Glossary | Psychiatry Online

We gratefully acknowledge the following individuals for providing definitions for this glossary: Aisha Abbasi, M.D.; Ann Appelbaum, M.D.; Maurice Apprey, Ph.D.; Morton Aronson, M.D.; Elizabeth Auchincloss, M.D.; Rosemary Balsam, M.D.; Michael Beldoch, Ph.D.; Anna Burton, M.D.; A. Scott Dowling, M.D.; Wayne Downey, M.D.; Peter Dunn, M.D.; Aaron Esman, M.D.; Henry Evans, M.D.; Stephen Firestein, M.D.; Karen Gilmore, M.D.; Eugene L. Goldberg, M.D.; Lee Grossman, M.D.; Jeffrey K. Halpern, M.D.; Samuel Herschkowitz, M.D.; Wendy Jacobson, M.D.; Benjamin Kilborne, Ph.D.; Lewis Kirshner, M.D.; Anton Kris, M.D.; Kimberlyn Leary, Ph.D.; Eric Marcus, M.D.; Andrew Morrison, M.D.; Peter Neubauer, M.D.; David D. Olds, M.D.; Sharone B. Ornstein, M.D.; Ernst Prelinger, Ph. D.; Ellen Rees, M.D.; Robert Scharf, M.D.; Eleanor Schuker, M.D.; Susan P. Sherkow, M.D.; Robert Tyson, M.D.; Milton Viederman, M.D.; and Arnold Wilson, Ph.D. <m#>small caps type indicates terms defined as main entries elsewhere in this glossary.

Glossary

Richard B.

Zimmer

Peter M.

Bookstein

Edward T.

Kenny

Andreas K.

Kraebber

Abstinence: The technical principle that the analyst must refrain from gratifying the wishes of the patient. By refraining from providing gratification, the analyst encourages these wishes to be put into words by the patient so that they can be analyzed.
Acting out: The expression in action outside of a psychoanalytic session of feelings and thoughts that were aroused within the session. By substituting an action or behavior for self-reflection or words, a person deprives himself or herself of knowledge of an important part of his or her inner experience.
Adaptation: The individual’s capacity to deal with the external environment, either by accommodating to the demands of reality or by actively modifying reality in a personally or socially beneficial way.
Affect: In classical psychoanalysis, emotions, and particularly their physiological manifestations, that are derivative (i.e., transformed) expressions of libidinal and/or aggressive drives. The ego, as an executive agency, deals with affects, with special importance given to anxiety, which serves as a signal of danger.
Agency: The capacity to recognize conditions and consequences in human interactions and to participate in exchange with others through action. Agency is distinguished from a sense of agency, which develops through repeated acknowledgments of one’s agency by others and by repetition of experiences that confirm one’s capacities to bring about desired results. The term is also used locatively to refer to any of the three major subdivisions of the mind in Freud’s structural theory: id, ego, and superego.
Aggression: Manifest strivings, in thought, action, feeling, or fantasy, to dominate, prevail over, or be destructive to others. The term also refers to the drive that gives rise to such manifestations.
Alexithymia: The inability to know and to describe one’s own feelings. Alexithymia differs from intolerance of feelings and may be seen in patients with disorders on the border between somatic and psychological illness.
Alpha function (Bion): The process through which the mother receives the primitive affective experiences of the infant, communicated through projective identification; processes them through her reverie; and returns them in a modified form to her infant, thereby serving to both modulate these experiences and imbue them with meaning.
Ambivalence: The state of having simultaneous contradictory feelings toward an object. Ambivalence is always present but may become a clinical issue if one of the feelings is intolerable and repressed. If this occurs, the threat of the repressed feeling coming to awareness may generate anxiety or mobilize defenses that affect functioning.
Anaclitic object: A person on whom an individual is totally dependent for survival, seen most clearly in the infant’s attachment to the mother. The loss of the object precipitates a severe depression. This archaic dependency is also present in severely depressed adults.
Anality: Symptoms and character traits in the adult that are analogous to the infantile delight in messiness or to the newfound capacity to control self and others by retaining or expelling feces. Defenses such as reaction formation and rationalization further define the anal character. Associated traits include excessive concern with order, cleanliness, and tidiness, and irrational retention of information, money, or things that are no longer useful.
Anal phase: The phase of psychosexual development in which pleasure arises primarily from the anal zone, specifically from the retention and expulsion of feces. Ambivalence has been said to typify this phase.
Analyzability: A prospective analysand’s capacity to undergo psychoanalytic treatment. It takes into account 1) the descriptive and dynamic diagnoses (e.g., symptom neurosis, character disorder), 2) the patient’s capacity for perseverance in difficult tasks, and 3) the patient’s ability to relate positively to the analyst in his or her role as helping professional. An analyst may also consider the analysand’s capacity to fruitfully employ the method of free association. Only the actual analytic collaboration will demonstrate whether the preliminary assessment of analyzability will be corroborated.
Anhedonia: The condition of being unable to experience pleasure, typically as a manifestation of depression or masochism.
Anonymity: In clinical psychoanalysis, the withholding of personal facts about the analyst in order to facilitate the emergence of fantasies about the analyst as a transferential object. Currently, many analysts feel that selective self-disclosure may be technically useful in certain clinical situations.
Anxiety: An unpleasant affect characterized by physiological manifestations of autonomic discharge and a subjective apprehensiveness. Psychologically, the danger is unconscious and should be contrasted with fear, which is a response to an external and realistic danger.
Applied analysis (applied psychoanalysis): The use of psychoanalytic insights originally developed from the clinical situation in order to understand history, art, music literature, or biography, which includes collaborative work with other disciplines such as neuroscience, anthropology, and philosophy.
Attachment: The biologically based bond between child and caregiver that ensures the safety, survival, and emotional well-being of the child. The quality of the attachment bond—whether it is secure or insecure—appears in clinical observation and empirical research to have powerful implications for the quality of psychic structure and the subsequent relationships a person develops.
Attachment theory: A view that postulates an innate need for attachment to a caregiver as the primary motivating force in human development. Varying patterns or failures in early attachment are thought to predispose to or be consistent with later developmental pathologies or to particular modes of object relatedness.
Autistic phase (Mahler): The state of the first few weeks of extrauterine life marked by an absence of awareness of a mothering agent and by the hallucinatory, omnipotent satisfaction of needs.
Autonomous ego function: An aspect of the ego that operates with little or no conscious or unconscious conflict (e.g., aspects of perception, recent memory, motility, intelligence, and communication). These functions can, of course, also be drawn into conflict, and many analysts question whether there is any function of the ego that is totally conflict-free.
Autonomy: The relative independence of the individual, which rests on the development of a reasonably constant sense of what is internal and external, as well as the psychological presence of important others. Developmental achievements of the first 3 years of life are instrumental in the subsequent acquisition of autonomy, which is a critical maturational issue of adolescence. Ego functions are said to be autonomous when they lose their links to their origins in intrapsychic conflict (see conflict, intrapsychic). Some analysts question the concept of autonomous ego functions.

Bastion: A collusion between patient and analyst, outside of the conscious awareness of both, to keep certain of the patient’s mental contents out of the treatment, which is often bolstered by a shared unconscious fantasy about their functioning as an analytic couple.
Bipolar self: In self psychology, the two-part structure that is the core of an individual’s personality and sense of self. It consists of the pole of the grandiose self, expressed by ambitions, and the pole of the idealizing parental imago, expressed by ideals and experienced as embodied in the parental object. In the psychoanalytic situation, the grandiose self may be activated and forms the basis of the mirror transference. The idealized parental imago may be activated and forms the basis of an idealizing transference.
Birth trauma: The hypothesized experience of overwhelming anxiety for the newborn as he or she emerges from the womb of the mother. Otto Rank proposed that it was the prototypical experience of anxiety and was responded to with repression. He believed that subsequent developmental crises follow from this traumatic loss of the original experience of union with and likeness to the mother.
Bisexuality: A psychological makeup in which the individual may choose either a man or a woman as a sexual object. Freud believed that bisexuality was universal in the unconscious. On a conscious level, research has demonstrated that most individuals have a primary preference for either a male or a female sexual object, while only a minority of individuals are bisexual.
Body ego: The sense of one’s body in three respects: what the body feels (i.e., external and internal sensory input), what the body does (e.g., internal/external movement), and how the body fits into the external world (i.e., its place, position, and extensions).
Body image: The unconscious mental representation of one’s own body, which may be anatomically incomplete or inaccurate and which may structure some psychological symptoms.
Borderline personality organization: A primitive character structure represented by a fluid and labile sense of identity; a desperate fear of isolation and aloneness, along with chaotic intimate relationships in which the other is both intensely needed and experienced as toxic and rejecting; and the use of archaic defenses of splitting and projective identification. This personality often manifests with eruptive anger in chaotic relationships, yet in nonintimate situations, these individuals often function well.

