Glossary of Psychoanalytical Terms

Medical (M.), psychiatric (Py.), and psychoanalytical (Pa.) terms, taken from Facts and Theories of Psychoanalysis, 3rd ed. (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1958) by Ives Hendrick, MD.

Prepared for the web by Nathan Jones, PhD. Please report errors to nathan.d.jones@gmail.com

Also available as PDF: nathanjones.com/s/glossary-of-psychoanalytical-terms.pdf

Syn. = synonymous with.

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Abreaction (Pa.): the therapeutically effective discharge of emotion associated with recall of a repressed idea or memory; especially that which occurs when a repressed traumatic experience is recalled under hypnosis. Syn., catharsis.

Acting-out (Pa.): the neurotic gratification of a repressed wish by compulsive behaviour, especially in reacting to another person; used chiefly for the acting-out of transference fantasies during psychoanalysis or psychotherapy.

Activity (Pa.): those instinctual aims whose gratification requires initiative in one’s behaviour toward an object.

Actual Neuroses (Pa.): anxiety neurosis, neurasthenia, and hypochondriasis. According to Freud, the symptoms of these neuroses, in contrast to the symptoms of psychoneuroses, are the result of a physiologic toxemia caused by either excessive prohibition or abuse of the erotic functions.

Adrenal Gland (M.): an endocrine gland, located above the kidney, and secreting “adrenalin” and other hormones into the bloodstream.

Affect (Py.): the subjective aspect of emotion; instinct-tension perceived as mood, sentiment, passion, or need to act.

Afferent Nerve (M.): a nerve carrying sensory and other stimuli toward the brain.

Aim, Instinctual (Pa.): a need for that specific act or experience which is productive of pleasure by reduction of instinctual tension; especially, for the sexual instincts, need for stimulation of a specific erotogenic zone.

Aim-inhibited Wish (Pa.): a wish which can be normally gratified by the substitution of an incomplete act for the original aim, usually unconscious-for example, a handshake for an embrace, “friendship" for erotic love, “latent” for “overt” homosexuality. (Cf. “Sublimation.”)

Allergy (M.): an abnormal somatic reaction to specific chemicals which are eaten, inhaled, or touched; a biochemical cause of asthma, hay fever, hives, and other diseases.

Ambivalence (Pa.): bipolarity of an instinct; the need to satisfy both of a pair of antagonistic desires; especially the bipolarity of love and hate, activity and passivity, masculinity and femininity, masochism and sadism.

Amnesia (Py.): inability to recollect consciously a specific idea, event, or period of one's life.

Amnesia, Infantile (Pa.): the normal inability to recall most of the experiences of the first five and one-half years of life (approximately), especially infantile sexual thoughts and observations.

Anabolism (M.): that phase of metabolism in which cells and tissues are built.

Anaclitic (Pa.): the narcissistic need to be taken care of, derived from dominant needs of early infancy.

Anaclitic Personality (Pa.): a type of personality whose chief love-needs are to be taken care of, described by Freud as the “most typical form of femininity.”

Anal Eroticism (Pa.): conscious or unconscious wishes associated with pleasurable stimulation of the anus, and with the derivatives of these wishes in conscious thought, act, symptom, or character trait; in theory, those components of the sexual instincts whose primary aim is anal pleasure.

Anal Sadism (Pa.): sadism associated with anal erotism and represented by conscious or unconscious fantasies of beating, exploding, torturing, dirtying, demolishing, etc., and the derivatives of these fantasies in conscious thought, symptom, or behaviour.

Analysis (Pa.): colloquial for “psychoanalysis” (q.v.).

Anorexia (M.): abnormally diminished or absent appetite for food.

Anus (M.): the external aperture of the intestines.

Anxiety Hysteria (Pa.): a psychoneurosis in which phobias are the most conspicuous symptoms.

Anxiety Neurosis (Pa.): one form of “actual neurosis” (q.v.) in which either conscious anxiety without phobia-formation, or the physiological signs of anxiety (palpitation, sweating, etc.), are the most conspicuous symptoms.

Anxiety, Neurotic (Py.): anxiety without, or disproportionate to, realistic justification, contrasted with “fear” of real danger.

Applied Psychoanalysis (Pa.): the non-medical applications of psychoanalytic knowledge and theory to art, literature, biography, sociology, anthropology, public health, etc.

Arthritis (M.): an organic disease of the joints and adjacent tissues; colloquially, “rheumatism.”

Asthma (M.): a disease characterized by paroxysmal or continuous inability to breathe air in and out of lungs easily.

Autism (Py.): wishful thoughts, particularly omnipotent, symbolic, delusional, and hallucinatory thoughts, unmodified by rational or realistic processes. Syn., “Primary Process” (q.v.).

Autoeroticism (Pa.): pleasurable gratification of sexual aims by stimulation of an erotogenic zone, without requiring love of another; unconscious and conscious psychological derivatives of autoerotic needs.

Autonomic Nervous System (M.): that system controlling and coordinating those bodily functions which have little mental representation except the experience of moods and emotions.

Bacteriology (M.): the study of microscopic organisms and their relationship to disease.

Bisexuality (Pa.): the fact that the sexual aims and wishes typical of both sexes are present in every individual whether male or female; and those theories of instincts derived from this fact.

