A child when scolded in class by a teacher returns home and shows anger to…

Concept

Defense mechanisms are unconscious psychological strategies the mind uses to protect itself from anxiety created by unacceptable impulses, thoughts, or emotions. Displacement is one such mechanism: it redirects an emotion or impulse away from the person or situation that caused it, toward a substitute target that feels safer or less threatening, while the emotion itself remains unchanged.

Application

1. The teacher scolds the child in class — this is the actual source of the child's anger, but reacting with anger toward the teacher is unsafe, since a teacher is an authority figure and expressing anger there could invite further punishment.

2. Because it is unsafe to direct the anger at its true source, the child unconsciously carries the same feeling home.

3. At home, the child releases this pent-up anger onto the sister — a target that feels emotionally safer and is unlikely to punish the child back.

4. The emotion (anger) is unchanged throughout; only its target has moved from the teacher to the sister — this substitution of target is exactly what displacement means.

Cross-check

Contrast with the other options, by value:

• Sublimation would require the anger to be converted into a constructive, socially approved activity (e.g., sport, art, hard study) — nothing in the scenario shows the anger being channeled that way; it is simply redirected, unchanged, at a new person.

• Conversion would require the anger/conflict to convert into a physical symptom (e.g., an unexplained loss of a body function) — no physical symptom appears here.

• Reaction formation would require the child to express the opposite of the anger (e.g., unusual affection or calm) — instead, the exact same anger is expressed, just at a different target.

Since the emotion stays the same and only its target changes to a safer substitute, this is a textbook case of displacement.