What are the most common classifications of 'defense mechanisms' that can make up our 'character armor' in defense against intimacy, emotional honesty, vulnerability, and unaccepted experiences, memories, fantasies, impulses?
Off the top of my head, let me list the ones that come easiest to mind: introjection, identification, projection, displacement, compensation, transference, denial, repression, suppression, dissociation, abstraction, intellectualization, rationalization, sublimation...there are probably a few more...approval-seeking, disapproval-avoiding, sado-masochism, distancing, rebellion, anarchy, power-seeking, revenge-seeking, the addictions, the obsessive-compulsions (both 'oral' and 'anal' in the literal and/or metaphorical sense as well as of course 'genital' in the literal sexual sense...), the psychoses and neuro-psychoses, bipolar disorder (there are hundreds of them), borderline personality, as well as whatever I have left out from the DSM.....
I like Horney's classification system of the neuroses which probably includes most if not all of the above...
1. We can move TOWARDS people (but in an unhealthy, manipulative way -- either narcissistic or approval-seeking) who we view as potentially dangerous to us (approval-seeking, disapproval-seeking, emotional and/or physical dependency, sado-masochism, Stockholm Syndrome, various forms of of actual and/or vicarious Identification With The Aggressor...
2. We can move AWAY from people who we view as toxic or otherwise dangerous to us...(the distancing neuroses and/or psychoses...)
3. We can move AGAINST people who we view as toxic and/or otherwise dangerous to us...(rebellion, anarchy, paranoia, power and/or revenge seeking, terrorism...)
