[ Dictionary of psychoanalytic terms ]

Anxiety: A state of apprehension, uncertainty, and fear resulting from the anticipation of a realistic or fantasized threatening event or situation, often impairing physical and psychological functioning.

Cathexis: points to the libidinal energy that is invested or attached to some representation or object (person) outside the ego.

Collective unconscious: the inherited part of the unconscious that especially in the psychoanalytic theory of C. G. Jung occurs in and is shared by all the members of a people or race.

Death drive: a primitive impulse for destruction, decay, and death, coexisting with and opposing life instinct. Also called Thanatos.

Defense mechanisms: Any of various usually unconscious mental processes, including denial, projection, rationalization, and repression, that protect the ego from shame, anxiety, conflict, loss of self-esteem, or other unacceptable feelings or thoughts.

Dream: product of unconscious psychic primal process, the dream is in the Freud's view the fulfillment of a repressed wish (see also - repression and repressed). Dreams are made by latent thoughts and manifest content (see also -> the latent content and -> the manifest content). Dreams may be interpreted by using a specific method created by Freud and published in his Dream Interpretation [Traumdeutung]. (See also -> dream interpretation).

Dream interpretation: method of exploration of the unconscious, dream interpretation acquired with Freud a scientific shape. It mainly consists in the gathering of associations of the dreamer related to the manifest content. (See also -> the manifest content). In the words of Freud, the dream interpretation is the reversal of the psychic process that leads to the formation of dreams, that is the latent thoughts -> dream's manifest content. The first historical dream interpreted by Freud himself is the the Irma's injection. The psychoanalytic dream interpretation method was published by Freud in his Dream Interpretation [Traumdeutung] (1900).

Drive: the word translates the German "Trieb" because it is closer to "impulse", "urge", than "instinct". A drive, in psychoanalysis, is a psychic tendency which assumes a biological source, an object of discharge, and a specific charge. Generally speaking, drives are linked with the sexual instinct.

Ego: the one of the three divisions of the psyche in psychoanalytic theory that serves as the organized conscious mediator between the person and reality especially by functioning both in the perception of and adaptation to reality.

Erotogenic (zones): any part of the body susceptible of becoming excited, of being a seat of pleasure. Freud used the term to refer primarily to a number of specific areas, notably, the genitals, mouth, and anus.

Faulty acts (see -> slips and mistakes).

First topic: topographic representation of psychic apparatus which consist of 3 systems (agencies): unconscious, conscious, preconscious.

Free association: method of investigation of the unconscious in which the client expresses thoughts exactly as they occur, even though they may seem irrelevant.

Guilt: a term denoting an unpleasant feeling associated with unfulfilled wishes.

Id: the one of the three divisions of the psyche in psychoanalytic theory that is completely unconscious and is the source of psychic energy derived from instinctual needs and drives.

Libido: quantitatively variable which could serve as a measure of processes and transformations occurring in the field of sexual excitation.

Life drive: opposing death drives, points to life building and sustaining drives. It includes the eros, or the sexual drives. It is also called Eros.

Latent content: Applied to the formation of dreams, refers to the thoughts related to the unconscious wishes that made the manifest content of dreams. (see also -> the manifest content)

Manifest content: Applied to the formation of dreams, points to the content of a dream that one remembers upon the waking. This is the facade of dream, the image or idea of it. (see also -> the latent content)

Neurosis: any of various mental or emotional disorders, such as hypochondria or neurasthenia, arising from no apparent organic lesion or change and involving symptoms such as insecurity, anxiety, depression, and irrational fears, but without psychotic symptoms such as delusions or hallucinations.

Object level: in dream interpretation, refers to the object-relation method of interpretation. Images and ideas of dream's manifest content are treated of like real images and ideas taken from the outer, social life, of the dreamer. (see also -> dream content)

Oedipus complex: an unconscious sexual wish in a child for the parent of the opposite sex, usually accompanied by hostility towards the parent of the same sex.

Projection: the attribution of one's own attitudes, feelings, or desires to someone or something as an unconscious defense against anxiety or guilt. (see defense mechanisms).

Psychoanalytic techniques: methods of exploration of the unconscious forged by psychoanalysis. Among them the most important are the free associations method (the golden rule of psychoanalysis) and the dream interpretation. (See also -> the free association method).

Psychic determinism: states that all processes occurring in mind are not spontaneous and free as they seem, but governed by unconscious rules or complexes. For example: when one tries to speak freely about what it comes in his/her mind in relation to a word of his/her free choice, the lines of thoughts are related each other and focus on an unconscious psychic complex. (See also -> unconscious)

Reality (pleasure) principles: the reality principle is one of the two major principles that govern the functioning of the mind. It designates the psyche's necessary awareness of information concerning reality and stands in contradistinction to the pleasure/unpleasure principle, which seeks the discharge or elimination of drive tension at all costs.

Repressed: is constituted by the operation of repression, which rejects and maintains in the unconscious representations deemed incompatible with the ego moral/superego moral values.
The repressed is not directly knowable, since it pertains wholly to the unconscious sphere of the mind. (see also -> the repression)

Repression: the exclusion of distressing memories, thoughts, or feelings from the conscious mind. Often involving sexual or aggressive urges or painful childhood memories, these unwanted mental contents are pushed into the unconscious mind. (see also -> the repressed)

Return of the repressed: process whereby repressed elements, preserved in the unconscious, tend to reappear, in consciousness, in the shape of secondary and more or less unrecognizable "derivatives of the unconscious". Parapraxes, bungled or symptomatic actions, are examples of such derivatives. (see also -> the repression and -> the repressed)

Second topic: topographic representation of psychic apparatus consisting of 3 agencies: id, ego, superego.

Self-analysis: it is the analysis that one is submitted him/herself in order to reach the unconscious and the signification of symptoms. It is usually directed by a trained psychoanalyst (supervisor). It is made with the help of the psychoanalytic techniques such as dream interpretation, free associations etc. Self-analysis is required in the psychoanalysis training. The model of self-analysis is the Freud's one. Learn more about Freud's self-analysis.

Slips and mistakes (Freudian): psychic unintentional acts (also called lapses) such us forgetting of names or objects, error of reading or writing, etc. that were analyzed by Freud and revealed links with unconscious psychic matters (complexes). (See also -> the psychoanalytic techniques)

Superego: the one of the three divisions of the psyche that is only partly conscious, represents internalization of parental interdictions and the rules of society. It is the moralizing and punishing instance in psyche.

Transference: the process whereby emotions are passed on or displaced from one person to another; during psychoanalysis therapy the displacement of feelings toward others (usually the parents) is onto the analyst.

Unconscious: the part of the psychic apparatus that does not ordinarily enter the individual's awareness but may be manifested by slips of the tongue, dreams, or neurotic symptoms.

[More entries will be available soon]

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Online resources: answer.com and webster dictionary.