Castration Complex (Pa.): a constellation of conscious and unconscious ideas associated with infantile fantasies that a female’s penis has been, or a male’s penis will be, mutilated, amputated, or destroyed.

Catabolism (M.): those phases of metabolism in which cell and tissue destruction occur.

Catatonic Rage (Py.): very violent, irrational impulses to destroy, occurring in certain types of schizophrenia.

Catharsis: Syn., “Abreaction” (q.v.).

Censor (Pa.): in dream psychology, that which compels and effects the disguise of the latent content.

Central Nervous System (M.): that system co-ordinating sensory experience, movement of the muscles of face, trunk, and limbs, and the association of ideas.

Character (Py.): those aspects of a personality (q.v.), especially social behaviour, which distinguish one from other human beings; what is typical of an individual’s ego.

Character Neurosis (Pa.): a psychoneurosis whose most conspicuous feature is the compulsive repetition of characteristic behaviour which leads to excessive suffering or failure. Syn., “Neurotic Character.”

Child Analysis (Pa.): special techniques developed by psychoanalysts for the treatment of the psychologic and behaviour problems of children, fully utilizing play technique and psychoanalytic knowledge and theory.

Child Guidance (Py.): a term nearly synonymous with “child psychiatry” (q.v.), which is now rapidly replacing “child guidance” in general usage.

Child Psychiatry (Py.): the study and treatment by psychiatrists of the mental, emotional, and social problems of children.

Clitoris (M.): one of a female’s external sexual organs, highly erotogenic and anatomically homologous with the male penis.

Coitus (M.): sexual intercourse.

Coitus Interruptus (M.): voluntary withdrawal of the penis before completion of coitus.

Complex (Pa.): an emotionally charged constellation of closely associated ideas, especially unconscious ideas.

Compulsion (Py.): a psychoneurotic symptom; the need, which cannot easily be controlled by the will, to repeat a rationally purposeless act or ritual, though its futility is intellectually realized.

Compulsion Neurosis (Py.): a psychoneurosis whose most conspicuous symptoms are compulsions (q.v.) which seriously impair the fulfillment of mature objectives, closely related to “obsessional neurosis” (q.v.).

Compulsive Character (Pa.): a character neurosis, closely related to compulsion neurosis and obsessional neurosis, whose most conspicuous features are the inflexibility of the character, the inability to abandon or alter a course of action or thought in order to avoid suffering, and often excessive indecisiveness.

Condensation (Pa.): the coincident representation of several unconscious wishes or objects by a single conscious dream-image, thought, act, or symptom.

Confession Compulsion (Pa.): the abnormal compulsion or normal need to confess guilt verbally to another person.

Conflict (Pa.): the opposition of intra-psychic impulses; especially between a repressed wish and a punishment fantasy, between ambivalent instinctual aims, or between different components of the personality structure.

Conscious

(1) adjective: being aware, capable of perception or apperception by a voluntary effort of attention.

(2) noun, “the Conscious” (Pa.): an inclusive abstraction of all conscious mental phenomena.

(3) noun, “the System Conscious” (Pa.): in the psychoanalytic theory of personality structure, a dynamic concept implying a functional differentiation of a “region” of the mind, where thoughts are conscious and rationally controlled, from an Unconscious; in early psychoanalytic literature it was used with many of the same implications as “ego” has been later.

Constitution

(1) (M.): the hereditary biological endowment.

(2) (Py.): often used with a less precise connotation than “heredity,” to include more or less generally what has become either biologically or psychologically fixed, unalterable, and characteristic of the individual.

Control Analysis (Pa.): therapeutic psychoanalysis conducted by a student of a psychoanalytic institute and supervised by a teacher. Syn., “supervised analysis.”

Conversion (Pa.): the transformation of an instinctual need mentally represented by a repressed unconscious fantasy into an abnormal physiologic function, often simulating organic nervous disease; according to Freud, the basic mechanism of symptom-formation in hysteria.

Conversion Hysteria (Pa.): a psychoneurosis whose most conspicuous symptoms are localized abnormal functions of sensory or motor nerves, without disease of the tissues, caused by “conversion” (q.v.); the same as “hysteria” as used by neurologists and till recently by psychiatrists.

Counter-transference (Pa.): the emotions and fantasies with which the physician reacts to his patient during psychoanalysis or psychotherapy.

Death Instincts (Pa.): a hypothetical group of instincts whose ultimate aim is death, whose biological manifestation is catabolism, and whose psychological derivatives are impulses to destroy or injure oneself or others.

Defense Mechanism (Pa.): an organized psychological reaction, including repression, by which conscious anxiety or guilt associated with an unconscious wish is avoided.

Defloration: rupture of the hymen, usually during the first sexual intercourse of a woman; loss of virginity.

Defusion (Pa.): in later psychoanalytic instinct theory, a process accompanying “regression,” characterized by a partial reversal of the “fusion” (q.v.) of Eros and the Death Instincts.

Delusion (Py.): an abnormal conscious idea or belief whose logical or realistic absurdity or dubiousness the individual is notably incapable of accepting.

Depression

(1) (Py.): melancholia; a psychosis or psychoneurosis whose most conspicuous features are an abnormal degree of melancholy, incapacity for pleasurable experience and useful activity, extensive inhibition and slowing of intellectual activity and behaviour, and marked preoccupation with self-abasing ideas, some of which may be delusions.

