Freud’s Defense Mechanisms: Protect Us from Reality!

Many people endure experiences throughout life that are either auspicious or malevolent. In addition, people also have desires and urges that are deemed either socially popular or unacceptable within society. However, it is the malevolent experiences and unacceptable urges that sometimes have a greater influence on people distorting reality. This is so because people often want to forget or ignore their unpleasant experiences and predilections. Inconsequently, in order to protect oneself from the cognizance of anxiety or guilt, a public and somewhat unconscious façade is displayed to conceal inner tension. By perceiving life discordantly from reality, inner tensions are tamed, and one can deal with life in a manner that is conducive to their coping and contentment. The misleading strategies that people often use to overshadow or hide their unwanted, conscious thoughts or memories in order to feel at ease are known as defense mechanisms which were first coined by Sigmund Freud.
Freud postulated the defense mechanism theory because he believed that people distort reality in order to protect their ego. For this reason, I agree with Freud’s defense mechanism theory because I believe that before all fails and there comes an influx of anxiety, a person will use strategies to mitigate their inner tension, even at the cost of living untruthfully. Defense mechanisms are interesting because they allow people to avoid the agony of remembering bad experiences or being reminded of personal flaws. In essence, people use defense mechanisms in order to unconsciously live as a different person from whom they currently are or were in their past, unpleasant experiences. Defense mechanisms also provide relief from self-deprecation whenever shameful ...

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...that they are absconding with injustice. Dexter‘s life is a contradiction because he works against people who kill, even though he also kills.
From the experiences that I am aware of, whether it includes my personal life, television shows, or the media, I must say that Freud’s extrapolation of the defense mechanism theory is indeed a plausible one. It is astonishing that people make a huge deal about forming an identity, yet at the same time, they are being unconsciously restrained by motives that are antithetical to their external identity. Reality can be harsh, but we all do not want our lives to be drowned in contempt. Therefore, we make our own reality and influence the ego that our perception of reality is the ideal one.

Works Cited

Freud, A. (1946). Ego and mechanisms of defense (C.B. Baines, Trans.) New York: New York (Original work published 1936).