Castration anxiety: The fear, occurring in both sexes, that the most sexually pleasurable parts of the genital anatomy (i.e., the penis and clitoris), which are most valued because they symbolize gender, may be damaged or lost. This fear is particularly intense in children ages 4–6 but continues unconsciously throughout life in displaced form (e.g., as inordinate anxiety in the face of the feared loss of health, youth, beauty, or wealth).
Cathexis: The investment of attention, interest, or mental energy (either libidinal or aggressive), the quantity and quality of which determine the level of engagement between self and other. In the transference, patients withdraw their cathexis (or investment) from past figures and reinvest in the clinician as a new figure.
Character: The aggregate of relatively enduring and stable personality traits in an individual. Examples of these habitual modes of feeling and thinking are obsessionality and hysteria. Character develops over time and is related to infantile solutions to particular conflict. It is slow to change, even with psychoanalytic intervention.
Character disorder: A disturbance in the structure of an individual’s personality in which there are rigidly held patterns of behavior that get the individual in trouble or lead to the defeat of his or her own aims but that cause him or her no subjective distress.
Co-construction: A process that integrates the experiences of two individuals in a dyad. Each individual constructs the experience of “self” and “other”; each one’s experience of “self” is affected by the other’s experience of him or her as “other.” For example, a “co-constructed” narrative of an analysis is created by the back-and-forth interaction between the narrative of the analyst’s experience of self and patient, the patient’s experience of self and analyst, and their wish to have a shared narrative of the shared experience.
Component instincts: The different early forms of the sexual drive directed at specific body areas such as the oral mucosa or genitalia, or associated with specific activities that may be erotically charged. These components frequently occur as complementary pairs, such as scopophilia and exhibitionism or sadism and masochism, and gradually combine to form mature sexuality in the course of psychic development.
Compromise formation: The ego’s solution to a problem presented by the competing demands of id, superego, the repetition compulsion, and external reality. Every psychic action has multiple functions and can be understood as a compromise formation.
Compulsion: A repetitive, ritualized action, the need for which forces its way into consciousness regardless of whether the person wishes to perform the action. Failure to perform this action often generates anxiety.
Condensation: A mental process in which a number of disparate thoughts or feelings are simultaneously represented by a single thought, feeling, or image. Condensation is a characteristic of primary process thinking and is frequently operative in dreams and symptoms.
Conflict, intrapsychic: The condition arising from the opposition of competing motives, at least one of which is unconscious. The motives may arise from sexual or aggressive wishes, the wish to satisfy one’s moral sense, the wish to conform to the demands of reality, and the wish to maintain a positive image of the self. Resolution of conflict involves a compromise formation that takes into account the opposing motives, resulting in a symptom, a character trait, or sublimation.
Conscious: The state of mental awareness of external and internal events—past, present, and future. Within Freud’s topographic theory, the system Conscious could be differentiated from the system Unconscious and the system Preconscious on the basis of accessibility to reflection. The system Cs receives information from the external world as well as from the body and psyche and operates on the basis of secondary process, characterized by logical thought that can be expressed in language.
Construction: See reconstruction. Although these terms are used interchangeably, many contemporary analysts prefer construction, as it more accurately reflects that the narratives of the patient’s past experiences, either external or intrapsychic, that are elaborated in the analytic setting are not necessarily accurate renditions of these experiences but rather renditions that explain more of the data or explain it in a more satisfying way than previously held renditions.
Container/Contained: The recipient of projected affects as the one who modifies these affects by accepting them inside himself or herself and tolerating them or the projected unacceptable affect, respectively. Bion asserted that the container/contained aspect of the mother-infant relationship was an important mechanism of early emotional growth, as well as a paradigm for an aspect of the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis.
Conversion: The transformation of unacceptable thoughts or impulses into physical symptoms that present clinically as a physical ailment caused or exacerbated by psychical rather than physiological forces. The symptom is simultaneously an expression of the unacceptable thought and a defense against it, rather than a nonspecific physical response to stress or anxiety.
Countertransference: Originally, the unconscious reaction of the analyst to the patient derived from earlier situations in the life of the analyst, displaced onto the patient. As such, these feelings were felt to be an impediment to analytic treatment and to require self-scrutiny and self-analysis on the analyst’s part to minimize their effects. Gradually, the term has come to include all the analyst’s emotional responses to the patient, conscious and unconscious. With this expansion of meaning of the term, there has been wider interest in the countertransference as a source of analytically useful data about the inner life of the patient.

Day residue: The precipitating stimulus for a dream, arising from an event from waking life in the day before the dream. The event acquires significance from unconscious connection with repressed conflicts and appears in the dream in a displaced and symbolic form.
Death instinct: An instinct postulated by Freud impelling the individual toward death and self-destruction. Its existence has always been a controversial question among psychoanalysts. Clinically, only aggression and the striving for power have been documented, not the biological drive toward a return to the inanimate by way of self-destruction.
Declarative memory: The type of memory characterized by active, conscious recall of specific facts and events, usually verbal in nature. It is often contrasted with procedural memory, which refers to implicit learned behaviors or patterns for various functions.
Defense: An unconscious mental operation aimed at avoiding anxiety. Examples of defenses are denial, repression, reaction formation, somatization, and intellectualization. Failure of such responses may lead to conscious anxiety or to symptom formation.
Deferred action: The control of impulses so that one may think and choose alternative actions rather than act immediately; alternately, the onset of a symptom or feeling when a significant time has elapsed after its precipitant. For Lacan, it is translated as après coup or afterwardness and refers to when a repressed memory awaits reinterpretation as sexually traumatic due to a more developed understanding in the future.
Denial: A defense mechanism in which knowledge of an unacceptable thought, feeling, wish, or aspect of external reality is repudiated.
Depersonalization: The feeling that one’s self is strangely unfamiliar or missing or that one is watching oneself behave in accordance with external reality but without emotional participation. Depersonalization may be a normal reaction to an acute and overwhelming danger, internal or external, or an abnormal reaction to what seems to be only a minor danger.
Depression: An emotional state (affect, mood, or disorder) usually characterized by feelings of sadness, reduced energy and self-esteem, often accompanied by feelings of guilt and self-reproach, loss of appetite, insomnia, and suicidal impulses. It is frequently precipitated by actual or fantasized experiences of abandonment, loss, or disappointment.
Depressive position (Klein): The psychic organization that developmentally succeeds the paranoid-schizoid position. It begins when the infant realizes that his or her loved good object and hated bad object are actually two aspects of the same object. Feelings of guilt toward the object for aggression directed toward it and desires to make reparation to the object (from which ultimately derive a capacity for mature object love and for sublimations) characterize the depressive position.
Derealization: A feeling of estrangement from the external world in which the environment is experienced as unreal, strange, and, if familiar, changed in some profound way. Perception and judgment remain intact even though the person experiencing derealization may feel threatened or afraid of the changes that seem to have taken place.
Derivative: The conscious expression, in modified form, of repressed contents of unconscious wishes, fears, and fantasies. Examples of derivatives are dreams, daydreams, symptoms, play, artistic creations, and transference fantasies and enactments.
Desire: A state of yearning for satisfaction or attainment; a particular feeling stronger than a wish, different from a need, and akin to intense longing. Often the longing in desire is more intense and satisfying than its attainment.
Developmental arrest: An interruption, as a result of trauma, constitution, or both, in the expectable unfolding of psychological development of an individual. This may profoundly affect the quality of the adult personality of the individual.
Differentiation subphase (Mahler): The subphase of the separation-individuation process during which the infant begins to show greater interest in the external world beyond the mother and appears to be psychologically “hatching” from the mother-infant symbiosis. This subphase occurs between the ages of 5 and 10 months.
Disavowal: The unconscious repudiation of awareness of some painful aspect of external reality in order to diminish anxiety or even more painful affects.
Displacement: The severing of the connection between a thought or feeling and its object, and the attachment of that thought or feeling to a substitute object. This mechanism is commonly observed in dreams and in the formation of phobias.
Dissociation: The separating off of two or more mental states within an individual so that the individual is unaware of one state while he or she is in the other. Often a result of psychic trauma, it may allow the individual to maintain allegiance to two contradictory truths while not being conscious of the contradiction. An extreme manifestation of dissociation is multiple personality disorder (dissociative identity disorder) in which a person may exhibit several independent personalities, each unaware of the others.
Dream work: The mental process by which the day residue and the dream thoughts are transformed into the manifest dream. The process makes use of archaic modes of thinking, primarily condensation and displacement. The dream thoughts are transformed into visual images, which are then linked together into a relatively coherent story by means of secondary revision (or elaboration).
Drives: The motivating force for all human behavior, according to Freud’s drive theory. Each drive consists of a source (somatic), a pressure, an aim (the means to achieve gratification), and an object, which provides the gratification. The primary drives, according to Freud, are the sexual and aggressive drives.
Dual instinct theory: A theory holding that the struggle between two opposing but complementary instinctual forces is central in the psychic life of the individual. Though currently the term is used mostly to refer to the sexual and aggressive drives, other dual instinct models have been proposed and include those in which the opposing forces are life instinct/death instinct, sexual instinct/self-preservative instinct, and self love/object love.
Dynamic unconscious: The mental content that is out of awareness because it has been subject to repression. It is distinguished from the system Unconscious, which comprises the rules and principles that govern unconscious mental processes.