(2) (Py.): a recurrent phase of “manic-depressive psychosis" (q.v.).

(3) (Py.): milder, non-psychotic moods similar to psychotic depressions; “the blues.”

Diabetes (M.): a disease caused by deficient secretion of the hormone [insulin] which normally enables the body to utilize sugars and starches.

Didactic Analysis (Pa.): psychoanalysis of a student at a psychoanalytic institute whose primary purpose is professional education. Syn., “teaching analysis,” “training analysis.”

Displacement (Pa.)

(1) the substitution of the original object of an instinctual impulse by a “surrogate” in act or fantasy.

(2) the substitution of partial aims of the sexual instincts for each other.

Dissociation (Py.): an abnormal process whereby a group of fantasies, which may determine hysterical symptoms and behaviour, cannot be controlled or mentally related to the more usual and rational conscious mental systems of the patient.

Dynamic (Py.): based on knowledge of how symptoms, diseases, and normal functions of the personality are affected or determined by ideas, emotions, and psychological development.

Dynamic Psychiatry (Py.): those clinical, theoretical, and therapeutic aspects of modern psychiatry developed by psychoanalysis and other techniques from the premise that the clinical study of psychologic and social data is pre-eminently valuable in learning about psychopathologic processes, personality development and social adaptation, and in therapeutically influencing these processes.

Efferent Nerve (M.): a nerve which carries stimuli away from the brain to muscles and other organs.

Ego

(1): the self, that which controls conscious perception, thought, feeling, and behaviour, and is experienced as self-awareness.

 (2) (Pa.): in the earlier literature Freud considered the ego the seat of the conscious, intellectual, and self-preservative functions, and generally used “ego” interchangeably with “the Conscious,” as opposed to “the Unconscious."

 (3) (Pa.): in the later concept of personality structure, more exactly described as that organized portion of the personality which enforces repression, other defenses against anxiety and guilt-producing impulses, subserves the Reality Principle, and controls perception, voluntary thought, and the discharge of emotional tensions by behaviour.

Ego-defect (Pa.): the absence or insufficiency of a function of the normal ego, predisposing to psychotic or related modes of personality adjustment.

Ego-ideal (Pa.): a narcissistic image of what one aspires to be. (Often confused with “super-ego.”)

Ego-instincts (Pa.): instincts which serve the self-preservative functions; in early psychoanalytic theory, those instincts which oppose the sexual instincts and enforce repression; in later theory, that portion of Eros which is utilized by the ego.

Ego-potentiality (Pa.): the potential capacity of an individual, if his psychoneurosis is alleviated, to deal effectively with the emotional and environmentally determined problems of adult life. Syn., “ego-strength.”

Ego-psychology (Pa.): those more modern aspects of psychoanalytic investigation and theory which emphasize the organized components of the personality that oppose the gratification of infantile aims, determine defense mechanisms, mediate the normal gratification of instinctual needs, and determine the appraisal of reality, rational thought, and relationship to the environment; especially, the concept of personality structure, the anxiety theory of psychoneurosis, and the psychology of defense mechanisms.

Ego-strength (Pa.): Ego-potentiality (q.v.).

Ejaculatio Praecox (M.): a psychoneurotic symptom; that impairment of male genital function characterized by premature discharge of semen with deficient sensual and emotional gratification.

Electra Complex (Pa.): that group of ideas determined by a girl’s incestuous fantasies of her father; the synonym, “female Oedipus complex,” is much more commonly used.

Endocrine Gland (M.): a gland secreting hormones, which are transported by the blood to other parts of the body and control many physiologic functions. Syn., “ductless gland.”

Endocrinology (M.): the study of hormones, their physiologic effects, and the diseases caused by deficient or excessive secretion of them.

Enuresis (M.), (Py.): involuntary discharge of urine, especially bed-wetting.

Epilepsy, Idiopathic (M.): a group of diseases in which a specific brain damage (except abnormal brain waves in many cases) has not been demonstrated, characterized by generalized convulsions or spells of loss of consciousness of specific types; generally accompanied by marked egocentricity and emotional explosiveness of the general personality, and frequently by progressive mental and social deterioration.

Eros (Pa.): that group of instincts whose aims are sexual pleasure and perpetuation of life, and whose functions are opposed to those of the “Death Instincts”; Syn., the “life instincts.”

Erotogenic Zone (Pa.): one of the surface areas of skin or mucous membrane friction of which affords marked voluptuous pleasure; especially the external genitalia, lips, anus, urethra, and skin.

Etiology (M.): the cause of a symptom, disease, or pathologic process.

Exhibitionism

(1) (Py.): a sexual perversion in which display of the genitals determines maximal erotic pleasure.

(2) (Pa.): also, a normal partial aim of infantile and adult sexuality and its derivatives, characterized by the conscious or unconscious wish to be looked at or to be admired; especially the wish to display the genitals. (See “Scoptophilia.”)

Fixation (Pa.): the persistence of an unconscious wish for an infantile object, or for a specific form of pregenital sexual pleasure normally dominant at an earlier stage of development.

Forepleasure (Pa.): those sensations and actions derived from pre-genital aims of the sexual instincts, and used in normal erotic courtship for the intensification of genital desire.

