Psychology-Land

• Level I - pathological defenses (i.e. psychotic denial, delusional projection)
• Level II - immature defenses (i.e. fantasy, projection, passive aggression, acting out)
• Level III - neurotic defenses (i.e. intellectualization, reaction formation, dissociation, displacement, repression)
• Level IV - mature defenses (i.e. humor, sublimation, suppression, altruism, anticipation)

• Id: a selfish, primitive, childish, pleasure-oriented part of the personality with no ability to delay gratification.
• Superego: internalized societal and parental standards of "good" and "bad", "right" and "wrong" behavior.
• Ego: the moderator between the id and superego which seeks compromises to pacify both. It can be viewed as our "sense of time and place",

Distortion: A gross reshaping of external reality to meet internal needs.
Fantasy: Tendency to retreat into fantasy in order to resolve inner and outer conflicts
*Projection: Projection is a primitive form of paranoia. Projection also reduces anxiety by allowing the expression of the undesirable impulses or desires without becoming consciously aware of them; attributing one's own unacknowledged unacceptable/unwanted thoughts and emotions to another; includes severe prejudice, severe jealousy, hypervigilance to external danger, and "injustice collecting". It is shifting one's unacceptable thoughts, feelings and impulses within oneself onto someone else, such that those same thoughts, feelings, beliefs and motivations are perceived as being possessed by the other.
*Displacement: Defense mechanism that shifts sexual or aggressive impulses to a more acceptable or less threatening target; redirecting emotion to a safer outlet; separation of emotion from its real object and redirection of the intense emotion toward someone or something that is less offensive or threatening in order to avoid dealing directly with what is frightening or threatening. For example, a mother may yell at her child because she is angry with her husband.
*Rationalization (making excuses): Where a person convinces him or herself that no wrong was done and that all is or was all right through faulty and false reasoning. An indicator of this defense mechanism can be seen socially as the formulation of convenient excuses - making excuses.
 *Repression: The process of attempting to repel desires towards pleasurable instincts, caused by a threat of suffering if the desire is satisfied; the desire is moved to the unconscious in the attempt to prevent it from entering consciousness;^[15] seemingly unexplainable naivety, memory lapse or lack of awareness of one's own situation and condition; the emotion is conscious, but the idea behind it is absent.
*Reaction formation: Converting unconscious wishes or impulses that are perceived to be dangerous into their opposites; behavior that is completely the opposite of what one really wants or feels; taking the opposite belief because the true belief causes anxiety. This defense can work effectively for coping in the short term, but will eventually break down.
*Regression: Temporary reversion of the ego to an earlier stage of development rather than handling unacceptable impulses in a more adult way.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_mechanism