Ego: One of three major agencies or subdivisions of the mental apparatus (along with id and superego). Operations of the ego may be conscious or unconscious. The ego serves to mediate among the demands of the instincts, the external world, and the superego. It perceives the needs and wishes of the individual and the qualities of the environment and integrates these perceptions so as to achieve (through modification of internally arising needs and actions taken on the environment) optimal gratification of internal needs and wishes in such a way as to be acceptable to the external world and superego.
Ego apparatus: The psychic structure associated with the execution of all of the functions of the ego (e.g., reality testing, thought processes, defensive functions).
Ego defect: A failure or weakness of some ego function or functions that would normally be expected in a healthy individual. Ego functions that are often involved are self-object differentiation, defensive functioning, modulation of drives and affects, and reality testing. Constitutional factors, psychic trauma, and early maternal deprivation may all play a role in the genesis of an ego defect.
Ego-dystonic: A term describing thoughts, feelings, personality traits, or behaviors that are experienced by the individual as incompatible with the dominant view of the self. Compare with ego-syntonic.
Ego functions: The specific capacities employed by the individual in the assessment of and mediation between the demands of the id, the superego, and external reality. Examples are perception, defensive functioning, impulse control, and reality testing.
Ego ideal: A set of standards that reflects an exemplary view of the self. It derives from multiple sources, including idealized images of the parent, qualities perceived as necessary to maintain the love of the parents, and vestiges of infantile fantasies of omnipotence and perfection.
Ego psychology: The area of psychoanalytic theory that focuses on the ego as a structure, the operation of its varying functions, and how they serve the aims of the individual’s adaptation and negotiation between the demands of internal needs and wishes, constraints of conscience, and exigencies of external reality.
Ego-syntonic: A term describing thoughts, feelings, personality traits, or behaviors that are experienced by the indvidual as compatible with the dominant view of the self. Compare with ego-dystonic.
Emotional refueling (Mahler): The experience of the infant, during the practicing subphase of the separation-individuation process (10–15 months of age), in which he or she is able to restore the elation and confidence of being physically separate from the mother and of exercising developing cognitive and motor skills through momentarily reconnecting with the mother. During this phase, the mother needs to be available so that the child can turn to her periodically for this “refueling.”
Empathy: The imagining of another’s subjective experience through the use of one’s own subjective experience. Empathy has been posited by self psychologists as vicarious introspection and the defining means by which the data of psychoanalysis are gathered.
Emptiness: A painful feeling in which the self is experienced as devoid of contents, thoughts, emotions, or inner images of relationships with others. It may be associated with having feelings of worthlessness and having nothing to give to others.
Enactment: The expression, in action, of transference impulses or fantasies and their associated memories as a substitute for experiencing, understanding, or remembering them; alternately, the eruption of unformulated thoughts and feelings from infancy into the analytic setting, where articulation and working through can take place. This often takes the form of a scenario, unconsciously played out through joint participation of patient and analyst. Some measure of enactment is inevitable in all analyses and, if interpreted by the analyst, may be therapeutically useful.
Envy: The emotion associated with the idea that someone else has something that one wants. Envy is a form of aggression, since it embodies a wish not only to have what the other person has but to deprive the person of what is valuable and make him or her suffer for having possessed it. Envy is often confused with jealousy, which involves three parties and has the aim of winning the exclusive love of the object over a rival for that love.
Eros: A mental energy that binds elements of experience from relationships, gratifications, or desires into larger units or patterns. These coalesce into fantasies tinged with sexual excitement.
Erotogenic masochism: As defined by Freud, a propensity to seek physical or mental suffering for the purposes of conscious or unconscious sexual gratification.
Erotogenic zone: A body part that serves, when stimulated, as a source of erotic excitation or gratification. Freud postulated a developmental series of such zones: the mouth, the anus, and the phallic/genital organs. Under particular circumstances, however, virtually any organ, mucous membrane, or cutaneous surface might fulfill this function.
Evocative memory: The capacity to retrieve a memory by virtue of conscious will, in the absence of an externally perceived cue. It is distinguished from recognition memory, in which the memory is retrieved in response to an external cue.
Exhibitionism: The pleasure in attracting attention to oneself. It is a normal part of child development and may be integrated into a well-functioning adult personality. The term also refers to the paraphilia of exposing the genitals to strangers as a means of achieving orgasm.
Expressive psychoanalytic psychotherapy: A form of treatment that relies on the basic psychoanalytic concepts of transference, countertransference, and unconscious motivation, even though it may not adhere to some conventions of formal psychoanalysis, such as the use of a couch. It seeks to encourage the expression, understanding, and working-through of thoughts and feelings that may have been previously unavailable to conscious awareness.
Externalization: A mental process that results in the individual’s attributing to the external world internal phenomena or personal agency when engaging in interpersonal interactions.

False self: The self experience that emerges and organizes in response to another’s needs, expectations, and demands (as opposed to the true self that emerges and organizes in response to one’s own needs, expectations, and demands).
Family romance: A fantasy, common in latency-age children, in which, as a result of disillusionment with their family of origin, children imagine they had parents very different from their own. These fantasy parents are endowed with ideal characteristics that they wish their own parents had, such as royalty, wealth, power, or special kindness.
Fantasy/Phantasy: An unconsciously organized intrapsychic “story” about oneself and others. Fantasies shape perceptions of the external world and determine the nature of interpersonal interactions. Freud believed unconscious fantasies were originally elaborated consciously in words and images and became unconscious through repression. The Kleinians added the concept of very early fantasies, elaborated before the attainment of language and experienced primarily on a somatic level, which they believe are part of a developmental continuum with the higher-level fantasies described by Freud. As a convention, the term phantasy is used to connote this broader Kleinian definition of fantasy life.
Feminine masochism: A term used by Freud to describe one of three forms of masochism in which men or women identify with certain aspects of the role of the woman that are experienced as submissive: being castrated, being penetrated, or giving birth to a baby. This identification is reflected in masochistic submissive behavior or sexual fantasies.
Femininity: See Masculinity/Femininity.
Fetish/Fetishim: A paraphilia (or perversion) in which a body part, inanimate object, or piece of clothing substitutes for the genitals as the aim of the sexual drive.
Fixation: The unchanged, unmodulated persistence of earlier patterns of thought or adaptation into advanced levels of maturing development, when their manifestations may be deemed inappropriate. This developmental stasis is often a consequence of early trauma.
Frame: The rules and regulations of social interaction that produce necessary boundaries to sustain the psychoanalytic situation and permit creative understanding in the psychoanalytic process. These include arrangements between patient and analyst regarding time and frequency of sessions and payment of the fee. For patients whose disorders include difficulty in negotiating boundaries, the analytic frame becomes an important focus of the treatment.
Free association: The principal method or fundamental rule of psychoanalytic treatment, in which the patient says whatever comes to mind, without conscious editing. Implicit in this rule is the understanding that difficulties in doing so will inevitably be encountered. The analyst attempts to assist the patient, through interpretation, to create greater freedom of association.
Fundamental rule: In clinical psychoanalysis, the injunction to the patient at the onset of treatment to report whatever comes to mind, regardless of its seeming lack of relevance or logic, social inappropriateness, or feelings of shame or embarrassment that it might stir.

Gender/Gender identity: A concept comprising two aspects of the experience of the self: core gender identity and gender role identity. Core gender identity refers to the individual’s anatomical self-image, usually as either male or female, rarely as hermaphrodite. Gender role identity is the sense of oneself as being masculine or feminine, in comparison to perceived familial/cultural norms on a continuum.
Genital phase/Genitality: The final phase of psychosexual development as conceived by Freud, and the psychic characteristics of this stage. The genital stage begins at the onset of puberty. The integration of object love with genital sexuality is a primary developmental attainment of this stage.
Good enough mother: The mother who can take care of, anticipate, and gradually allow frustration in a developmentally appropriate way, allowing the baby’s true self to emerge.
Grandiose self: In self psychology, a normal structure in the path of development of a cohesive sense of self. This structure is reactivated in the treatment of patients with narcissistic personality disorder. Its expression includes omnipotence and exhibitionism. In development, it represents the child’s attempt to recover an experience of perfection in infancy, experiencing all perfection as residing in the self and all imperfection as residing in the external world. The grandiose self may develop into mature ambition and healthy, realistic self-esteem. In less optimal circumstances, demands of the unmodified grandiose self may persist and lead to rages when the needs for confirmation are not met by the outside world.
Group psychology: The mental processes in operation when several individuals join together to act in concert with each other. Freud noted in particular the idealization of and identification with the leader of the group leading to reduction of individual superego controls.
Guilt: A feeling of remorse, accompanied by expectations of negative consequences, for specific thoughts, feelings, or actions (or lack thereof) that are felt by the individual to be wrong or bad. Guilt is a response to failing to come up to the internal standards of one’s own ego ideal. By contrast, shame is associated with being seen to be bad in the eyes of others.