Free Association (Pa.): the fundamental principle of psychoanalytic technique, the reporting by the patient so far as he is able of all thoughts as they become spontaneously conscious, with a minimum of rational or ethical criticism; the thought-processes of spontaneous reverie, contrasted with the intellectual association of ideas.

Frigidity (Py.): any impairment of the female’s capacity for genital sensory pleasure, or for any aspect of the emotional experience normally coincident with genital pleasure; it may be of any degree and is usually a psychoneurotic symptom.

Frustration (Pa.): either environmental or intra-psychic prevention of gratification of an instinctual wish.

Functional (M.): in respect to a symptom, etiologically not caused by demonstrable destruction of tissue or primary physiologic abnormality; inexactly but frequently used as a symptom for “hysterical,” “psychoneurotic,” or “psychogenic.”

Fusion (Pa.): in later psychoanalytic theory, an impulse providing gratification of both Eros and Death Instincts; the theoretical origin of sadism, masochism, and normal aggression.

Gastric (M.): pertaining to the stomach.

Genitalia (M.): the sexual and reproductive organs of male and female; especially, the external sexual organs.

Genitality (Pa.): the normal adult organization of the sexual instincts; those aims of psychosexuality which impel to normal adult coitus, and require tenderness and the partner’s pleasure as prerequisites of maximal gratification. Roughly synonymous with the non-analytic usage of “sexual instinct.”

Grandiosity (Py.): abnormal over-valuation of oneself, expressed in fantasies, delusions, or acts.

Gratification (Pa.): an act or experience which reduces conscious or unconscious emotional tension and yields pleasure; the fulfillment of an instinctual aim; “wish-fulfillment.”

Grave's Disease (M.): a disease of the thyroid gland, with overproduction of thyroid hormone.

Guilt, Unconscious (Pa.)

(1) those mental functions initiated by unconscious punishment fantasies; suffering which results from gratification, or drive toward gratification, of a repressed wish.

(2) theoretically, the tension between ego and super-ego.

Hallucination (Py.): an abnormal perception, conviction in the reality of a sensory experience, such as seeing or hearing, for which no real (external) stimulus exists.

Heredity: those physical and mental components of the organism which are transmitted from parents to child at conception. (Cf. “Constitution.”)

Homeostasis (M.): the principle that physiologic processes tend to maintain a state of physico-chemical equilibrium.

Homosexuality

(1) (Py.): an abnormal erotic relationship with an individual of one's own sex; or the unusual prominence of psychological traits or behaviour usually characteristic of the other sex.

(2) (Pa.): also a “latent” or unconscious wish either for “overt” (actual) homosexual experience, or for the characteristics and experiences of the other sex.

(3) (Pa.): “aim-inhibited homosexuality,” comprising all conscious and normal affectionate and friendly emotions for members of one’s own sex.

(4) (Pa.): theoretically, a normal aim of a portion of the sexual instincts.

Hormone (M.): a chemical substance secreted by an endocrine (ductless) gland (q.v.) and carried by the blood to other organs whose function it affects.

Hypnosis (Py.): the induction by psychological suggestion, generally for symptomatic therapy or research, of a special mental state or “trance” somewhat resembling sleep and characterized by unusual responsiveness to suggestions and by the consciousness of memories and ideas repressed at other times. Syn., “mesmerism.”

Hypochondria (Py.): a fixated mental attitude, sometimes a psychosis with delusions, involving the erroneous conviction that the body or its organs are diseased.

Hysteria

(1) (M.): a psychoneurosis whose most conspicuous features are usually symptoms of abnormal sensations, paralysis, or other functions, without demonstrable abnormality of the nervous system. (Sometimes loosely used in medicine for psychoneurosis in general.)

(2) (Pa.): those closely related psychoneuroses, occurring in people with dominant genital sexual aims and conflicts, referred to as “anxiety hysteria,” “conversion hysteria,” and “hysterical character” (q.v.); in colloquial usage, synonymous with “conversion hysteria,” which is symptomatically identical with “hysteria” as used in neurology and general psychiatry.

Hysterical Character (Py.): a character neurosis, most frequent in women and closely related to conversion hysteria, whose most conspicuous features are unpleasant sensations or fantasies when erotically stimulated, excessively volatile, childlike, or theatrical display of emotion, and a pronounced repetitive tendency to sexual relationships which eventuate in quarrelling, erotic disappointment, or psychogenic symptoms.

Id (Pa.): in the concept of personality structure, that “region” of the mind characterized by unorganized primitive instinctual wishes.

Identification (Pa.): a complex unconscious process whereby real or imagined characteristics of another person become permanent components of the personality; especially, the typical unconscious solution of an ambivalence (love-hate) conflict, as that of a child reacting to the authority of an adult, resulting in the development and individual features of his super-ego.

Impotence (Py.): partial or complete impairment of the male’s capacity for normal erection, orgasm, or erotic pleasure; usually a psychoneurotic symptom.

Infancy (Pa.): technically, in psychoanalysis, the period of life (approximately the first five and a half years) before the Oedipus complex is repressed or resolved and succeeded by the latency period; roughly, the “pre-school” period.

