Psychoanalytical Terms
repression: the unconscious exclusion of painful impulses, desires, or fears from the conscious mind.
voyeurism: perversion in which a person receives sexual gratification from seeing the genitalia of others or witnessing others' sexual behavior.
scopophilia: The love of looking. The term refers to the predominantly male gaze of Holloywood cinema, which enjoys objectfying women into mere objects to be looked at (rather than subjects with their own voice and subjectivity). The term, as used in feminist film criticism, is heavily influenced by both Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis.
Oedipus crisis: a stage where the child experiences an erotic attachment to one parent and hostility toward the other parent.
Elektra complex: a daughter's unconscious libidinal desire for her father.
castration anxiety: a child's fear of injury to the genitals by the parent of the same sex as punishment for unconscious guilt over oedipal feelings.
Id: the division of the psyche that is totally unconscious and serves as the source of instinctual impulses and demands for immediate satisfaction of primitive needs.
Ego: the division of the psyche that is conscious, most immediately controls thought and behavior, and mediates between the person and external reality.
Superego: the division of the psyche that censors and restrains the ego and has identified itself unconsciously with important persons from early life. It results from incorporating the values and wishes of these persons into one's own standards.
disavowal: denial of any connection with or knowledge of.
free association: A psychoanalytic technique in which a patient's articulation of free associations is encouraged in order to reveal unconscious thoughts and emotions, such as traumatic experiences that have been repressed.
transference: the process by which emotions and desires originally associated with one person, such as a parent or sibling, are unconsciously shifted to another person, especially to the analyst.
displacement:A psychological defense mechanism in which there is an unconscious shift of emotions, affect, or desires from the original object to a more acceptable or immediate substitute.
condensation: The process by which a single symbol or word is associated with the emotional content of several, not necessarily related, ideas, feelings, memories, or impulses, especially as expressed in dreams.
the unconscious: a part of the mind that stores repressed memories.
psychosexual development: (psychoanalysis) the process during which personality and sexual behavior mature through a series of stages: first oral stage and then anal stage and then phallic stage and then latency stage and finally genital stage.
libido: (psychoanalysis) a Freudian term for sexual urge or desire.
eros: sexual drive.
thanatos: death drive.
sadomasochism: The combination of sadism and masochism, in particular the deriving of pleasure, especially sexual gratification, from inflicting or submitting to physical or emotional abuse.
regression: Reversion to an earlier or less mature pattern of feeling or behavior.
obsessive compulsion: an irrational motive for performing trivial or repetitive actions against your will.
repetition compulsion: when a person repeats a traumatic event or something having to do with it over and over again in an attempt to deal with it. This "re-living" can take the form of dreams, repeating the story of what happened, and even hallucinations.
identity crisis: a period in the psychological development of an individual, generally occuring during adolescence, usually manifestated by a loss of the sense of the sameness and historical continuity of one's self, confusion over values, or an inability to accept the role the individual perceives as being expected of him by soceity.
surrealism: pure psychic automatism, by which one proposes to express, either verbally, or in writing, or by any other manner, the real functioning of thought. Dictation of thought in the absence of all control exercised by reason, outside of all aesthetic and moral preoccupation.
mirror stage: the young child's identification with his own image (what Lacan terms the "Ideal-I" or "Ideal ego"), a stage that occurs anywhere from 6-18 months of age.
imaginary stages: a preverbal/verbal stage in which a child (around 6-18 months of age) begins to develop a sense of separateness from her mother as well as other people and objects; however, the child's sense of sense is still incomplete.
symbolic stages: the stage marking a child's entrance into language (the ability to understand and generate symbols); in contrast to the imaginary stage, largely focused on the mother, the symbolic stage shifts attention to the father who, in Lacanian theory, represents cultural norms, laws, language, and power (the symbol of power is the phallus--an arguably "gender-neutral" term).
voyeurism: perversion in which a person receives sexual gratification from seeing the genitalia of others or witnessing others' sexual behavior.
scopophilia: The love of looking. The term refers to the predominantly male gaze of Holloywood cinema, which enjoys objectfying women into mere objects to be looked at (rather than subjects with their own voice and subjectivity). The term, as used in feminist film criticism, is heavily influenced by both Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis.
Oedipus crisis: a stage where the child experiences an erotic attachment to one parent and hostility toward the other parent.
Elektra complex: a daughter's unconscious libidinal desire for her father.
castration anxiety: a child's fear of injury to the genitals by the parent of the same sex as punishment for unconscious guilt over oedipal feelings.
Id: the division of the psyche that is totally unconscious and serves as the source of instinctual impulses and demands for immediate satisfaction of primitive needs.
Ego: the division of the psyche that is conscious, most immediately controls thought and behavior, and mediates between the person and external reality.
Superego: the division of the psyche that censors and restrains the ego and has identified itself unconsciously with important persons from early life. It results from incorporating the values and wishes of these persons into one's own standards.
disavowal: denial of any connection with or knowledge of.
free association: A psychoanalytic technique in which a patient's articulation of free associations is encouraged in order to reveal unconscious thoughts and emotions, such as traumatic experiences that have been repressed.
transference: the process by which emotions and desires originally associated with one person, such as a parent or sibling, are unconsciously shifted to another person, especially to the analyst.
displacement:A psychological defense mechanism in which there is an unconscious shift of emotions, affect, or desires from the original object to a more acceptable or immediate substitute.
condensation: The process by which a single symbol or word is associated with the emotional content of several, not necessarily related, ideas, feelings, memories, or impulses, especially as expressed in dreams.
the unconscious: a part of the mind that stores repressed memories.
psychosexual development: (psychoanalysis) the process during which personality and sexual behavior mature through a series of stages: first oral stage and then anal stage and then phallic stage and then latency stage and finally genital stage.
libido: (psychoanalysis) a Freudian term for sexual urge or desire.
eros: sexual drive.
thanatos: death drive.
sadomasochism: The combination of sadism and masochism, in particular the deriving of pleasure, especially sexual gratification, from inflicting or submitting to physical or emotional abuse.
regression: Reversion to an earlier or less mature pattern of feeling or behavior.
obsessive compulsion: an irrational motive for performing trivial or repetitive actions against your will.
repetition compulsion: when a person repeats a traumatic event or something having to do with it over and over again in an attempt to deal with it. This "re-living" can take the form of dreams, repeating the story of what happened, and even hallucinations.
identity crisis: a period in the psychological development of an individual, generally occuring during adolescence, usually manifestated by a loss of the sense of the sameness and historical continuity of one's self, confusion over values, or an inability to accept the role the individual perceives as being expected of him by soceity.
surrealism: pure psychic automatism, by which one proposes to express, either verbally, or in writing, or by any other manner, the real functioning of thought. Dictation of thought in the absence of all control exercised by reason, outside of all aesthetic and moral preoccupation.
mirror stage: the young child's identification with his own image (what Lacan terms the "Ideal-I" or "Ideal ego"), a stage that occurs anywhere from 6-18 months of age.
imaginary stages: a preverbal/verbal stage in which a child (around 6-18 months of age) begins to develop a sense of separateness from her mother as well as other people and objects; however, the child's sense of sense is still incomplete.
symbolic stages: the stage marking a child's entrance into language (the ability to understand and generate symbols); in contrast to the imaginary stage, largely focused on the mother, the symbolic stage shifts attention to the father who, in Lacanian theory, represents cultural norms, laws, language, and power (the symbol of power is the phallus--an arguably "gender-neutral" term).