Hallucinatory wish fulfillment: An infantile mental mechanism in which a wish is experienced as fulfilled even if it has not been fulfilled in reality. This experience is based on memory traces of experiences of satisfaction. In normal psychological development, the infant learns to replace hallucinatory wish fulfillment with actions directed to the outside world, with the aim of evincing actual satisfaction of wishes.
Hermeneutics: The theory, science, and art of interpretation. Psychoanalysis may be regarded as a hermeneutic discipline, and the study of the sources, methods, and validation of psychoanalytic interpretations is an important aspect of contemporary psychoanalysis.
Homeostasis: A state of stable psychic equilibrium, in which the different agencies of the mind work together in harmony so as to achieve reasonable satisfaction of the individual’s needs and adaptation to external reality, without being overwhelmed by affects or external stimuli.
Horizontal split: The division of psychic structure into unconsious and (pre)conscious systems from Freud’s topographic model. The primary defenses associated with the horizontal split are repression and denial.
Hypnosis/Hypnotic suggestion: A state of altered consciousness variously described as dissociation, focused attention, or split affect, accompanied by changes in brain waves, induced by special techniques. Under hypnosis, individuals may be induced to recall previously repressed memories or convinced that they remember events that never occurred. Individuals may be instructed through posthypnotic suggestion to carry out specific behaviors after the hypnotic trance is ended.
Hypochondriasis: An excessive preoccupation with bodily concerns, often involving imagined serious illness, sometimes bordering on the delusional.
Hysteria: A common diagnosis during the earlier epoch of psychoanalysis, encompassing somatic symptoms, conversions (e.g., paralyses or blindness in the absence of physical etiology), fugue states, and dissociative episodes The treatment of hysterical patients led Freud to the theory of unconscious conflict as the etiology of neurosis.
Id: In Freud’s structural theory, the source of the instincts, manifested in biological urges pressing for satisfaction, as well as repressed infantile wishes. The content of the id is always unconscious.
Idealization: The attribution in fantasy of ideal or wished-for characteristics in others that do not accurately reflect the reality of these people.
Idealizing transference: An attitude in which the therapist is seen in glowing, elevated terms. From a self psychological perspective, this attitude—including the yearning for a good selfobject—is viewed as an inevitable element in the treatment of narcissistic phenomena. Alternatively, idealization is considered to be a defense against underlying aggression and hatred, frequently leading to destructive disillusionment.
Identification: An unconscious process in which a person models his or her ways of thinking and acting after those of an important figure in life such as a parent. Influenced by affect, identification is an ongoing process that occurs throughout life, though it is especially important in one’s early years and in adolescence.
Identity: The enduring experience of the self as a unique, coherent, and relatively consistent entity over time.
Identity diffusion: The lack of a consistent sense of self due to a failure of integration of diverse senses of self. This leads to the presentation of an assumed identity to others, the overflow of poorly modulated aggression, fragmented or shifting self-presentations, or the appearance of being simply rudderless and adrift in the world.
Imaginary: A term commonly used to denote productions of the mind that are largely fantastical and do not adhere rigidly to the perceptions or constraints of external reality. One of three registers for Lacan, the Imaginary, is based on dyadic relations and specular representations, as opposed to the Symbolic register (based on triadic relations and structured in language) and the Real (based on unsymbolizable experiences).
Implicit memory/Procedural memory: The memories that are not readily available in words or images and are not conscious. Their presence is revealed by behavioral and emotional patterns that are elicited without the subject’s awareness. Examples include riding a bicycle, playing a musical instrument, experiencing the subtleties of social eye contact, and having automatic emotional responses in patterned situations.
Incorporation: The fantasy of taking on the traits of another person by taking them in bodily (e.g., by eating them). The fantasy of incorporation is typical of the oral phase of development.
Individuation: The process through which the developing child distinguishes his or her own individual characteristics and increasingly experiences himself or herself as different from the object.
Induction phase: The initial phase in clinical psychoanalysis. It is characterized by unclear and often shifting transferences, unlike the more persistent transferences that are said to characterize the midphase.
Infantile amnesia: The normal, universal inability to remember experiences from the early years of life. It is based on either the inability of the developing brain to register these experiences such that they are recoverable in memory or the repression by the mind of disturbing early mental contents.
Infantile neurosis: According to Freud, a normal developmental phase in children in which the intense conflicts of childhood, particularly those of the oedipal phase, with its attendant anxiety and guilt, are brought to some sort of adaptive resolution and repressed. Definitions of the infantile neurosis have varied widely among psychoanalysts, and some believe that it regularly resurfaces in the course of psychoanalysis and is thereby resolved.
Infantile sexuality: The full range of sexual thoughts, feelings, fantasies, and activities throughout childhood. Freud asserted its importance in the formation of character and symptoms. More narrowly defined, it comprises the manifestations of psychosexual development prior to latency unfolding in a pattern of sequential, overlapping phases. See psychosexual phases.
Inhibition: The withdrawal from a particular activity that would ordinarily be assumed to be well within one’s purview in order to avoid the anxiety associated with that activity. The withdrawal may be conscious or unconscious.
Insight: An understanding of some previously unrecognized truth about one’s self, one’s behavior, or the actions and motivations of others. Insight may accrue gradually or be experienced as a flash of recognition, and it may be associated with feelings of either relief or pain.
Instinct: An impulse or tendency. Freud postulated that somatic energic forces, sexual and aggressive, provided the energy that stimulated mental activity. In this view, all mental life could be seen as derivative of sexual or aggressive instinctual forces.
Instinctual aim: The representation of the specific action on the object that will satisfy an instinctual wish, for example, to suck on the breast or to penetrate in genital intercourse.
Instinctual object: The representation of a person or thing, either an external “other” or an internal memory of “other,” toward which instinctual energy is directed. Freud’s concept of instinct reflects an organic state integrating physiological drive and psychological motivation.
Intellectualization: The exaggerated use of intellectual measures such as abstract philosophizing, speculative thought, or pedantic logic as a defense against anxiety or other unwelcome affects. It is commonly mobilized in adolescence. It may be associated with obsessional or paranoid thinking.
Internalization: The unconscious psychological process by which an individual adopts aspects of the environment. Three separate forms—incorporation, introjection, and identification—are regularly distinguished, according to developmental features.
Internalized object relations: The mental representation of persons in the external world and their interactions with the self. These object relations are created by specific defensive and adaptational processes that include identification and introjection and form a template that organizes one’s world into a stable way of situating oneself in relation to others.
Internal object (Klein): The mental representation of the object and of aspects of its relation with the self.
Interpersonal: A term describing the interactions between individuals that are responsible for psychological change and growth, often contrasted with intrapsychic referring to processes occurring in the mind of one individual.
Interpretation: A communication by the analyst aimed at expanding the patient’s self-knowledge by pointing out connections in the patient’s mental life of which he or she was previously unaware. The analyst’s interpretations are key factors in the unfolding of the psychoanalytic process.
Intersubjective/Intersubjectivity: The aspect of interpersonal experience that is characterized by the interaction of two individuals with different subjective experiences of themselves, each other, and the events between them and that is best understood by examining the subjective contributions of each to the interaction. The intersubjective school of psychoanalysis places this aspect of the transference-countertransference matrix at the center of inquiry in clinical psychoanalysis, implicitly making a demand on the analyst for greater awareness of the impact of his or her own subjective experience on the evolution of the transference.
Intervention: Any of the psychoanalyst’s activities in clinical psychoanalysis meant to facilitate the unfolding of the analytic process and the patient’s self-understanding. Examples are questions, clarifications, interpretations, confrontations, and educative or supportive statements.
Intrapsychic: Located within the mind of the indivdual. An intrapsychic conflict (see conflict) would be one between two contradictory wishes of the individual rather than between the individual and the external world.
Introjection: A process of internalizing object images and their affective relation to images of the self. It differs from identification in that modification of the ego is a less central aspect of introjection than of identification. Introjections (i.e., introjected object images) form the basis of the primitive superego; optimally, these images ultimately coalesce into a structuralized superego, which may then be modified through identifications and other ego processes.
Introspection: The attempt to examine and understand one’s own inner psychological and emotional experiences and constructions.
Isolation: The disconnection of relevant ideas from one another, or of ideas from affects, in order to avoid anxiety or psychic pain.

Jealousy: The emotion associated with the idea that someone you love is in love with someone else. The aim of the jealous person is to win the love of the beloved from the rival. Jealousy differs from envy because it involves three parties and because the wish to destroy the rival is secondary to the wish to become the person who is more loved.

Latency: A developmental phase extending from ages 6–7 years to ages 10–11 years, originally identified by Freud as the period between the oedipal phase and puberty that is distinguished by quiescence in regard to libidinal and aggressive drives. During this phase, the child’s focus shifts to school and peers, and there is the advent of concrete operational thought and an expanded repertoire of ego capacities. Most modern analysts agree that the oedipal struggles have not disappeared but are warded off by the newly acquired superego and the defenses of externalization, reaction formation, and sublimation.
Latent content: Unconscious dream thoughts, stimulated by the day residue and the associatively linked infantile, sexual, and aggressive wishes, that underlie the manifest dream and are tranformed into the manifest dream through dream work.
Libido: The souce of psychic energy deriving from the organism’s sexual wishes, drawn from all levels of psychosexual development, not just genital sexuality.
Libido theory: An early model of mental life postulated by Freud that sought to explain symptoms such as anxiety and neurasthenia as the result of variations in the distribution and discharge of sexual energy.

Manifest content: The dream as it is recalled by the dreamer. The manifest content is the product of the dream work and is to be differentiated from the latent content, which is unconscious.
Masculinity/Femininity: Respectively, the male and female gender role identities that develop after the establishment of core gender identity. These include early identifications and fantasies of oneself as male or female and internal representations of gendered object relations. Most individuals consider themselves primarily masculine or feminine, but each individual nevertheless has a wide range of unconscious and preconscious fantasies and wishes that derive from multiple identifications.
Masochism: Broadly, the seeking of pleasure in pain. Freud described three kinds of masochism—erotogenic masochism, in which conscious sexual pleasure is derived from pain, suffering, or humiliation; moral masochism, in which defeat or humiliation is unconsciously sought out without any conscious sexual pleasure; and feminine masochism, which is the pleasure derived by women (or by men who are having a fantasy of being a woman) in submitting and being penetrated. Many modern analysts believe the term falsely lumps together a variety of clinical phenomena with very different meanings that have in common only a seeking of unpleasure.
Melancholia: A pathological depressive reaction to loss, characterized by persistent self-hatred and self-reproaches. Freud distinguished melancholia from normal mourning, emphasizing in melancholia an inability to come to terms with the ambivalence toward the lost object and an unconscious identification with hated aspects of that object.
Mentalization: The developmental attainment in which the child becomes aware of the existence of his or her mind and of the sense that other people in the environment are motivated by activities of their minds that are in some ways like, and in some ways different from, those of the child’s mind.
Metapsychology: The construction of high-level abstract theories that are intended to serve as a basis for understanding more specific clinical phenomena.
Midphase: The second of three phases (with induction phase and termination phase) of a clinical psychoanalysis. Hallmarks of the midphase are the establishment of the transference neurosis, the patient’s understanding of the nature of the work of psychoanalysis (e.g., free association, the analysis of resistances), and his or her voluntary participation in it. Many analyses do not follow such a clearly defined course.
Mirror transference: In self psychology, that aspect of the selfobject transference in which the patient experiences the analyst solely or primarily in his or her function of confirming or validating the patient’s grandiose self.
Moral masochism: One of the three types of masochism (with erotogenic masochism and feminine masochism) desribed by Freud. Moral masochism implies that a person has an unconscious need to be punished, arising from a sense of guilt, manifesting in self-defeating or self-destructive behavior without conscious sexual excitement.
Motivation: The cause of behavior. Analysts disagree on whether drives, affects, or wished-for relations with objects, or combinations of these, are the primary motivating forces. In a psychoanalytic view, many actions are unconsciously motivated, and probably all actions have multiple psychological sources of motivation.
Mourning: The intrapsychic process of responding to loss. This process regularly requires an alternation between the wish to reverse the loss and the wish to accept it and regain that portion of oneself bound up with what has been lost. It involves coming to terms with both positive and negative feelings about what has been lost. Mourning is always painful; inability to adequately mourn can lead to a state of pathological grief (melancholia) or depression.
Multideterminism: The concept that all mental and behavioral events are not random but are caused by the convergence of multiple factors, including needs of the ego, superego, and id; compulsions to repeat; developmental and maturational influences; and effects of memories, symbolic meanings, and relations with others.
Multiple function, principle of: The concept, first put forward by Waelder, that every psychic action reflects the ego’s attempt to find a compromise solution to the problem presented by the competing demands of id, superego, and external reality.
Mutative: A quality of an interpretation in psychoanalysis. A mutative interpretation is one that changes the patient’s perspective on himself or herself and his or her relationship with the world. The response of a patient to a mutative interpretation has an emotional quality, rather than being purely cognitive, and offers the possibility for change in behavior.

