Psychoanalysis Glossary

The analyst's verbal intervention that makes unconscious material conscious by explaining hidden meanings or connections...

The unconscious incorporation of external objects, qualities, or relationships into one's internal psychological structu...

International Psychoanalytical Association, the global organization that sets standards for psychoanalytic training and...

The hidden, unconscious meaning and wishes underlying a dream's surface narrative.

In psychoanalytic theory, the psychic energy derived from sexual drives, broader than sexual desire alone.

Klein's term for defenses against depressive anxiety, including omnipotence, denial, and idealization.

The remembered, surface narrative of a dream as reported by the dreamer.

The capacity to understand behavior in terms of underlying mental states, intentions, and feelings.

An interpretation that produces lasting psychological change by addressing unconscious conflicts in the here-and-now tra...

Bion's term for primitive anxiety that cannot be symbolized or thought about, only experienced as overwhelming terror.

The analyst's stance of emotional equidistance and non-judgment to facilitate the patient's projections and transference...

A psychoanalytic theory focusing on how early relationships shape internal mental representations of self and others.

The part of the patient's ego that maintains capacity for self-observation and collaboration in the analytic process.

The triangular emotional dynamics involving child, mother, and father that shape subsequent relationship patterns.

A primitive defense mechanism involving the fantasy of having unlimited power over internal and external reality.

Klein's earliest developmental position characterized by splitting, projection, and persecutory anxieties about destroye...

A Freudian slip; an error in speech, memory, or action believed to reveal unconscious thoughts.

In object relations theory, relating to another person as a collection of separate functions or body parts rather than a...

Klein's spelling for unconscious mental content that gives meaning to instinctual drives and forms the basis of psycholo...

Mental content that is not currently conscious but can be readily recalled to awareness, distinct from unconscious mater...

A child's real or fantasized observation of parental sexual activity, significant in psychoanalytic theory for psycholog...

The unconscious mental functioning characterized by wish fulfillment, symbolism, and disregard for logic or reality.

A defense mechanism where unacceptable thoughts, feelings, or impulses are attributed to others rather than acknowledged...

A defense mechanism where unwanted feelings are projected onto another person who then experiences those feelings.