Infantile Sexuality (Pa.): the normal sexuality of infancy, and its unconscious and conscious derivatives in the adult. It includes the fantasies and autoeroticism of pregenital sexuality and the Oedipus complex.

Inhibition (Py.): normal or pathological limitation of nerve, muscle, or mental function.

Instinct (Pa.): drive, or impulsion of physiologic origin, producing emotional tension and mentally represented by fantasies or wishes and the need to act in that specific way which yields pleasure by the reduction of tension.

Instinct Representation (Pa.): those components of the mind, especially memories and fantasies, which are accompanied or produced by an emotional need. Syn., a “wish”; “mental-representation.”

Insulin (M.): a hormone whose deficiency causes diabetes; sometimes administered for “shock treatment” of psychosis.

Introversion (Pa.)

(1) originally used by Freud to designate preoccupation with fantasies of object-love whose actual realization is neurotically inhibited.

(2) used by Jung to designate thoughts, feelings, sensations, and intuitive processes when interest in other people is absent or subsidiary.

(3) later used by Freud for those fantasies in which the self is object of the libido; narcissism; egocentricity.

Iritis (M.): a disease characterized by inflammation and pain of the “iris,” the circular, coloured portion of the eye whose central aperture is the pupil.

Latency Period (Pa.): the period of psychosexual and personality development between the repression of the Oedipus complex and puberty, lasting approximately from the age of six to thirteen.

Latent Content (Pa.): in dream psychology, those primary unconscious wishes, discovered by analysis of the manifest content (q.v.), which have activated a dream.

Lay Analysis (Pa.): therapy by psychoanalysts who have not studied medicine.

Libido (Pa.): the instinctual source of psychosexual needs and their mental representations; in later theory, a derivative of “Eros.” Syn.: sexual instincts.

Lumbar Pain (M.): pain in the loins, or lower curvature of the back.

Manic-depressive Psychosis (Py.): a psychosis characterized by “manic” periods of pathological excitement, lack of emotional restraint, incessant heightened mental and physical activity, alternating with periods of depression.

Manifest Content (Pa.): in dream psychology, the conscious waking memory of what has been dreamed in sleep.

Masochism

(1) (Py.): a sexual perversion, characterized by the need to experience physical pain in order to attain maximal erotic satisfaction.

(2) (Pa.): also, conscious or unconscious wishes to experience physical or psychological pain, and their derivatives; actual or potential pleasure in pain or suffering.

(3) (Pa.): theoretically, a partial aim of the libido; in later theory, the passive instinctual aims resulting from incomplete fusion of Eros and the Death Instincts.

(4) (Pa.): loosely used in early literature as synonymous with any impulsion toward passive gratification; “passivity.”

Megalomania (Py.): a psychotic mental state characterized by delusions that one is a very great personage; psychotic grandiosity.

Melancholia (Py.): a severe psychotic depression (q.v.).

Menopause (M.): the physical and psychological changes accompanying the cessation of menstruation; “change of life” in women.

Mental Status (Py.): a systematic examination whose chief purpose is the determination of abnormalities of the intellectual functions, affects, and behaviour of a patient.

Narcissism (Pa.)

(1) theoretically, those phenomena which result from a person’s body, ego, or mental attributes being the object of his libido; “introversion” of the libido;

(2) conscious or unconscious libidinal wishes which do not require object-love for full gratification; love of self or certain attributes of the self;

(3) in analytic psychopathology, unusual manifestations, or an excessive degree, of self-love.

Narcissism, Primary (Pa.): the original narcissism of normal infancy, before the stage of object-love.

Narcissistic Character (Pa.): an individual many of whose characteristic traits are determined by excessive narcissism and deficient capacity for object-love; colloquially, a “narcissist.” Moderate types are closely related to “character neurosis,” severe types to “psychosis.”

Neonate (M.): a newly born infant.

Neurasthenia (Py.): a non-psychotic syndrome characterized by lassitude, irritability, failure of initiative, mild but often abundant hypochondriacal complaints, excessive worry or fearfulness, constant fatigue, and general psychic incapacity and deficient normal pleasure. (Often misused in general medicine as a diagnosis of almost any psychological difficulty.)

Neurology (M.): the medical study of the organs of the nervous systems and their diseases.

Neurosis

(1) (M.): a disease ascribed to abnormal function of the nerves.

(2) (Pa.) : in psychoanalysis, the usual colloquial synonym for “psychoneurosis” (q.v.).

Neurotic Character (Pa.): a synonym for “character neurosis” (q.v.).

Nirvana Principle (Pa.): a fantasy that the ultimate goal of life is peace without tension by death.

Object (Pa.): that person or thing or surrogate which is loved or hated, consciously or unconsciously essential for gratification of a specific instinctual impulse.

Object-love (Pa.): the need to give to, to be tender toward, to provide pleasure for another person, who is consequently subjectively “over-valued,” in contrast to autoerotic, narcissistic, and most pre-genital love.

Obsession (Py.): a psychoneurotic symptom; an absurd, inconsequential, or irrelevant idea upon which conscious attention must be focused, though it is adequately evaluated by the intellect as futile and opposed by the will.

Obsessional Character (Pa.): a character neurosis closely related to “compulsive character,” in which the mind is excessively dominated by elaborate intellectualization without full development of obsessions, recognition of emotional needs is impaired, and a rigidity of personality produces a pattern of repetitive failures to attain reasonable objectives.

