▪️The general concept of the development of defense mechanisms in
adolescence
Adolescence is characterized by an increase in libido, which contributes to the development of the attitudes of one's own "I" into certain methods of protection and defense mechanisms. This explains the personality changes that occur during puberty.
All the methods of psychological defense described in psychoanalysis at this age serve to help the “I” in the fight against manifestations of instincts and are motivated by three types of anxiety inherent in the "I" of the individual:
📍neurotic anxiety;
📍moral anxiety;
📍real anxiety.
Among all periods of a person's life, it is during puberty that contradictions are formed in the mental life of a teenager and, accordingly, protective psychological mechanisms find a greater manifestation. Let's consider them in more detail.
▪️Defense mechanisms characteristic of adolescence age
Denial is one of the earliest and most primitive defense mechanisms that develops to contain emotional manifestations. As a result of its manifestation, a teenager gets the opportunity to freely express his feelings, while constantly attracting the attention of others in all available ways. The protective function of this mechanism is manifested in ignoring disturbing information.
Projection is a psychological defense mechanism that is associated with the transfer of existing unacceptable feelings and desires of a teenager to other people and this process proceeds at an unconscious level. This mechanism is based on the need to reject existing experiences and doubts, and redirect them to the people around them in order to relieve oneself of responsibility for certain actions and conditions that are disapproved by society.
The projection is divided into several types:
📍attributive projection - manifested in the unconscious rejection of one's own negative qualities and their redirection to other people;
📍rationalistic projection - conscious recognition of one or another personality traits and projecting them according to the principle "everyone does it anyway";
📍complimentary projection - manifested in the interpretation of one's shortcomings as advantages;
📍simulative projection - the process of attributing existing shortcomings by similarity, for example, a child is the same as his parent.
Substitution - this protective psychological mechanism develops in the process of restraining anger and aggression against a stronger opponent and relieving tension in the process of turning one's negative reactions to weaker surrounding people, inanimate objects or oneself.
The protective mechanism of suppression is developed in order to contain fear, the manifestation of which in specific situations is unacceptable. Blocking fear occurs by forgetting the real stimuli, objects, facts and circumstances associated with negative events or phenomena. Protection finds its manifestation in blocking unwanted information in the process of its transfer from perception to memory or when information comes out of memory into the mind of a teenager.
The protective mechanism of intellectualization gets its development in early adolescence and is aimed at restraining the emotions of expectation or foresight, in a situation of saving the experience of disappointment. Most often in adolescents, this mechanism is associated with failures in competition with peers.
Sublimation is one of the highest and most effective protective psychological mechanisms that moves the accumulation of energy in a positive direction and directs it to increase mental performance and develop the process of creative activity.
The compensation mechanism is the latest and most complex psychological defense mechanism that develops on a conscious level and is designed to contain the manifestations of feelings of sadness and grief, feelings of inferiority and feelings about existing shortcomings.
The compensation cluster also includes the protective mechanisms of overcompensation, identification, and fantasy.
Let us consider in more detail the mechanism of identification, which is associated with the process of identifying oneself with another person and thereby raising one's personality to the level of another person, by expanding the boundaries of one's own "I". This mechanism allows adolescents to overcome the feeling of their own inferiority and insignificance, to transform their "I" in such a way as to correspond to the social environment and the norms and rules adopted in it.
The mechanism of repression is closely related to forgetting the existing motive of actions, which is socially unacceptable and the recognition of which is a blow to self-perception teenager and his perception by a significant environment. During the operation of this mechanism, the process of forgetting not the traumatic event itself, but its cause and motive takes place, The Repression that precedes it is considered the most effective defense mechanism, since it is able to cope with such powerful instinctive impulses that other forms of defense cannot cope. However, displacement requires a constant expenditure of energy, and these expenditures cause inhibition of other types of vital activity.
At the same time, events repressed to the unconscious level retain their emotional charge and, under certain circumstances, can find their manifestation in the mind of a teenager in the form of increased general anxiety, experiencing inexplicable anxiety, causeless fear.
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