Narcissism: An individual’s love, regard, and valuation of his or her own self. Normal narcissism is represented in adequate self-care, realistic self-confidence, and pride. Heightened narcissism is seen in vanity, insistence on privilege, exaggerated assumptions of superiority over other people, or outright grandiosity. The more intense a person’s narcissism, the more aggressively he or she may react to real or imagined insults, and the greater is his or her vulnerability to humiliation and shame.
Narrative: A recounting of events that provides a sense of history; alternately, selecting and bringing together a series of discrete events to form a coherent story with implicit elements of cause and effect. An individual’s narratives of his life may play an important part in his view of himself in relation to the world. Narratives are subject to constant revision; in treatment, observing the way in which these narratives are revised provides a window into the mental functioning of the patient. Revision of narratives as a result of interpretation and insight can be an important part of the therapeutic action of clinical psychoanalysis.
Negation: A spontaneous statement of denial that something has occurred or has meaning. Such denial often indicates that actually the opposite is unconsciously believed. Negation can permit repressed thoughts to enter consciousness without their accompanied feelings or connotations.
Negative hallucination: The nonperception of something that is actually present, involving any of the senses. This experience is the inverse of a hallucination, which is the subjective perception of an external phenomenon not in fact present.
Negative therapeutic reaction: The worsening of symptoms in response to the therapist’s effort to foster insight. Many different dynamics may underlie such a response, including guilt over lessened suffering or improved functioning or envy of the analyst’s capacity to help.
Neurasthenia: A state of excessive fatigability, lassitude, irritability, lack of concentration, and hypochondria. In Freud’s early work, he attributed these symptoms to physiological consequences of inadequate sexual satisfaction due to masturbation. Both the term and Freud’s understanding of it are important in the history of psychoanalysis but are not considered clinically relevant in modern psychoanalysis.
Neurosis: A category of symptomatic disturbance arising from intrapsychic conflict (see conflict, intrapsychic) that interferes with normal functioning but that does not interfere with reality testing. Compare with psychosis, in which reality testing is impaired.
Neutrality: The position of nonjudgmental listening adopted by a psychoanalyst toward his or her patient, avoiding suggestion, advice, or choice of sides in the patient’s intrapsychic conflicts (see conflict, intrapsychic). Modern analysts have questioned both the realistic attainability and the clinical value of neutrality as it was originally described by Freud. Today, analysts vary widely as to what they believe constitutes a stance of neutrality.
Neutralized energy: A postulated form of psychic energy that results from a process in which sexual and aggressive elements are integrated, providing impetus for the performance of psychic work not dominated by either libidinal or aggressive feelings.
Normality: As commonly used, psychological health or appropriate behavior. Some psychoanalysts have attempted to posit a relatively normal ego that pursues reasonable pleasures and accomplishments in relationships with others. However, there is no consensus among psychoanalysts as to what constitutes “normality” from a psychoanalytic point of view.

Object: A person who is the focus of one’s wishes and needs. The object may be internal (the individual’s mental image of the object) or external (the actual person external to the subject), part (a body part, function, or gratifying or frustrating aspect of the object) or whole (an image of the entire object that takes into account its multiple attributes.)
Object constancy: The integration of originally separate, unconscious mental representations of “good” and “bad” objects into more realistic and stable representations combining the “good” and “bad” qualities.
Object relations: A term that refers both to the actual relationships of subject and object and to the internal fantasy of the nature of the object (the “other”), as well as the nature of the relationship of self and object.
Object relations theory: A theory of psychological structure and development that postulates that the internalized representations of objects, and the fantasies of the relationship of self and object, are determining factors in the development of psychic structure.
Object representation: The individual’s mental image of an object in his or her life. The representation contains aspects of the actual external object but is also colored by the individual’s fantasies about the object.
Obsession: A recurrent thought that intrudes on an individual’s mind and cannot be banished from consciousness by an exercise of will. Obsessions are closely related to compulsions but differ in that obsessions occur within the realm of thought, whereas compulsions impel the individual to action.
Oedipus complex: An aggregate of mental processes that develops from the child’s incestuous wishes toward the parent of the opposite sex. There are associated conflictual feelings toward the parent of the same sex as both a rival for the love of the incestuous object and a loved object himself or herself. This conflict is resolved through an identification with the same-sex parent. (The “negative” Oedipus complex involves an identification with the parent of the opposite sex in order to receive the love of the parent of the same sex.)
Oral-incorporative mode: A mode of relating to an object that is characterized by the prominence of fantasies of eating and swallowing the object and making it part of the individual’s own body, thus abolishing individual characteristics of the object.
Oral-intrusive mode: The earliest of the infantile developmental stages. It provides the prototypes of both love (libido) and hate (aggression), manifesting, respectively, through feeding/ taking in and biting/spitting out. The oral-intrusive mode reflects the infant’s aggressive insertion of self into the body of the mother through demand for constant feeding or through biting. Later expressions of clinging and demandingness may be traced developmentally to oral intrusiveness.
Orality: All the psychic interests, impulses, character traits, and defense mechanisms that stem from the libidinal and aggressive drives associated with the mouth, particularly during the oral phase of psychosexual development, when these drives and the defenses against them are the dominant organizing forces of mental life. Greed, dependency, demandingness, impatience, and sarcasm are character traits associated with orality.
Oral phase: The psychosexual phase, consisting of approximately the first 18 months of life, in which sensations of the oral zone and strivings attached to these sensations are dominant in the organization of psychic life.
Oral-retentive mode: A mode of relating to objects that is characterized by the prominence of fantasies of holding on by closing or grasping with the mouth.
Overdetermination: The concept that all aspects of psychic life, including symptoms, fantasies, dreams, personality traits, and behaviors, are caused by a number of intersecting psychic factors, some of which are unconscious.