Obsessional Neurosis (Py.): a psychoneurosis the most conspicuous feature of which is the occurrence of obsessions which seriously impair normal thought and behaviour. Closely related to “compulsion neurosis” (q.v.).

Oedipus Complex (Pa.): the conscious or unconscious erotic and tender love of male or female for either parent, with marked jealousy of the other parent; the normal culmination of the infantile period of sexual development. (See “Electra Complex.”)

Ontogeny (M.): the sequence and relationship of phases of development.

Oral: related to the lips or mouth.

Oral Erotism (Pa.): conscious or unconscious wishes associated with pleasurable sensations of the lips and mouth, and the derivatives of these wishes in thought, act, and symptom; in theory, those components of the sexual instincts whose primary aim is oral pleasure.

Oral Sadism (Pa.): sadism associated with oral erotism and mentally represented by unconscious fantasies of biting or devouring, and the derivates of these fantasies in thought, symptom, or behaviour.

Organic Disease (M.): a somatic disease, contrasted with “functional” disease and psychoneurosis (q.v.), in which an abnormality of a tissue or organ can be demonstrated or inferred. Syn., “somatic disease.”

Ovary (M.): the internal organ of the female which produces ova (eggs).

Overt: direct, actual expression of a wish by conscious behaviour. (Cf. “Latent.”)

Paranoia (Py.): a paranoid psychosis (q.v.) whose delusions are highly systematized, intellectually rationalized, and coherent.

Paranoid Character (Py.): a non-psychotic type of narcissistic character (q.v.), whose conspicuous feature is an excessive subjective tendency to suspect others of hostile intentions.

Paranoid Psychosis (Py.): a psychosis whose most conspicuous feature is delusions that certain people are plotting, persecuting, or disloyal.

Parapraxia (Pa.): an unconsciously determined error or mistake, a “symptomatic act.”

Partial Aim (Pa.): any one of the various means of gratification of the sexual instincts; especially one of the pregenital aims (oral, anal, phallic, urethral, exhibitionistic, etc.).

Passivity (Pa.): those instinctual aims requiring initiative in the behaviour of the object.

Pathological (M.): abnormal.

Pathology (M.): the study of changes in the tissues produced by organic disease.

Personality (Py.): the aggregate of psychological and social reactions which characterize an individual; the aggregate of his subjective, emotional, and organized mental life, his behaviour, and his reactions to the environment. Less emphasis on the unique or unalterable traits of a person is connoted by “personality” than by the term “character” (q.v.).

Perversion, Sexual (Py.): a dominant conscious preference for attaining maximal erotic gratification by some other sexual act than coitus, or the need to supplement coitus by some unusual voluptuous experience.

Phallic Phase (Pa.): that stage of psychosexual development in which the penis or clitoris is the zone of maximal sensual pleasure, but in which tender object-love and the pleasure of another are not essential for maximal gratification.

Phobia (Py.): a psychoneurotic anxiety experienced when some special object or situation, as a certain animal or street, or the darkness, is encountered or imagined.

Physiology (M.): the study of the functions of tissues and organs.

Pituitary Gland (M.): an endocrine gland within the brain secreting hormones which control the functions of other endocrine glands, often called the “master gland.”

Pleasure Principle (Pa.): in instinct theory, the hypothesis that pleasure results from reduction of instinctual tension, that all psychological processes are determined by the desire for maximal pleasure and minimal pain, and that immediate gratification regardless of future consequences is normally characteristic of the instincts when not controlled by an organized and mature ego.

Pleurisy (M.): inflammation of the membranes encasing the lung.

Preconscious (Pa.): in Freud's early theory of personality structure, a portion of the “System Conscious” (q.v.), consisting of potentially conscious ideas.

Pregenital Sexuality (Pa.)

(1) those phases of infantile psycho-sexuality which precede maturation of the Oedipus complex and genital object-love and whose maximal gratification is autoerotic.

(2) the wishes of the adult unconscious for autoerotic gratification, and their conscious derivatives.

Primal Horde (Pa.): the hypothetical structure of a primitive human family historically antedating the organization of clans.

Primary Process (Pa.): the laws determining the association of ideas not controlled or altered by such rational and realistic mental processes as logic, recognition of time and spatial relationships, of opposites, of negation, etc.; the “primary process” is considered characteristic of the infantile mind, the adult unconscious, latent dream content, and psychotic thoughts. Syn., “autism.”

Prognosis (M.): prediction of the probable outcome of a disease or its treatment.

Projection (Pa.): conscious perception of an imaginary sensation or idea as though it existed in the outer world; especially, the unrealistic ascribing of an unconscious wish, a character trait, or an ideal to another person.

Proteins (M.): complex chemical compounds found in all cells and essential to life.

Pseudo-memory (Pa.): a free association which seems subjectively to be the memory of a real event, though it certainly, or probably, did not actually occur.

Psychiatry (M.): that specialty of medicine which studies and treats mental disease, including psychoses, psychoneuroses, personality and social problems, and the emotional aspects of organic disease.

Psychoanalysis (colloquially, “analysis”) (Pa.): the technique of Sigmund Freud based upon free association (q.v.); the use of this technique for treatment, and for the study of normal and abnormal unconscious psychology; and the data and the theories derived from these studies.

