Self-Deception Part 5: Displacement

Source: Neel Burton

Simply put, displacement is the redirection of uncomfortable feelings and impulses from their legitimate target towards someone or something less threatening.

A classic example of displacement is the man who has had a bad day at work: instead of taking out his frustration on his boss or colleagues, he bottles it all up until he gets home and then, over supper, pours it all out onto his long-suffering wife.

Displacement can give rise to a chain reaction, with the victim unwittingly becoming a perpetrator. The angry man’s wife might go on to smack their son, perhaps rationalizing her behaviour by thinking of it in terms of a punishment. A day or month or year later, the son might bully one of his classmates "just for fun."

In his Brief Lives, the 17th-century biographer John Aubrey relates the following humorous anecdote about the writer and explorer Sir Walter Raleigh and his son, Mr. Walt:

Mr Walt humbled himself to his Father, and promised he would behave himself mightily mannerly. So away he went... he sate nexte to his Father and was very demure at least half dinner time. Then sayd he, I this morning, not having the feare of God before my eies, but by the instigation of the devil, went to a Whore. I was very eager of her, kissed and embraced her, and went to enjoy her, but she thrust me from her, and vowed I should not, ‘For your father lay with me but an hower ago.’ Sir Walt, being so strangely supprized and putt out of his countenance at so great a Table, gives his son a damned blow over the face; his son, as rude as he was, would not strike his father, but strikes over the face of the Gentleman that sate next to him, and sayed, ‘Box about, ‘twill come to my Father anon.’

Displacement often involves deflected anger and frustration, but can also involve other feelings and impulses. For example, a person who lacks a fulfilling relationship might spend a lot of time with a placeholder or lavishing care and attention on a pet. Or a person who is attracted to a person of the same sex but is repulsed by the idea might "take it out" on partners of the opposite sex. This "taking it out" on a less threatening object often has a dual function: to release pent up frustration, of course, but also to reinforce the person’s supposed heterosexuality—an ego defense called reaction formation, which essentially involves "overdoing the opposite thing."

An ego defense that is related to displacement, and might be looked upon as a special form of displacement, is turning against the self, in which unacceptable impulses—typically anger—towards others are redirected upon the self. Turning against the self is common in people with depression and suicidal ideation, and people who self-harm.

Finally, displacement plays an important role in scapegoating, in which uncomfortable feelings such as anger, frustration, envy, guilt, shame, and insecurity are displaced or redirected onto another, often more vulnerable, person or group. The scapegoats—outsiders, immigrants, minorities, "deviants"—are then persecuted, enabling the people doing the scapegoating to discharge and distract from their negative feelings, which are replaced or overtaken by a crude but consoling sense of affirmation and self-righteous indignation. The creation of a villain necessarily implies that of a hero, even if both are purely fictional.

In the sixth instalment in this series, I will be discussing the ego defense of reaction formation. In the previous instalment, I discussed rationalization.

Neel Burton is author of Hide and Seek: The Psychology of Self-Deception.