Parameter: A term coined by Eissler to describe deviations from a standard psychoanalytic technique. The term and concept are little used today.
Paranoia: A condition in which the subject holds to irrational beliefs, often circumscribed to one area of life, generally characterized by both grandiosity and persecutory ideas.
Paranoid-schizoid position (Klein): The earliest psychic organization, characterized by a predominance of aggression over libido and by primitive defenses such as splitting and projective identification. Through splitting, the mother is perceived alternately as a good (gratifying) or bad (frustrating) object, and the intense aggression stirred by the bad object is projected, so that it is experienced as persecutory. Remnants of this psychic organization persist throughout life and alternate with the more integrative depressive position.
Paraphilia: A form of sexual behavior in which the the aim of the sexual impulse is diverted from coitus and in which orgasm is obtained through other means or in which other activities are required for adequate sexual functioning. Examples are fetishism, pedophilia, exhibitionism, sexual masochism, and sadism. This term replaces perversion, which many analysts have moved away from as imprecise and implicitly judgmental.
Parapraxis: Slips of the tongue, errors, bungled actions, and memory lapses that usually surprise the subject. These occurrences, like neurotic symptoms, are compromise formations between forbidden wishes or ideas and defenses against them.
Part object (Klein): The individual’s experience of the object as only one aspect of the object rather than the entire object in its full complexity. This aspect may be a particular body part (e.g., the breast) or an experience of the object dominated by one affect (e.g., the good or the bad object) or of a function of the object (e.g., feeding, containing). The experience of the object as a part object is a hallmark of the paranoid-schizoid position.
Pathological grandiose self (Kernberg): The central mental structure in narcissistic personality disorder, which consists of a condensation of elements of the idealized object, the ideal self, and the real self. Though it may describe similar phenomena to Kohut’s grandiose self, it differs in that, according to Kernberg, it is a result of a pathological line of development rather than the persistence of a normal developmental phase.
Penis envy: The envy of power and strength in others, unconsciously attributed to the other’s possession of a bigger or “better” penis. While originally attributed primarily to girls envying the larger, more visible penis of boys, penis envy is considered today by many analysts to be a symbol of the social advantages of males in society.
Phallic phase: That period of psychosexual development, beginning at about 2 years of age and culminating in the oedipal phase, during which the sensations from the phallus (penis or clitoris), and the wishes and impulses connected with these sensations, are dominant in the organization of psychic life.
Phallus: A term used literally to refer to the mental representation of the genitalia (the penis or clitoris), and figuratively to refer to personality traits such as pride and assertiveness, as well as a type of character in which such traits are prominent.
Phantasy: See Fantasy/Phantasy.
Phobia: A symptom involving the avoidance of an object or situation that stimulates anxiety. A phobia involves the displacement of a feeling away from its actual object onto one that bears some symbolic connection to it, along with a projection of a forbidden urge onto the phobic object.
Pleasure principle/Unpleasure principle: The basic regulatory aim of all mental activity, according to Freud, in which the individual seeks to maximize pleasure and to avoid unpleasure. Frustration in achieving immediate gratification leads to recognition of environmental constraints and modifications in the pleasure principle so that immediate pleasure is delayed in the interest of eventual satisfaction and self-preservation. Freud called this developmental achievement the reality principle and juxtaposed it with the pleasure principle.
Practicing subphase (Mahler): The subphase (10–12 to 16–18 months of age) of the separation-individuation process that is initiated by the infant’s maturational capacity to create physical distance from mother, beginning with crawling and peaking with running, and is at its height with the achievement of upright locomotion. The subphase is distinguished by elation, as the toddler experiences a “love affair with the world”, and excitement about exploration and his or her own growing ego capacities; and b) the toddler’s capacity to reassure himself or herself by returning to mother’s physical body if anxiety intrudes.
Preconscious: One of the three components (with conscious and unconscious) of the mental apparatus in Freud’s topographic theory. The preconscious contains word residues that can connect an unconscious or conscious feeling, thought, or image with a linguistic representation. Elements of the preconscious are not conscious but are easily brought into conscious awareness through focusing attention on them.
Pre-oedipal: A term describing the psychic organization, including drives, defenses, and self representations and object representations, specific to the phases of development before the Oedipus complex. Pre-oedipal organization is associated with more primitive forms of psychopathology, such as narcissistic or borderline personalities, but the persistence of some pre-oedipal features of psychic life is ubiquitous, and these features may become prominent in regressive states even in individuals who are primarily organized around oedipal conflicts.
Primal scene: The childhood perception of parental sexual intercourse, whether actually observed, actually overheard, or only imagined, and the meaning the child attaches to it.
Primary gain: A term, in reference to a psychological symptom, that refers to the psychic gain derived from its function in the resolution of an intrapsychic conflict (see conflict, intrapsychic). It is distinguished from secondary gain, which refers to the gain derived from the symptom’s use in the manipulation of the external world.
Primary identification: The earliest form of identification with an object, which occurs before the infant can distinguish the self from the object. This is different from later forms of identification, in which the growing infant or child distinguishes outside influences as external and then takes them in.
Primary process: A primitive form of thought described by Freud, closely linked with the pleasure principle. It seeks immediate discharge of impulses through hallucinatory wish fulfillment and makes use of the mechanisms of displacement and condensation in its representations of satisfactions. Developmentally it gives way to the secondary process, which is associated with the reality principle and obeys higher-level rules of logic. In Freud’s original topographic theory, the primary process was believed to be the form of thinking that governed all the activities of the unconscious. Later, in the structural model, Freud understood that many mechanisms governed by the secondary process can also occur at an unconscious level.
Procedural memory: A form of memory for motor patterns, habits, and skills. Procedural memory is nonverbal and unconscious. A skill such as skiing or surgery is learned with conscious input, but many of the components of the skill are neither conscious nor verbally expressible. The concept has been applied by some contemporary analysts to understand some aspects of transference, which can be conceptualized as habitual modes of object relatedness learned as procedures in the first few years of life.
Prohibition: A mechanism of the superego whereby impulses, wishes, or thoughts are deemed unacceptable and blocked from entering consciousness or from being acted on.
Projection: The defense mechanism in which an individual attributes his or her unacceptable thought, feeling, or attribute, such as an aggressive or sexual impulse, to another person.
Projective identification: The defense mechanism, originally described by Klein, through which an intolerable aspect of the individual’s mental life is projected into another person, accompanied by the fantasy that this projected element controls the other person from within. In an interpersonal context, the target of projective identifications may have powerful feelings stirred in him or her, as if he or she is actually taken over by the projected element. Bion added that in addition to functioning as a mechanism of defense, projective identification also functions as a primitive form of communication and can ultimately be a vehicle for emotional growth in the mother-infant interaction.
Psyche: The realm of the mind, as distinguished from the realm of the body, or soma.
Psychic determinism: The hypothesis that mental events are not random and that behavior can be understood to be determined by unconscious as well as conscious influences.
Psychic reality: Reality as it is constructed in the mind of an individual at a particular moment. The components of this subjective “reality” are perceptions, memories, wishes, and fears. It is distinguished from objective or historical reality.
Psychoanalysis: According to Freud, a theory of mind, an investigative method, and a form of treatment for mental disorders. As a method of treatment, it involves multiple sessions per week for several years. Psychoanalysis utilizes free association, observations about unconscious mental functioning, and the examination of transference and countertransference as major means by which to understand and therapeutically influence the patient.
Psychoanalytic boundaries: A set of conditions that composes the frame, including setting, time limit, confidentiality, payment of a fee, avoidance of dual relationships, and abstinence regarding sexual or physical contact. These conditions facilitate the emergence of the transference while also protecting both the patient and the analyst from potential exploitation.
Psychoanalytic method: The technique of classical psychoanalysis involving multiple sessions per week with the patient lying on a couch out of view of the analyst and endeavoring to say everything that comes to mind. The analyst uses the patient's associations and the information derived from transference and countertransference to enhance the patient’s self-understanding.
Psychoanalytic process: The experience within a patient who is responding to the psychoanalytic method. Analysis of resistance leads the patient to master unpleasurable feelings, particularly with respect to the analyst; this leads to the emergence of previously unconscious thoughts and feelings with a new set of resistances, which are, in turn, interpreted. At the same time, unfolding feelings within the analyst help him or her to better understand the patient’s emotions and defenses and facilitate his or her capacity to interpret.
Psychoanalytic situation: The totality of the conditions—practical, psychological, and interpersonal—that are present when patient and analyst come together for the purposes of psychoanalyzing the patient. It may be seen as having three components: the patient who brings a disposition to use a relationship with an analyst to transform aspects of his or her emotional life; the analyst who listens with the aim of understanding the patient’s unconscious; and the setting, which includes practical arrangements such as time and fee, and agreed-on methods and procedures such as the injunction to free-associate.
Psychodynamics: The organized constellation of unconscious wishes and defenses against those wishes that underlie a piece of human behavior. Implicit in psychoanalytic theory is the idea that all human behaviors and mental events have psychodynamic underpinnings.
Psychopathology: Psychological states or structures, transitory or enduring, that cause active psychological pain to the individual, get in the way of the individual’s optimal functioning, or lead to patterns of action in the external world that can be seen by the external observer to inevitably lead to harmful consequences.
Psychosexual phases: A series of sequential, overlapping stages in the developing infant and child—oral, anal, phallic, and genital—each representing predominant sensual investment in different bodily zones (e.g., sucking, biting, or mouthing in the oral phase; expelling or retaining feces in the anal phase; and manipulating the genitals in the phallic phase). Fixation at one of these stages may color adult personality development and character type.
Psychosis: A category of mental disorders typified by a loss of reality testing, as opposed to neurosis or character pathology, in which reality testing remains intact. Phenomenologically, psychotic disorders may include delusions, idiosyncratic thinking, hallucinations, abnormal affective states, and bizarre behaviors.
Psychosomatic: A term referring to physical symptoms or diseases in whose expression psychological factors play an important role. The sufferer may or may not be aware of this connection. These symptoms and diseases are associated with actual physiological derangements; they are not imaginary or factitious.

Rapprochement subphase (Mahler): The subphase of the separation-individuation process following the practicing subphase. It extends from about 16 to 25 months of age. The infant has mastered upright locomotion and now becomes more aware of physical separateness from the mother. The need to share every experience with mother is heightened as the infant’s exuberance wanes with the recognition that she is not participating in his or her “delusion of parental omnipotence.” During this subphase, the toddler is in a crisis of ambivalence, seeking to coerce the mother and yet also escape her orbit.
Rationalization: A defense mechanism in which apparently sensible explanations are used to justify something unconsciously considered unacceptable.
Reaction formation: A defense mechanism in which one convinces oneself that one feels exactly the opposite way from how one does feel. The most common form of reaction formation involves substituting exaggerated feelings of love for hate.
Reality: Psychoanalysis has distinguished between “outer” or “objective” reality and “inner” or “psychic” reality. The former consists of consensually validated judgments of the nature of the external world. The latter, subjective, unique, and idiosyncratic to the individual, is determined by unconscious wishes, perceptions, memory traces, and fantasies about early experiences and object relations. In life, the two are in constant dialectic interaction; psychic reality may distort external perceptions and judgments, while too great a focus on external reality may constrict the imagination.
Reality principle: A basic organizing principle of the mind that developmentally succeeds the pleasure principle in response to both growing cognitive capacities and experiences of frustration. The individual no longer seeks immediate satisfaction of needs and discharge of impulses but interposes an assessment of the environment and actions directed toward the environment with the aim of effectively maximizing pleasure and minimizing unpleasure within the confines of the external reality of the situation.
Reality testing: The process of distinguishing between inner thoughts and feelings and outer perceptions, or between the subjective and objective elements in the judgment of external reality.
Reconstruction: In clinical psychoanalysis, the process of elucidation and recollection of repressed experiences. Though once considered a central mechanism of the therapeutic effect of analysis, analysts have come to see its role as less important and have increasingly understood that it is psychic reality, rather than objective reality, that is retrieved in reconstruction.
Regression: A change in psychological phenomena in a direction that is the reverse of its usual, progressive direction. Freud distinguished three forms of regression, which are conceptually related:
Topographic: A reversion to earlier types of energic discharge (e.g., pleasure principle)
Formal: A reversion to earlier forms of representation (e.g., from verbal expression to image or action)
Temporal: A reversion to modes of psychological functioning typical of earlier developmental stages (e.g., primary process).

