| Mechanism |
Definition |
Result |
Personality Disorders Involved |
| Projection |
Attribution of one's unacknowledged feelings to others |
Leads to prejudice, rejection of intimacy through paranoid
suspicion, overvigilance for external danger, and injustice collecting |
Typical of
paranoid and
schizotypal personalities; used by with
borderline, social or narcissitic personality when under acute stress |
| Splitting |
Black or white, all-or-nothing perceptions or thinking, in which
persons are divided into all-good idealized saviors or all-bad
evil-doers |
Avoids the discomfort of feeling ambivalent (i.e., having loving and
angry feelings for the same person), uncertain, and helpless |
Typical of
borderline personality |
| Acting Out |
A direct behavioral expression of an unconscious wish or impulse
that enables a person to avoid being conscious of the accompanying
painful or pleasurable affect |
Includes many delinquent, reckless, promiscuous, and
substance-abusing acts, which can become so habitual that the actor
remains unaware and dismissive of the feelings that initiated the acts.
|
Very common in persons with
antisocial, cyclothymic, or
borderline
personality |
| Turning Aggression Against Self |
Allows angry feelings towards others to be expressed toward the
self; when indirect, called passive-aggressive |
Includes failures and illnesses that affect others more than
one-self and silly, provocative clowning |
Underlies passive-aggressive and depressive personality disorders;
dramatic in persons with
borderline
personality, who express anger
towards others in self-mutilation (see also Hychondriasis below) |
| Fantasy |
A tendency to use imaginary relationships and private belief systems
to resolve conflict and relieve loneliness |
Associated with eccentricity and avoidance of interpersonal intimacy |
Used by persons with
avoidant or
schizoid personality, who in
contrast to psychotic persons, do not believe in and thus do not act on
their fantasies |
| Hychondriasis |
Uses physiologic complains to gain attention |
May gain nurturant attention from others; may express anger towards
others without knowing it |
Used by persons with
dependent,
histrionic or
borderline personality |
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