Psychogenic (M.): caused by psychological factors. Syn., “functional.”

Psychology

(1) all study of the mind, and all mental phenomena.

(2) specifically, the non-medical science of the mind, including experimental, psychometric, clinical, social, educational, and other branches of psychology, and the practical applications of these.

Psychoneurosis (colloquially, “neurosis”) (Py.): a disturbance of psychologic or physiologic functions, of the general personality, or of the social adjustment, without conspicuous evidence of psychosis or emotional indifference to other people, caused by unconscious mental conflict, and productive directly or indirectly of a significant limitation of pleasure or success, or a significant degree of suffering and social failure.

Psychopathic Personality (Py.): a diagnostic term used variously by different psychiatrists. [Hendrick] uses it to designate special types of abnormal personality, with or without definite psychosis, characterized predominantly by a major defect in moral sensitivity, a profound disregard of social institutions, and a marked incapacity to restrain antisocial impulses, though intellectually there is normal awareness of the laws and mores and of the consequences of their violation.

Psychopathology (Py.): the study of abnormalities of mind, personality, and social adjustment.

Psychosexuality (Pa.)

(1) psychosexuality, as used in psychoanalysis, comprises all aspects of love and pleasure-seeking; it emphasizes unconscious wishes for sensual gratification and their conscious de-eroticized derivatives, normal and abnormal, as well as wishes which culminate in complete and mature heterosexual union. (Colloquially, “sexuality.”)

(2) theoretically, the instinctual impulsion of the libido toward acts or thoughts of sensual pleasure, or substitutes for sensual pleasure.

Psychosis (Py.): insanity; medically, one of the forms of mental disease which manifest a striking abnormality of mental function or behaviour, usually of a degree incompatible with self-sustained social adjustment, often but not always manifesting delusions or hallucinations.

Psychosomatic (M.): involving the relationships of bodily and mental phenomena, especially psychologic factors in the causation of organic disease.

Psychotherapy (Py.): treatment of disease, psychoneurosis, and personality problems by a psychologic method.

Punishment Fantasy (Pa.): a fantasy, generally unconscious in the adult, of an unpleasant consequence of wish-fulfillment; usually the subjective motive for repression of a wish or of guilt if it is gratified.

Rationalization (Pa.): a simple or philosophical, logically justifiable or fallacious, reasoning process which is unconsciously exploited to explain intellectually an emotionally motivated occurrence.

Reality Principle (Pa.): that normal function of the ego, characteristic of maturity, which governs the temporary denial or postponement of immediate gratification of a wish in order to avoid painful future consequences.

Reality Situation (Pa.): the actual environment of a person, especially the emotional attitudes of other people appraised objectively, and the economic, social, and other practical aspects of the situation. The environment as a person would appraise it if there were no immaturity or neurotic distortion at all.

Reality-testing (Pa.)

(1) the discrimination of what has rational validity or actual existence in the person's environment from imaginative or autistic ideas.

(2) theoretically, a conscious mental function organized in the course of development, a normal component of the ego.

Regression (Pa.): unconscious displacement of instinctual aim or object to one whose primacy in normal development is chronologically earlier.

Repetition Compulsion (Pa.): the primitive tendency of instincts to reproduce a typical tension independently of the Pleasure Principle.

Repression (Pa.)

(1) the involuntary exclusion from representation in the conscious mind of a sexual or hostile wish, fantasy, memory, or associated emotion; especially the exclusion of wishes associated with infantile sexual objects or aims.

(2) theoretically, one of the defense mechanisms organized by the ego for control of instinctual impulses and avoidance of conscious pain.

Resistance (Pa.): the occurrence during psychoanalysis or psychotherapy of emotional opposition to the method and objective purpose of the treatment.

Reversibility (Py.): the potential capacity of a diseased tissue or organ to return to its healthy state when the original cause of the abnormality is altered.

Sadism

(1) (Py.): a sexual perversion, characterized by the need to inflict physical pain in order to attain maximal erotic gratification.

(2) (Pa.): also, conscious and unconscious wishes to cause physical or psychological pain, and their derivatives; pleasure in inflicting pain or injury.

 (3) (Pa.): theoretically, active partial aims of the sexual instincts; in later theory considered the result of incomplete fusion of Eros and the Death Instincts.

 (4) (Pa.): loosely used in early literature as though synonymous with any aggressive impulse; “activity.”

Sado-masochism (Pa.): sadism and masochism.

Schizoid Character (Py.): a personality type characterized by marked limitation of self-assertive behaviour and object-love, social seclusiveness, and excessive preoccupation with fantasies, which are often of a poetical or symbolic character.

Schizophrenia (Py.): a group of malignant psychoses characterized especially by a profound deficiency of the usual indications of normal emotion and capacity for “rapport,” and an extreme preoccupation with ideas which are extensively symbolic, neologistic, unreal, and intellectually incomprehensible, often accompanied by bizarre delusions, hallucinations, and behaviour. Syn., “dementia praecox.”

Scoptophilia (Pa.): conscious or unconscious psychosexual pleasure in looking, especially looking at the genitals, and its derivatives (curiosity); in theory, a partial aim of the libido. (See “Exhibitionism.”)

