The precocious development of verbal thought can function as a defense against unbearable emotional chaos; in later life, this kind of “thinking” often takes on a life of its own, can feel persecutory and underlies problems with insomnia.
Category: Defense Mechanisms
The most prominent psychological defense mechanisms, including repression, denial, idealization, splitting and projection. This is the category for you.
Defense Mechanisms III: Further Uses for Projection
In addition to ridding the self of painful experience, projection may also defuse internal conflict between opposing impulses or ideas. People who use projection in this way often provoke behavior in others than appears to “validate” the projection.
Defense Mechanisms II: Denial
Like all defense mechanisms, denial has its normal and constructive uses: by denying the awareness of unavoidable death, for instance, we’re able to continue with our daily lives.
Defense Mechanisms I: Splitting
Splitting (along with its companion defense, projection) is one of the primary defense mechanisms; it’s also an indispensable part of everyday mental processes, enabling us to make distinctions and evolve meaning out of our experience.
The Role of Helplessness in PTSD Symptoms and Other Disorders
The experience of helplessness in the face of trauma plays a central role in post traumatic stress disorder and the development of ptsd symptoms, but also has an impact on the genesis of other psychological disorders and maladaptive character traits.