Regression in the service of the ego: A form of regression that, though it may be originally instituted for defensive purposes, leads to a return to a more innovative and adaptive mental function and organization.
Reparation (Klein): The idea that the guilt experienced by the individual for his or her aggressive wishes toward his or her object may be ameliorated through efforts to repair the fantasied damage done by the aggressive impulses. It is associated with the attainment of the depressive position.
Repetition compulsion: A tendency to repeat patterns of behavior or to re-create situations that may be painful or self-destructive, considered by some analysts to be a major motivational factor in pathology.
Repression: The expulsion of unacceptable psychic content from consciousness. The psychic content is seemingly forgotten via a motivated unconscious action but is potentially retrievable for conscious consideration.
Resistance: Unconsciously mobilized defenses that arise in the course of psychoanalytic treatment. While such defenses may or may not be adaptive in everyday life, in psychoanalytic treatment they constitute an obstruction to the patient’s and analyst’s joint effort to uncover the patient’s unconscious wishes and fantasies. For many analysts, the analysis of these resistances constitutes a major part of a psychoanalytic treatment.
Return of the repressed: The reemergence into consciousness or preconsciousness of previously repressed ideas and affects. This may occur under circumstances of stress, leading to manifest anxiety, deregulation of affect, or emergence or intensification of symptoms. In the context of psychoanalytic therapy, however, the return of the repressed may signal that the ego may now be strong enough to resolve previously overwhelming, and therefore repressed, conflicts.
Reverie: A term used by Bion to refer to the mental state of a mother with her infant. It is a state in which she is filled with what she imagines to be her child’s inner life, in the past, the present, and the future. This state, according to Bion, is the mother’s tool for receiving and understanding the affective communications from her infant; in so doing, she is able to contain and modify her infant’s intense affective life so that he can manage intense emotional states more capably. Some analysts use this model in analytic work as a way of thinking about how the analyst helps the patient deal with affect states that are difficult to manage.
Ritual: A sequence of connected behaviors enacted in a specific context. Rituals have meanings that are both conscious and unconscious. A ritual can be either a normal form of expression or a symptom. When used as a symptom, a ritual is constructed so that it contains a compromise between unacceptable wishes and defenses against those wishes.
Role responsiveness: A term used by Sandler to refer to a countertransference response in the analyst in which he or she feels impelled to behave in a way so as to play out a role that the patient unconsciously has assigned to him or her.
Rorschach: The “ink blot” test in which, by scoring the subject’s responses to a set of 10 ambiguous forms on cards, inferences can be made about mental functioning and diagnosis, including psychological defenses and major conflicts.

Sadism: The seeking of pleasure in the act or fantasy of inflicting pain or humiliation on another. It also refers to a paraphilia (perversion) in which conscious sexual excitement is found in inflicting pain or humiliation.
Schizoid: A term used in different contexts with various meanings. Bleuler described some nonpsychotic personality types as schizoid because, as with schizophrenia, they showed a divorce between the mind’s emotional and intellectual functions. More recently, the term schizoid character has come to encompass a broader group of individuals and connotes an individual who is withdrawn, derives a majority of gratification from a vivid fantasy life, and may be suspicious of others while overestimating himself or herself. Fairbairn, in his clinical descriptions of schizoid dynamics, referred to this broader group. Melanie Klein described schizoid defenses, particular to the paranoid-schizoid position, which include splitting, projective identification, and introjection.
Scopophilia: The sexual pleasure derived from looking, often at another person’s body or sexual organs. It is linked with its complementary component instinct, exhibitionism, and clinically the two often occur together in the same individual.
Screen memory: A memory that is remembered with particular emotional intensity, often containing some prominent visual detail. Though such memories have a very real quality, their details are often inconsistent with the chronology of the memory. The elements of these memories are often symbols associatively linked to repressed aspects of the historical event to which the memories allude. In this way, they may function in a similar way to dreams.
Secondary gain: The gratification from a symptom that derives from the use of that symptom to manipulate others or to obtain concrete benefit in the external world. It is distinguished from the primary gain of the symptom, which is the solution of intrapsychic conflict. See conflict, intrapsychic.
Secondary process: A type of thinking characterized by rationality, order, and logic. It arises during development in accordance with the reality principle, which aims to replace hallucinatory wish fulfillment with adaptations to reality. It is distinguished from primary process, a more primitive mode of mental activity associated with the pleasure principle. Ordinarily both processes contribute to mental life, although in different proportions at different times.
Secondary revision (or elaboration): The part of the dream work that reorganizes and links together the elements of the dream into a relatively coherent narrative.
Seduction theory: An early hypothesis by Freud that the trauma of childhood sexual seduction by adults was the cause of hysterical symptoms. He later abandoned this theory as he came to realize that many of the accounts of seductions were fantasized rather than real and to understand the importance of repressed fantasies in the genesis of neurosis. He never explicitly took the position that all such memories were fantasies, and certainly modern psychoanalysts recognize lasting psychological damage that can arise from childhood sexual abuse.
Self: A psychic structure consisting of the individual’s subjective sense of “I,” an agency of the mind that is a center of initiative in relation to the external world, and the total individual (including both mind and body). Kohut emphasized the sense of continuity over time and cohesiveness in space as important aspects of the self; in self psychology, the self refers both to experience-near subjective aspects of the individual’s mental life and to an abstract concept of a mental structure whose vicissitudes are a central focus of clinical attention.
Self-actualization: A course of action that results in the positive potentialities and special abilities of the individual finding expression in the external world and the pleasurable subjective experience of the individual when he or she is able to successfully pursue such a course of action.
Self-cohesion: The subjective experience of the self as whole, well-functioning, relatively internally consistent, relatively enduring over time, and not subject to serious disruption as a result of disappointments in the self or others.
Selfobject (Kohut): In self psychology, the individual’s experience of another person as functioning as part of the self or as necessary to fulfill a need of the self. The selfobject dimension of experience is usually unconscious but can be made conscious. It exists along a continuum from archaic to mature. Common selfobject needs include a person’s need for affirmation and idealization.
Selfobject transference (Kohut): The aspect of the patient’s experience of the analyst in which the analyst functions as part of the patient’s self. There are three major types of selfobject transferences:
Mirror transference: The patient requires validating or affirming responses from the analyst. See mirror transference.
Idealizing transference: The patient requires merger with an admired analyst. See idealizing transference.
Twinship transference: The patient requires merger with the analyst as a person who is similar to himself or herself. See twinship transference.; Kohut believed that these transferences represented developmentally necessary experiences in the establishment of a stable and cohesive sense of self.
Self psychology (Kohut): The psychoanalytic theory originated by Heinz Kohut that places central importance on the sustained, empathic immersion in the patient’s subjective experience and the vicissitudes of the selfobject transference. In self psychology, Freud’s tripartite model of id, ego, and superego is seen as subordinate to the self-selfobject configurations.
Self representation: The individual’s mental image of himself or herself. This representation is made up of experiences of internal stimuli, fantasies about the self that are elaborated in relation to objects, and internalized perceptions of the way in which others experience the person.
Self-state dream: In self psychology, a dream in which the manifest content reflects the current condition of the self and the selfobject transference rather than the disguised fulfillment of a wish.
Separation anxiety: The child’s fear of being physically separated from the mother. It is a fundamental anxiety of early childhood and is likely to accompany each developmental advance. It is common for separation anxiety to persist in some form into later childhood and even adulthood, manifesting as homesickness or anxiety associated with separation from any important object.
Separation-individuation (Mahler): The process of “psychological birth” of the child in the first 3 years of life. Unlike biological birth, separation-individuation is a gradual intrapsychic unfolding that begins with the “symbiotic dual unity” of the mother-infant dyad and moves through the following phases: differentiation, practicing, rapprochement, and “moving toward object constancy.” The crowning achievement is the establishment of optimal “distancing from and introjection of the lost symbiotic mother.”
Sexual identity: A broad term that includes the experience of the self in four separate categories: biological sex, gender (composed of core gender identity and gender role identity), sexual behavior (actual and fantasied, including object choice and nature of activity), and reproduction (fantasies and behaviors). It is fully established after puberty, finding its expression in fantasy and desire in physical sexuality.
Shame: An affect linked to a sense of wrongdoing in the presence of others, either in reality or in fantasy.
Signal anxiety: An unconscious affective response to an anticipated danger situation. Signal anxiety mobilizes defensive activity so as to avert the conscious experience of anxiety; when unsuccessful, it may lead to panic states or to neurotic symptom formation.
Somatic compliance: The participation of the body in the expression of unconscious psychic conflict. It implies a readiness of specific organs or body parts to provide a somatic outlet for psychological processes either because of their unconscious meaning or because of a constitutional weakness that predisposes them to be used in this way.
Somatization: The use of the body to express psychological states.
Splitting: The separating of positive feelings and perceptions, either toward the self or toward others, from negative feelings and perceptions so that the self or object is seen as either “all good” or “all bad.” Freud described it as a defense mechanism; Klein posited that it was a normal developmental stage in the perception of self and other, only later mobilized as a defense.
Stimulus barrier: The psychological mechanism that protects the individual from excessive and overwhelming stimulation, internal or external.
Stranger anxiety: The reaction of the infant as he inspects the faces of individuals who are not the mother. This reaction may range from curiosity and wonderment to marked anxiety. This reaction is generally observed around 8 months of age, when the onset of evocative memory permits the infant to compare present and past representations.
Structural change: A change in the enduring patterns, or structures, of an individual’s mental life, resulting in changes in subjective experience and/or behavior. Structural change is an important goal of psychoanalytic treatment. Improved capacities to delay gratification, to regulate affect and self-esteem, to tolerate painful feelings, to develop a more reasonable conscience, and to have more flexible expectations for the self and the ability to maintain self-esteem characterize structural change that may occur in a successful psychoanalytic treatment.
Structural theory: The theory, introduced by Freud in 1923, of the tripartite model of the mind consisting of three separate agencies: the ego, id, and superego. With the structural theory, Freud attempted to address both the problems not explained by his earlier theorizing referred to as his topographic theory, such as why defenses against unconscious impulses were also unconscious, and the phenomenon of unconscious guilt.
Structure: A grouping of mental processes that is enduring, changing only slowly over time, and that functions with some degree of autonomy with respect to other mental processes. Freud divided the mental apparatus into three structures: the ego, id, and superego. Other theorists have used the term to refer to enduring configurations that reflect experience with, and fantasies about, important others during development; this more general use of the term is the more common connotation for contemporary analysts.
Sublimation: A resolution of intrapsychic conflict (see conflict, intrapsychic) by changing the sexual or aggressive aim of an urge and finding a substitute gratification. The term differs from other resolutions (inhibitions, symptoms, character traits) in that it implies a constructive or socially admirable outcome that is satisfying and flexible.
Superego: One of three major agencies of the mind (along with id and ego) as described in Freud’s structural theory. It is the seat of the individual’s system of ideals and values, moral principles, prohibitions, and moral injunctions. It observes and evaluates the self and may either criticize, reproach, and punish or praise and reward. It is thus an important modulator of self-esteem.
Supportive psychoanalytic psychotherapy: Form of psychotherapy based on psychoanalytic understanding and principles that seeks to support the patient’s ego by strengthening adaptive defenses, modifying unhealthy defenses, improving reality testing, and using the therapist as an auxiliary ego or superego. In contrast to psychoanalysis and expressive psychoanalytic therapy, supportive psychotherapy involves more direct focus on symptoms and other areas of immediate concern, with a greater tendency to avoid exploration of the transference and unconscious themes. Also, the technical interventions are characterized by a greater emphasis on advice giving, with a deemphasis on interpretation.
Suppression: The conscious process of “putting out of mind.” It is the conscious counterpart of the unconscious process of repression.
Symbiotic phase (Mahler): The developmental phase, lasting from about 6 weeks to 1 year of age, that is the immediate forerunner of the separation-individuation process. In this phase, the infant’s behavior suggests that the infant experiences the mother and itself as a unit, in which the mother is experienced as a need-satisfying extension of itself, and there is little affective differentiation between self and object.
Symbol: A thing that is used to stand for, or represent, something other than itself. The unconscious makes use of symbols as a way of simultaneously expressing and concealing unconscious thoughts. The connection between the symbol and its referent is outside of conscious awareness. This process plays an important part in dreams and in the formation of some psychological symptoms.
Symbolic equation: A mental process, described by Segal, that is a forerunner of symbolization proper. In this process, the mind chooses a symbol for an object but treats it as if it is literally and concretely the object. For example, a patient might experience the analyst’s use of the word “attack” as an actual physical assault on him or might be fearful of being seen smoking a cigarette because he would experience himself as actually performing fellatio.
Symbolization: The unconscious process by which one object or concept comes to represent another object or concept. The associative link may be sensory (e.g., visual, auditory), temporal (i.e., relating to time), or concrete (e.g., using similar objects, such as a friend’s brother, as a substitute for one’s own brother). Though some symbols may be universal, symbols always have personal meanings that are unique to the individual.
Symptom: An ego-dystonic manifestation of mental life that is the result of an unconscious attempt to solve an intrapsychic conflict (see conflict, intrapsychic). Examples are obsessional thoughts, compulsions, slips of the tongue, phobias, hysterical paralysis, inhibitions, and ego-dystonic character traits.

