Gorgonia Wróbel-Sucharska
Defense Mechanisms
A Way to Survive
About this training
Why does a patient spend a session telling long stories, quoting other people’s thoughts, or avoiding eye contact instead of talking about their feelings?
This is not accidental. These are defence mechanisms: psychological strategies that help a person survive anxiety and internal conflict. They provide protection, but at the same time they separate the patient from their genuine emotions and desires.
This training introduces ways of understanding the function of defence mechanisms through the Triangle of Conflict, one of the most important diagnostic tools in ISTDP.
Among other things, you will learn:
- How defences are classified, from psychotic to mature, according to Vaillant
- The difference between front-line defences, such as storytelling, quoting others and avoiding closeness, and basement defences, such as freezing, defiance, devaluation and intellectualisation
- How defences operate at the level of the stimulus, meaning relationships with other people, and at the level of the response, meaning the experience of feelings and impulses
- The role of defence mechanisms in the neurobiological regulation of anxiety
- How defences affect the physiological experience of emotion
- How to assess a patient’s defensive pattern, including its level, type and degree of ego-syntonicity or ego-dystonicity
You will learn, among other things:
- How to respond when a patient uses quotations as a defence and does not believe that their own words can be important
- How not to be drawn in by a patient’s compliance, and how to address the patient’s adult, autonomous part
- How to recognise defences in body language, such as avoiding eye contact, freezing and excessive smiling, as well as in speech, such as minimising, projection and fantasising
- Why clarification and sharing a perspective with the patient are essential if the patient is to feel able to relinquish their defences
The course is enriched by the discussion of numerous clinical cases, showing how the theory works in practice and how the knowledge gained can be applied directly in the consulting room.
Course content
- Selected approaches to understanding the function, development and classification of defence mechanisms
- Types of defences
- The place of defences within the neurobiological model of anxiety regulation
- The influence of defences on the physiological experience of emotion
- Assessment of the defensive pattern: level, type and degree of ego-syntonicity
- Defence mechanisms and ego adaptive capacity
- Resistance in psychotherapy
- How to work with defences using C-I-C
- Examples of defence mechanisms used by patients
- Therapeutic intervention strategies
A fragment of this training
A short excerpt from the recording itself. It is here so you can see how the material is taught, and what to expect, before you decide.
Your teacher
Gorgonia Wróbel-Sucharska
Psychologist, certified psychotherapist, trainer and psychotherapy supervisor. She holds psychotherapy certifications from the Polish Psychological Association, the European Association for Psychotherapy and the International Experiential Dynamic Therapy Association. She is also a trainer recommended at Levels I and II by the Polish Psychological Association and a certified psychotherapy supervisor of the Polish Psychological Association.
She completed the first Polish edition of ISTDP training, an ISTDP teacher-training course at the Psychotherapy Laboratory, and an advanced ISTDP core training programme in Berlin under the direction of Josette ten Have-de Labije.
From 2021 to 2025, she served as a member of the Board of the Psychotherapy Section of the Polish Psychological Association. She co-founded and co-directs the EMPIRO School of Psychotherapy in Bydgoszcz and the DELTA Centre for Psychological Support and Education in Bydgoszcz.
Why choose this training?
- Experienced ISTDP teachersOur teachers are practising clinicians with many years of experience.
- Practical methods you can use immediatelyAfter completing the material, you will return to your practice with ready-to-use methods that will help you conduct more effective therapeutic interventions with your patients.
- Knowledge that stays with youYou can revisit our online courses whenever you wish and as many times as you need. Your purchase includes unlimited access, allowing you to consolidate and refresh your knowledge effectively.
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Defense Mechanisms
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