider what constitutes the defining properties or characteristics of the mechanisms of defense. It is generally accepted in counseling that defenses are relatively discrete mental constructs that may be inferred from behavioral observations of clients (Sampson et al., 1972) or from collateral information, such as observations of a parent or spouse, available to the counselor. Identifying additional properties of defense mechanisms beyond this level generally is subject to the varying views of researchers and counselors. From my perspective, after an extensive review of the literature, the properties of a defense mechanism include the following defining characteristics: unconscious processing, subjective distortion, intolerable affect and conflict, and automatic and undifferentiated responses. Each of these properties will be discussed in the following sections, concluding with a definition of a defense mechanism.

Unconscious Processing. When persons react to threat when employing defense mechanisms, the conflicted source of the response is largely outside their conscious awareness. Sigmund Freud emphasized the significance of the unconscious as a repository for data that had never been conscious or that had been conscious briefly but had been subsequently repressed (American Psychiatric Association, 1994b). Alfred Adler (1931/1958) contended that what is considered the unconscious is simply parts of human consciousness that are not fully understood. A crucial aspect of the unconscious process of an individual relates to the core convictions that a person maintains in relationship to the self, the world, and life (Adler, 1931/1958; Kelly, 1955; Liotti, 1987). At this core level, a person lacks understanding or awareness of influential convictions or assumptions that are fundamental to the individual’s functioning. In conjunction with the core level of mental activity is an intermediate level or a “protective-belt” relating to the explicit verbal...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Denial
• 3. Displacement
• 4. Identification
• 5. Isolation
• 6. Projection
• 7. Rationalization
• 8. Reaction Formation
• 9. Regression
• 10. Repression
• 11. Undoing
• 12. Defense Mechanisms in the Counseling Process in Groups
• 13. Defense Mechanisms in the Counseling Process: A Case Study
• References
• Index
• About the Author