Fixation: according to Freud, a lingering focus of energies at an earlier psychosexual stage, in which conflicts were unresolved. defense mechanisms: in psychoanalytic theory, the ego's protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality. Repression: in psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness. Regression: psychoanalytic defense mechanism in which an individual faced with anxiety retreats to a more infantile psychosexual stage, where some psychic energy remains fixated. reaction formation: psychoanalytic defense mechanism by which the ego unconsciously switches unacceptable impulses into their opposites. Thus, people may express feelings that are the opposite of their anxiety-arousing unconscious feelings. Projection: psychoanalytic defense mechanism by which people disguise their own threatening impulses by attributing them to others. Rationalization: defense mechanism that offers self-justifying explanations in place of the real, more threatening, unconscious reasons for one's actions. Displacement: psychoanalytic defense mechanism that shifts sexual or aggressive impulses toward a more acceptable or less threatening object or person, as when redirecting anger toward a safer outlet. Denial: defense mechanism by which people refuse to believe or even to perceive painful realities. collective unconscious: Carl Jung's concept of a shared. Inherited reservoir of memory traces from our species history. projective test: a personality test, such as the Rorschach or TAT, that provides ambiguous stimuli designed to trigger projection of one's inner dynamics.
Fixation: according to Freud, a lingering focus of energies at an earlier psychosexual stage, in which conflicts were unresolved. defense mechanisms: in psychoanalytic theory, the ego's protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality. Repression: in psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness. Regression: psychoanalytic defense mechanism in which an individual faced with anxiety retreats to a more infantile psychosexual stage, where some psychic energy remains fixated. reaction formation: psychoanalytic defense mechanism by which the ego unconsciously switches unacceptable impulses into their opposites. Thus, people may express feelings that are the opposite of their anxiety-arousing unconscious feelings. Projection: psychoanalytic defense mechanism by which people disguise their own threatening impulses by attributing them to others. Rationalization: defense mechanism that offers self-justifying explanations in place of the real, more threatening, unconscious reasons for one's actions. Displacement: psychoanalytic defense mechanism that shifts sexual or aggressive impulses toward a more acceptable or less threatening object or person, as when redirecting anger toward a safer outlet. Denial: defense mechanism by which people refuse to believe or even to perceive painful realities. collective unconscious: Carl Jung's concept of a shared. Inherited reservoir of memory traces from our species history. projective test: a personality test, such as the Rorschach or TAT, that provides ambiguous stimuli designed to trigger projection of one's inner dynamics.