Level · Mental inhibitions
Displacement: the defense mechanism, with examples
Displacement is a defense mechanism in which you redirect a feeling, usually anger, from the person or situation that caused it to a safer target. The feeling stays the same; only its address changes. The classic example is a boss who criticizes you, and a partner or child who gets shouted at that evening.
What it protects you from
The risk of aiming a feeling at the person it is really meant for.
Examples of Displacement
At home
Your manager humiliated you in a meeting. At dinner you snap at your partner for loading the dishwasher wrong.
With children
You’re frightened about money and become strict with your kids about small things.
On the road
A row with your mother leaves you raging at the slow driver in front.
At yourself
You can’t be angry with the parent who left, so you’re furious with yourself for every small mistake.
Displacement, step by step
One moment, traced link by link. The defense is the step that keeps the rest out of view.
The moment
Your manager rewrites your report without asking.
- 01 · AttentionRed edits all over your work.
- 02 · InterpretationI can’t say anything. I need this job.
- 03 · EmotionHumiliation, then anger.
- 04 · BodyHeat in the face, a fist clenched under the desk.
- 05 · DefenseDisplacement: the anger waits until it finds someone safe.
- 06 · Root beliefStanding up to people with power is dangerous.
- 07 · ActionAt home you start a fight about the dishes.
How it feels in the body
Displaced anger carries a charge the moment can’t explain: a hot face, a raised voice, a tight chest over something small. People often notice it afterwards, as guilt, or as a sense that the reaction was never really about the dishes.
The beliefs it often protects
- It isn’t safe to be angry with people who have power over me.
- If I show them how I feel, I’ll lose them.
- My feelings are a burden.
How it differs
- Projection
- Projection disowns the feeling, so it seems to belong to the other person. Displacement keeps the feeling as yours and points it at someone else.
- Passive aggression
- Passive aggression delivers anger to the right person, indirectly. Displacement delivers it directly, to the wrong person.
Mature or immature?
Level · Mental inhibitions
Keep a threatening feeling or idea out of awareness while you keep functioning.
On the DSM-IV Defensive Functioning Scale, displacement belongs to the mental-inhibitions level. In the moment it can prevent a conflict you can’t afford. The cost is carried by the people closest to you, and the original situation stays as it was, so the cycle repeats.
Questions to notice it in yourself
Not a test. Answer for one specific moment, not for your life in general.
- Who gets my worst moods, and are they the cause?
- What happened earlier on the day I snapped?
- Who in my life would it feel dangerous to be angry with?
- What would I say to the real target if it were safe?
Common questions
- What is an example of displacement?
- A person who is reprimanded at work comes home and shouts at their partner over something minor. The anger belongs to the work situation, but it is released where it feels safe.
- Is displacement the same as projection?
- No. In displacement you know you are angry and aim it at the wrong person. In projection you don’t experience the feeling as yours at all; you see it in someone else.
- Can displacement be healthy?
- Taking anger out on a punching bag or a hard run is a form of displacement that harms no one, and it can shade into sublimation. It becomes unhealthy when other people absorb feelings that belong elsewhere.
Related defense mechanisms
Disavowal
ProjectionProjection is a defense mechanism in which you see your own unacceptable feelings, wishes or traits in someone else instead of in yourself.Action
Passive aggressionPassive aggression is a defense mechanism in which anger or resistance comes out indirectly, through procrastination, forgetting, sarcasm, sulking or deliberate inefficiency, instead of being said out loud.High adaptive
SublimationSublimation is a defense mechanism in which an impulse that would be unacceptable in raw form, such as aggression or frustrated desire, is channeled into something valued: work, art, sport or care for others.Sources
- Freud, A. (1936). The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence. London: Hogarth Press.
- American Psychiatric Association (2000). Defensive Functioning Scale. In Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th ed., text rev. (DSM-IV-TR), Appendix B.
- Vaillant, G. E. (1992). Ego Mechanisms of Defense: A Guide for Clinicians and Researchers. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press.
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