Termination phase: The concluding period of an analysis, subsequent to the decision that the objectives for which treatment was undertaken have been substantially achieved. From that point onward until the appointed final day, there is enhanced focus on the imminent separation of patient and analyst, leading to reverberations in emotion and fantasy that revisit the important themes that emerged in the analysis. The prospect of termination may stir symptomatic recurrences that are usually brief.
Therapeutic alliance: The sense of constructive collaboration between the patient and the analyst as they work together on the patient’s problems. Some research suggests that this element is a predictor of successful treatment. Some differentiate between a transference, which tends to be irrational, and the therapeutic alliance, which is said to be more real. Others believe that this state is just an aspect of a positive transference.
Topographic theory: An early effort by Freud to classify mental functioning and contents in terms of their relationship to consciousness. A mental event, such as a wish, idea, or feeling, is termed unconscious when it exists outside of conscious awareness and cannot be made conscious via focal attention and termed preconscious when such attention leads to conscious awareness. The structural theory, which divided the mind into id, ego, and superego, expanded on rather than replaced the topographic theory.
Training analysis: The personal analysis that is required of prospective analysts. The training analysis is intended to help prospective analysts become aware of their own psychological processes and to master unconscious conflicts that would otherwise lead to interference with participation as an analyst in the analytic treatment of patients.
Transference: In clinical psychoanalysis, the patient’s emotional experience of and fantasies about the analyst, which, though they may be based in part on actual perceptions of the analyst, recapitulate experiences with and fantasies about important objects in the patient’s childhood.
Transference neurosis: In clinical psychoanalysis, the analysand’s reexperiencing of his or her characteristic psychic conflicts and modes of defense, finding their expression in fantasies about the analyst. These fantasies recapitulate experiences with and fantasies about important objects in the patient’s childhood.
Transitional object: An inanimate object (e.g., a blanket, teddy bear, tune),discovered in the environment by the child and invested with powers under the child’s omnipotent control. For the child, the object exists in a third space, which incorporates both reality and fantasy.
Transitional phenomenon: A developmental process of separating “me” from “not-me” that creates a link between the child’s creativity and external reality, facilitated through the use of the transitional object. The process is the precursor to the capacities for play, creativity, and cultural experiences throughout life.
Transmuting internalization (Kohut): In self psychology, the process of internal structure building through the internalization of selfobject functions originally provided by the object. Kohut believed this occurred as a result of nontraumatic empathic failures on the part of the selfobject. The internalization of the analyst’s (or parent’s) mirroring function enables the patient to regulate affective experience and to more effectively manage disappointment and rage.
Trauma: An experience in which external events overwhelm the capacity of the ego to process and manage them, evoking intense feelings of helplessness. The meaning of the event, not its reality characteristics, defines it as traumatic.
True self: An experience of the self that emerges in response to one’s own needs and wishes (as opposed to the false self experience, which emerges in response to another’s needs, expectations, and demands).
Turning against the self: A defense in which an aggressive impulse is redirected from another to the self. It is commonly found in masochistic individuals.
Twinship transference: In self psychology, a slightly more differentiated form of mirror transference, in which the analyst is perceived as exactly like the patient, with the same values, tastes, and ideas

Uncanny: A term describing the quality of an experience of a mysterious or magical type, not able to be explained scientifically but for which Freud believed a psychoanalytic explanation was possible. Premonitions and states of dejá vu are common examples.
Unconscious: A term that refers to mental contents that are beyond the reach of conscious thinking and are manifest through their derivatives in compromise formations. For Freud, dreams and parapraxes provided evidence of the existence of the unconscious and its impact on mental life. He distinguished between the dynamic unconscious, meaning the sum of all repressed mental contents, and the system Unconscious, which is the seat of the drives, is governed by the pleasure principle, and operates according to the logic of primary process thinking. In his later writings, the term was used in a primarily descriptive way: most defenses and superego conflicts, for example, operate on an unconscious level but are not necessarily part of either the system Unconscious or the dynamic unconscious. In contemporary psychoanalysis, nonverbal enactments in the analytic setting are viewed as another manifestation of unconscious themes.
Unconscious fantasy: A narrative about the self in relation to others that is either consciously elaborated and then repressed or elaborated outside of conscious awareness. Unconscious fantasies represent compromises between drives or wishes and the defenses against them, and they are constituted as well by the individual’s perception of himself or herself in relation to others. The fantasies form a template for behavior in the real world. When these fantasies are brought to consciousness through analysis, their power as motivators of maladaptive behavior is lessened.
Undoing: A defense mechanism in which unacceptable unconscious wishes, feelings, and impulses are disguised by substituting behavior that appears to be their opposite.

Vertical split: A process by which conscious but unwanted qualities of self are warded off, as by an impenetrable wall, and separated from conscious desirable self elements. Contrasted in self psychology to horizontal split, the defenses associated with vertical split are dissociation and disavowal.

Whole object (Klein): The experience of the object as one object comprising both good and bad characteristics, toward whom both love and hatred may be felt. It is characteristic of the depressive position.
Working alliance: The spoken or unspoken agreement between patient and analyst to work toward understanding and recovery. It is differentiated from the therapeutic alliance in that the working alliance implies an understanding of how the work of analysis proceeds, as well as the patient’s voluntary adherence to his or her role as analysand and to the rules, conventions, and methods of the analysis.
Working-through: A phase of clinical psychoanalysis during which the dynamics of conflict are repeatedly revisited in experiences of the present, the past, and the transference. It aims at transforming intellectual understanding into emotional knowledge; unconscious conflicts are resolved or replaced by more adaptive compromises, leading to an increase in adaptive functioning and a decrease in symptoms.

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