Recent studies in social psychology are reviewed for evidence relevant to seven Freudian defense mechanisms. This work emphasizes normal populations, moderate rather than extreme forms of defense, and protection of self-esteem against threat. Reaction formation, isolation, and denial have been amply shown in studies, and they do seem to serve defensive functions. Undoing, in the sense of counterfactual thinking, is also well documented but does not serve to defend against the threat. Projection is evident, but the projection itself may be a by-product of defense rather than part of the defensive response itself. Displacement is not well supported in any meaningful sense, although emotions and physical arousal states do carry over from one situation to the next. No evidence of sublimation was found.
The term self-regulation refers to people's efforts to alter their own responses, such as overriding behavioral impulses, resisting temptation, controlling their thoughts, and altering (or artificially prolonging) their emotions. During the 1980~~ social psychologists belatedly awoke to the importance of self-regulation for understanding human functioning. By necessity, clinical psychologists had gained some appreciation of self-regulation earlier (e.g., Kanfer & Karoly, 1972), but the full import of self-regulation for clinical phenomena could not be grasped until basic research established the major outlines of how it worked. Hence, it is only now that the implications of self-regulation for psychopathology can begin to be explained. In this chapter, we apply current self-regulation theory to clinical patterns and psychopathology.The potential applications of self-regulation theory are extensive. In a review of the research literature on self-regulation failure, Baumeister, Heatherton, and Tice (1994) concluded that the majority of contemporary social and personal problems afflicting Western society contained some Preparation of this chapter was facilitated by Research Grant MH-57039 from the National Institutes of Health.
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