deliberately distract yourself by going to a movie rather than thinking about
an upcoming job interview. However, these conscious efforts to reduce anxi-ety are not the same as the unconscious defense mechanisms we are consider-
ing here (Cramer, 2000). The coping strategies we deliberately employ to
reduce anxiety are covered in Chapter 6.
Identifying and Measuring Defense Mechanisms
Psychologists investigating defense mechanisms face the same set of problems
that confront other researchers studying psychoanalytic concepts. Because
these processes operate at a level below consciousness, we cannot simplyask people to describe their defense mechanisms. Rather, investigators must
rely on less direct methods to determine when and how often research partici-
pants use the various mechanisms identified by psychoanalysts (Davidson &MacGregor, 1998).
Not surprisingly, many of these researchers turn to projective tests. Some
investigators measure defense mechanisms by interpreting responses toRorschach inkblots (Lerner & Lerner, 1990) or to stories (Ihilevich &
Gleser, 1993). Others use responses to Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
picture cards (Cramer, 1991; Cramer & Blatt, 1990; Hibbard et al., 1994).Consider the response one psychiatric patient gave to a TAT card. The pic-
ture on the card features a boy and an unplayed violin. As with most projec-
tive stimuli, what the boy is feeling or thinking and his connection to the
musical instrument is deliberately left unclear. The patient provided the fol-
lowing story:
There ’s something wrong with this boy physically and mentally. He ’s unhappy.
He wants to play the violin, and he can ’t. Maybe he’ s deaf. Somebody else was in
the room earlier and put it in front of him, and left. He ’s not the kind of person
who would pick it up and break it or anything. Is that enough? I don ’t know
what the placemat ’s doing. It ’s obviously not something to eat. (Cramer, Blatt, &
Ford, 1988, p. 611)
Researchers have developed detailed coding systems to turn this kind of re-
sponse into numerical values (Cramer, 1991, 2006). They derive scores from
the stories to indicate the extent to which test takers use various defense me-chanisms. In this example, the investigators found evidence of denial ( “He’s
not the kind of person who would pick it up and break it ”) and projection
(“Something’ s wrong with this boy physically and mentally” ). The more fre-
quently test takers make these kinds of statements, the more they are assumed
to use defense mechanisms when dealing with the anxiety they face in their
own lives.
In one demonstration of defense mechanisms, college students were given
some threatening information about their masculinity and femininity (Cramer,1998b). The researcher reasoned that gender-related behavior is a particularlyimportant aspect of identity for young men and women. In other words, it is
important for most men entering adulthood to think of themselves as mascu-
line, and for women to believe they are feminine. Information that threatens
this part of the self-concept is potentially quite anxiety provoking. The investi-
gator predicted that students would deal with this anxiety by using the defense76 CHAPTER 4 The Freudian Approach