Idealization

Identification of the young child with his parents gradually turns into idealization of them. The child's own ego ideals, the secret inner picture of himself as he feels he would like to be, are permanently established in his superego by this process of idealization.

Idealization, as a mental mechanism, is a device the ego adopts to escape the recrimi­nations of the superego. When it substitutes other ideals for the original parent ideals, it always includes at the core of the new ideals some fraction of the original pattern. "Ideal­istic love," as we have noted, is shaped in the inner image of one's parents.

Like identification, idealization is usually uncritical. This often leads to overestimation of the people toward whom it is directed. We see idealization blissfully at work in young lovers, who refuse to see the least blemish in their beloveds.

Idealization is also employed at the very highest cultural levels in religious worship and love of God, commonly idealized as Father, all-powerful and all-loving. We attribute  to God  all  that is best in  man.

Regression

Regression means reverting to immature and often childish behavior in the presence of current difficulties and frustrations. In terms of overt behavior it is one of the easiest of the mental mechanisms to observe and identify in other people. We all know the boy who won't play if he can't be captain of the team; the girl who sulks or goes into a temper tantrum if she misses a much-desired date; the tennis player who smashes his racket when he loses a match; the "perpetual undergraduate" col­lege alumnus, yelling himself hoarse at a football game; the child who throws himself on the floor and screams at the top of his lungs when he is denied candy. Not all re­gressive behavior is as obvious as the exam­ples given, but they should give the general idea.

Regression is a retreat from the complexi­ties of the present to the fancied security of the past. The ego feels more comfortable  for the moment in seeking an old solution for a present problem. Tears and tantrums, how­ever, rarely if ever get a person what he really wants.

Projection

Nobody likes to fail. We frequently seek to excuse our own failings by blaming them on someone or something else. The student who is failing a college course may sincerely but erroneously believe that the instructor is down on him the poor workman blames his tools Auto accidents are always "the other fellow's fault." When the ego rejects respon­sibility for failure and projects the blame elsewhere, it is employing the mental mecha­nism of projection.

But the process of projection may be much broader than merely excusing. We may, for example, project our own feelings on other people or the world at large. When we feel "blue," we may see the whole world as black. This is a false picture. We often attri­bute our own most undesirable traits to other people. If we are "bad." they are worse. We are most prone to project on others those feelings which trouble us most. Thus, if we feel secretly hostile toward somebody else, we may imagine that he is equally hostile toward us which may or may not be the case. Seeing others in a distorted image of our­selves may make us unduly critical, sarcasiic, cynical, and pessimistic.

Substitution

Substitution and displacement are mental mechanisms akin to projection. We sometimes substitute one love object for another as does the childless woman who lavishes ma­ternal affection upon a dog or cat. We may also displace our feelings, sometimes because we are afraid to express them toward the person who aroused them. Thus a man may be angry at his boss but displace his anger on his wife for some trivial reason. A girl who is angry at her parents may take it out in a quarrel  with  her boy friend, or vice versa.