Enneagram and Defense Mechanisms
The following are said to be the key defense mechanisms of each enneagram type.
Key Defense Mechanisms:
Enneagram 1 - Repression, Reaction Formation, and Displacement
Enneagram 2 - Identification, Reaction Formation, and Denial.
Enneagram 3 - Repression, Projection, and Displacement.
Enneagram 4 - Introjection, Displacement, and Turning against the self.
Enneagram 5 - Displacement, Projection, and Isolation.
Enneagram 6 - Identification, Displacement, and Projection.
Enneagram 7 - Repression, Externalization, and Acting out.
Enneagram 8 - Repression, Displacement, and Denial.
Enneagram 9 - Repression, Dissociation, and Denial.
Here are some brief explanations of these defense mechanisms.
Repression- the unconscious psychological attempt made by an individual to direct one's own desires and impulses toward pleasurable instincts by excluding the desire from one's consciousness and holding or subduing it in the unconscious.
Reaction Formation- a kind of psychological defense mechanism in which a person perceives their true feelings or desires to be unacceptable, and so they attempt to convince themselves or others that the opposite is true--often in a very exaggerated performance.
Displacement- displacement is when a person shifts his/her impulses from an unacceptable target to a more acceptable or less threatening target.
For example, if you are very angry at your teacher because you did poorly on a test and think the reason for your poor performance is because the teacher asked tricky, unfair questions, you may become angry at your teacher. But, you obviously can't yell at your teacher (really, you can't!), hit your teacher, or express your angry in any other hostile way toward the teacher, so you go home and "displace" your anger by punching your little brother instead.
Identification- a psychological process whereby the subject assimilates an aspect, property, or attribute of the other and is transformed wholly or partially, by the model that other provides. It is by means of a series of identifications that the personality is constituted and specified.
Introjection- occurs when a person internalizes the ideas or voices of other people. This behavior is commonly associated with the internalization of external authority, particularly that of parents
Introjection is a more complicated and much deeper version of identification. Think of introjection as someone taking a part of or a belief held by someone else and figuratively injecting that into themselves. In introjection, a person will so deeply integrate a behavior or belief held by another person, that it becomes deep entrenched in who they are. For example, a young girl grows up with a caretaker who always told her she’s not smart enough to ever be successful. That young girl, as she grows older, introjects that false belief and then subsequently flunks out of college. That could be despite the fact that she’s actually really brilliant and capable. But because she holds that introjected notion, introjected from her caretaker, it’s tough for her to realize her own potential.
Denial- a psychological defense mechanism in which confrontation with a personal problem or with reality is avoided by denying the existence of the problem or reality.
Projection- Psychological projection is a defense mechanism people subconsciously employ in order to cope with difficult feelings or emotions. Psychological projection involves projecting undesirable feelings or emotions onto someone else, rather than admitting to or dealing with the unwanted feelings.
The classic example of projection is that of a woman who has been unfaithful to her husband but who accuses her husband of cheating on her.
Turning against the self - a very special form of displacement, where the person becomes their own substitute target. It is normally used in reference to hatred, anger, and aggression, rather than more positive impulses, and it is the explanation for many of our feelings of inferiority, guilt, and depression.
Isolation- It is characterized as a mental process involving the creation of a gap between an unpleasant or threatening cognition, and other thoughts and feelings. By minimizing associative connections with other thoughts, the threatening cognition is remembered less often and is less likely to affect self-esteem or the self concept
The concept is illustrated with the example of a person beginning a train of thought and then pausing for a moment before continuing to a different subject. His theory stated that by inserting an interval the person was "letting it be understood symbolically that he will not allow his thoughts about that impression or activity to come into associative contact with other thoughts." As a defense against harmful thoughts, isolation prevents the self from allowing these cognitions to become recurrent and possibly damaging to the self-concept.
Externalization- an unconscious defense mechanism by which an individual "projects" his or her own internal characteristics onto the outside world, particularly onto other people. They do not take full responsibility and ownership of these things, they blame others.
Acting Out- to perform an action in contrast to bearing and managing the impulse to perform it. The acting done is usually anti-social and may take the form of acting on the impulses of an addiction (e.g. drinking, drug taking or shoplifting) or in a means designed (often unconsciously or semi-consciously) to garner attention (e.g. throwing a tantrum or behaving promiscuously).
Dissociation- any of a wide array of experiences from mild detachment from immediate surroundings to more severe detachment from physical and emotional experience. Usually it’s disruptions in aspects of consciousness, identity, memory, physical actions and/or the environment.
And for those neurotic people that need sources or whatever, these defense mechanisms originate from Freudian Theory. And I got them from Wikipedia and from Psychology Today. The correlation to the types and the defense mechanisms is from the 9types.com website under that tab on the left that says “Understanding E-gram”
