A child who is upset after being scolded at school comes home and starts…

Concept

Defense mechanisms are unconscious psychological processes that reduce anxiety or inner conflict.

They are distinguished by what happens to the troubling feeling or impulse: it may be attributed to someone else, replaced by its opposite, kept out of awareness, or redirected to another target.

Application

The child’s anger begins with the scolding at school, but expressing it toward the person who scolded the child may feel unsafe. The same emotion is therefore redirected toward the younger sibling, a less threatening target. This pattern is displacement.

Contrast

• Projection would involve attributing the child’s own anger or impulse to someone else.

• Reaction formation would involve displaying an exaggerated behavior opposite to the unacceptable impulse.

• Repression would keep the distressing event or impulse outside conscious awareness.

• Displacement preserves the emotion but changes the target toward which it is expressed.

Cross-check

The emotion remains anger, while its target shifts from the authority figure at school to the younger sibling. A changed target with the same emotion confirms displacement.

Therefore, the example illustrates displacement.