Human Growth and Development / Unit 14 HGD 1954 short lesson, about 20 seconds
Vaillant's Mature Defenses
Captions available
The idea
Vaillant held that adults meet life's challenges with defense mechanisms, strategies for managing anxiety; mature defenses support positive aging, and immature ones impede growth.
In practice
Humour and sublimation, channelling anxiety into productive work, as mature defenses; denial and acting out as immature ones.
Where people slip
The idea descends from psychoanalytic theory, which unit one introduced; Vaillant tested it in a long-term study of men.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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