Creating false but plausible excuses to justify unacceptable behavior

Example: Reducing guilt for cheating on your taxes by rationalizaing "everyone does it."

Pushing unacceptable id impulses out of awareness and back into the unconscious. Sometimes called "motivated forgetting."

Example:  Having no memory of an  unpleasant experience.

Behaving exactly the opposite of one's true feelings.

Example:  A mother who feels resentment toward a child may be overly cautious and protective.

Reversion to immature patterns of behavior.

Example:  temper tantrums

Attributing one's own thoughts, feelings, motives, or shortcomings to others.

Example:  A wife who constantly suspects her husband of having an affair because unconsciously she has thought of having an affair.

Shifting unacceptable feelings from their original source to a safer, substitute target.

Example:  You are mad at your boss, but you do not yell at your boss, instead you become angry with a family member when you return home.

A useful, socially acceptable course of behavior replaces a socially unacceptable or distasteful impulse.

Example:  A person who feels aggression due to a lack of control plays an aggressive game of basketball with friends every other day.

By dealing with a stressful situation in an intellectual and unemotional manner, a person detaches him- or herself from the stress.

Example:  A person who has lost a family member due to an illness will speak of the medical terminology of the illness, but will not discuss the emotional aspects of the illness.

Denying that a very unpleasant thing has happened.

Example:  A person with severe stomach pains, possibly an ulcer, refuses to see a doctor because he or she feels it is only indigestion.