Psychoanalysis Glossary

Expressing unconscious conflicts through behavior rather than words or conscious awareness.

Association for the Integration of Mind-Soma, focusing on psychosomatic approaches in psychoanalysis.

Bion's term for the mental capacity to transform raw sensory and emotional experiences into meaningful, thinkable though...

Relating to emotional dependence on another person, particularly in early developmental relationships.

The person undergoing psychoanalysis; the patient in analytic treatment.

The analyst's practice of withholding personal information to maintain therapeutic focus on the patient's projections an...

The analyst's stance of evenly hovering attention, curiosity, and abstinence that facilitates exploration.

The two-person psychological system formed between analyst and patient in psychoanalytic treatment.

The psychological and physical boundaries that contain and protect the analytic process.

The structured boundaries and consistent parameters that provide safety and containment for psychoanalytic treatment.

A prolonged period of stagnation in analysis where progress appears blocked and neither patient nor analyst can identify...

The analyst's method of attending to multiple levels of meaning including manifest content, latent themes, and transfere...

The content produced by the patient during analysis including associations, dreams, symptoms, and behavioral patterns.

The evolving dynamic interaction between patient and analyst that facilitates psychological change through insight.

The analyst's professional positioning characterized by curiosity, abstinence, and technical neutrality during sessions.

The conscious, manifest level of communication in analysis, as opposed to deeper unconscious meanings.

The co-created intersubjective field that emerges between patient and analyst during treatment.

The assessment of whether a patient possesses the psychological capacities necessary for psychoanalytic treatment.

The process by which earlier experiences are retroactively given new meaning through later psychological development.

American Psychoanalytic Association; the primary professional organization for psychoanalysts in the United States.

Bion's term for unprocessed sensory and emotional experiences that cannot be used for thinking or symbolic representatio...

Board for Psychoanalytic Education; the credentialing body that establishes standards for psychoanalytic training progra...

The investment of psychic energy or emotional significance in a person, object, idea, or mental representation.

A primary process mechanism where multiple thoughts or images are compressed into a single dream element or symptom.