AP PSYCHOLOGY

Detailed explanation-1: -Repression: Subconsciously blocking ideas or impulses that are undesirable. This defense mechanism may be present in someone who has no recollection of a traumatic event, even though they were conscious and aware during the event.

Detailed explanation-2: -Example: Jacob cannot remember certain painful memories as a child. To protect himself, he unconsciously represses these memories from his consciousness. Instead, he displays anxious behaviors toward other items that he associates with these original painful memories.

Detailed explanation-3: -Repression is an unconscious defense mechanism employed by the ego to keep disturbing or threatening thoughts from becoming conscious. Repression, which Anna Freud also called “motivated forgetting, ” is just that: not being able to recall a threatening situation, person, or event.

Detailed explanation-4: -Examples of Repression An adult suffers a nasty spider bite as a child and develops an intense phobia of spiders later in life without any recollection of the experience as a child. Because the memory of the spider bite is repressed, he or she may not understand where the phobia originates.

Detailed explanation-5: -Dissociation defense mechanism examples A doctor’s parents pressured her into her profession, even though she dreamed of being an athlete. She dissociates by daydreaming about athleticism instead of acknowledging the career turmoil she is experiencing.