Defence Mechanisms

Today in the dungeon we had an 'inservice' training thingy for the nurses on "defence mechanisms"...

It was supposed to help them understand how patients react to things in order to deal with them better.

Out of interest (and mainly boredom) I went along and found out the following things about how people "act to prevent a perceived harm to their inner psyche":

1) Splitting - this is a primitive response which evolves from basic classification of things as being 'black or white' and therefore the perosn cannot perceive people as being both good and evil at once. Therefore they treat some poeple very well and others awfully as they class them into one of 2 boxes. (ie you are nice to the people you think are nice and bad to the people you think are bad... pretty simple!)

2) Projective Identification - you project your feelings towards a certianperson onto another person and try to manipulate them so they act like that originial person so you can then 'have it out' with that original person thru this new person. (ie mistken identity and you dump your rubbish with one person onto another person rather than take it to the orginal person)

3) Denial - a river in Egypt (nah seriously.. this doesn't need explaining)

4) Repression - kinda like denial; but done so at the subconscious level (which is badder apparently - more 'primitive')

5) Displacement - your boss gets angry at you and you know that it's innapproprote to kill him so you hit the cat instead. Kinda like a conscious, less-primitive version of projective identification.

6) Reaction Formation - When you do the opposite of what you fear in order to ensure a good outcome (ie you go and become a 'Bible basher' becasue you have bizarre sexual urges which you fera you will act on)

7) Isolation of Affect - when you just completely disengage from your emotions (ie your mum dies and you're like "So what?")

8) Somatisation - you channel all that mental stuff into physical stuff

9) Conversion - kinda similar to above

10) Suppresion - a conscious form of repression where you konw it's bad and know that the best way to deal with it is to ignore/suppress it... ie when you get sent to Whoop Whoop for a rotation and know it's gonna suck so you just don't talk about it.

11) Altruism - where in order to deal with this stuff you do the 'right' thing as a coping mechanism... this is typified by 'classic-parenting' or "other-person-centredness"

12) Sublimation - you channel all your anger at your boss into a punching bag (a good alternative as opposed to that poor cat)

13) Humour - apparently the most highly evolved non-primitive defence mechanism (as if!)

So there you have it... aren't we all an intersting bunch of people. As the psychiatrist went thru all these mechanisms I began to envisage all my firends using each of these methods at various times and in various ways. In fact I see myself using these things to deal with work, girls, friends, family, etc...

It began to make me think... should I be using more of the less-primitive responses? Do I need to train myself in how to 'defend' myself better?

Bu then again... I think I'm not coping too badly... especially compared to our new patient who has taken to dropping his pants and mooning us all morning then streaking around the wards singing "Oh Danny Boy" and "Fire, Water, Burn". He also enjoys beating his fists against the perspex, karate kicking the walls and imitating the call of Lord Greystoke (aka Tarzan of the Apes)

Now HE has acopia*

*Acopia = lack of coping and a favourite diagnosis of Emergency Triage Nurses who have to categorise gomers coming in from nursing homes.