Secondary Gains (Pa.): those pleasures which a psychoneurotic person seeks to derive from or attain by his symptoms or immature character traits; they are not the cause, but a consequence of the psychoneurosis.

Secondary Process (Pa.): those laws determining the rational and realistic association of ideas; in the theories of personality structure they are considered functions of the System Conscious or the ego.

Seminal Vesicles (M.): internal organs where semen is stored and from which it is emitted during male orgasm.

Sexual Instincts (Pa.): a group of instincts producing emotional needs for love and sensual pleasures and their substitutes, and for all other manifestations of “psychosexuality” (q.v.); each component sexual instinct is distinguished by specificity of its “aim” (q.v.). Syn., “libido” (q.v.).

Siblings: brothers and sisters.

Structure, Personality (Pa.)

(1) originally, in “metapsychology,” the description of the mind as composed of three systems, the Unconscious, the Conscious, and the Preconscious (q.v.).

(2) later, the theory that all the conscious and unconscious mental components of total personality may be described in three systems, id, ego, and super-ego (q.v.).

Sublimation (Pa.): the process by which an unconscious sexual wish is “de-sexualized” and consciously gratified in work, play, or art, without conscious sensual experience, without love of another person, and without contingent suffering. (Cf. “Aim-inhibited Wish.”)

Suggestion (Py.): those methods of psychotherapy by which symptoms are cured by direct or implied authoritative reassurance.

Super-ego (Pa.): in the later concept of personality structure, those components of the personality, in the main unconscious, which represent intra-psychically the prohibitions and ideals of adults who had originally imposed external frustrations or punishment; theoretically, the organization of intra-psychic functions which threaten or impose a sense of guilt or psychic suffering.

Supervised Analysis (Pa.): instruction of a student at a psychoanalytic institute in the clinical use of the psychoanalytic method. Syn., “control analysis.”

Surrogate (Pa.): a conscious substitute for the unconscious object of a sexual or aggressive wish, the result of object-displacement.

Symbol (Pa.): any mental or behavioural representation of a wish or thing by some simple, poetically toned, and unrealistic substitute; especially those representations of unconscious psychosexual thoughts which are found to be common to many individuals of various cultures, and recur frequently in dreams, art, folklore, and everyday life.

Sympathetic Nervous System (M.): a part of the autonomic nervous system (q.v.).

Taboo: the ritualistic or conventional prohibition of certain forms of behaviour, especially one of those prohibitions which constitute the ethical codes of primitive societies.

Therapy (M.): treatment of disease or symptoms; (Py.) : psychotherapy.

Thyroid Gland (M.): an endocrine gland situated in the neck whose secretion increases physiologic metabolism and psychologic excitability.

Tic (M.): an involuntary, convulsive movement of any muscle-group, usually a psychoneurotic symptom.

Totality Concept (Py.): the concept of psychosomatic medicine that every biologic and mental function, especially emotion and interpersonal experience, is related to the functions of the organism as a whole. Syn., “holistic concept.”

Totem: that animal regarded by primitive people as the reincarnation of dead members of their clan, and therefore the object of special taboos and rituals.

Training Analysis (Pa.): synonym for “didactic analysis” (q.v.).

Transference (Pa.): a patient’s pattern of conscious and unconscious fantasies about the physician, and the emotions and conflicts they represent, developing during psychoanalysis or psychotherapy (and in other professional relationships) in consequence of the patient's repressed needs and earlier object relations.

Transference Neurosis (Pa.): that phase of transference during some psychoanalyses when the most fundamental ambivalence conflicts of the individual are displaced on the therapist and become compulsive.

Trauma (M.): an external event which acts as a primary or precipitating cause of a symptom or disease.

Traumatic Neurosis (Py.): a mental disorder caused by an acute emotional trauma, characterized especially by inhibition of normal functions, intense anxiety, and the marked tendency to repeat the emotions of the trauma, and to reproduce portions of it in hallucinations or catastrophic dreams. “Shell-shock” or “combat neurosis” of soldiers in battle is the most common traumatic neurosis.

Ulcer, Gastric (M.): a medical or psychosomatic disease producing erosions of the inner wall of the stomach.

Umbilical Cord (M.): the cord attaching the unborn foetus or infant to his mother's womb.

Unconscious

(1) adjective: unaware, inaccessible to consciousness by an effort of voluntary attention.

(2) noun, “the Unconscious” (Pa.): an inclusive abstraction of all unconscious mental phenomena.

(3) noun, the “System Unconscious” (Pa.): in the early theory of personality structure (q.v.), a “region” of the mind controlled by the “primary process” (q.v.) and differentiated from the System Conscious, or ego.

Urethra (M.): the tube by which urine is excreted from the bladder.

Urethral Erotism (Pa.)

(1) conscious or unconscious wishes for sensory pleasure by urination, and associated fantasies. instincts.

(2) in theory, a partial aim of the sexual instincts.

Uterus: the female organ in which the infant develops prior to birth; the womb.

Vagina: the female organ which receives the penis in sexual intercourse.

Wild Analysis: therapeutic psychoanalysis by the untrained and unqualified.

Wish (Pa.): a fantasy; the representation of an instinct in the mind, especially unconscious psychosexual and hostile fantasies associated with infantile aims and objects; an “instinct-representation.”