Anxiety
An affect triggered when the subject is confronted with something that threatens their psychic integrity. Unlike fear (which has a definite object), anxiety is diffuse and signals the presence of unconscious contents about to emerge.
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A contextual reading index based on the supplied copy. Not a substitute for a technical psychoanalytic dictionary.
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Condensation
A mechanism of the unconscious in which several ideas, images or affects are brought together into a single representation. It is one of the central processes in the formation of dreams.
Countertransference
The set of the analyst's unconscious emotional reactions toward the patient. When recognized and analyzed, it becomes a valuable clinical tool.
Defense
The set of psychic operations the ego uses to protect itself from threatening contents. It includes mechanisms such as repression, projection and denial.
Defense mechanisms
Unconscious strategies of the ego for dealing with conflicts. They include repression, projection, rationalization, sublimation, denial, regression and reaction formation.
Displacement
A mechanism by which the emotional charge of an unconscious representation is transferred to another, seemingly insignificant one. Frequent in dreams and symptoms.
Drive
A constant force that springs from the body and demands from the psychic apparatus a work of representation. Unlike instinct, the drive is plastic and is articulated with language and culture.
Ego
The psychic agency that mediates the demands of the Id (drives), the Superego (morality) and external reality. Responsible for the subject's adaptation, defense and sense of identity.
Fantasy
An imaginary scene in which the subject is present and which represents the fulfillment of an unconscious wish. Fundamental fantasies structure the way the subject perceives themselves and the world.
Formation of the unconscious
The manifestations through which the unconscious expresses itself in conscious life: dreams, parapraxes, jokes and symptoms. They are the ‘royal road’ to knowledge of the unconscious.
Free association
The fundamental rule of psychoanalysis in which the patient is invited to say everything that comes to mind, without censorship, judgment or logical organization. It is the main method of access to the unconscious.
Id
The most primitive psychic agency, the reservoir of unconscious drives and wishes. It operates according to the pleasure principle, seeking immediate satisfaction.
Identification
The psychic process by which the subject assimilates aspects of another person, transforming themselves according to that model. Fundamental in the constitution of the ego and of affective relationships.
Interpretation
The analyst's intervention that aims to make conscious the latent meaning of a production of the unconscious — a dream, a symptom, a parapraxis. The main technical tool of psychoanalysis.
Jouissance
A Lacanian concept designating a paradoxical satisfaction that goes beyond the pleasure principle and may include suffering. It involves compulsive repetition linked to the drive.
Mourning
The psychic work carried out in the face of the loss of a loved object. Well-elaborated mourning allows the libido to be gradually detached from the lost object and reinvested in new bonds.
Narcissism
The investment of libido in one's own ego. Freud distinguished primary narcissism (a developmental stage) from secondary narcissism (the return of libido to the ego).
Neurosis
A clinical structure resulting from the conflict between the ego and the id, with repression predominating. It manifests in symptoms such as phobias, obsessions and somatic conversions.
Object
In psychoanalysis, it does not refer to a ‘thing’, but to that toward which the drive is directed. It may be a person, a part of the body, a concrete object or a phantasmatic representation.
Oedipus complex
The set of loving and hostile wishes that the child experiences toward the parents. Central to Freudian theory, it structures the subject's identity, sexuality and affective relationships.
Parapraxis
A seemingly accidental action — such as a slip of the tongue, of the pen or of memory — that reveals an unconscious wish or thought. Freud showed that these ‘mistakes’ are not random, but expressions of the unconscious.
Projection
A defense mechanism by which the subject attributes to another person feelings, wishes or qualities that they do not recognize in themselves.
Repetition
The subject's tendency to place themselves repeatedly in painful situations that reproduce past experiences. Freud related it to the death drive.
Repression
The fundamental psychic operation by which representations incompatible with the ego are kept in the unconscious. The primordial defense mechanism, the basis of the theory of the symptom.
Resistance
Everything that opposes access to the unconscious. It is not an obstacle to be eliminated, but a clinical phenomenon to be analyzed and understood.
Signifier
A central concept in Lacanian psychoanalysis. An element of language that carries no fixed meaning, but produces meaning in relation to other signifiers. The unconscious is structured like a language.
Sublimation
The process by which the energy of the drives is redirected toward socially valued activities — art, science, work — without needing to be repressed.
Superego
The psychic agency that represents the moral norms, prohibitions and ideals internalized from authority figures. It can be rigid, generating guilt.
Symptom
A compromise formation between an unconscious wish and the forces that repress it. It is, at the same time, suffering and disguised satisfaction.
Transference
The process by which the patient displaces onto the figure of the analyst feelings, wishes and patterns of relating originally experienced with significant figures from the past. The driving force of analytic treatment.
Trauma
An experience that, because of its intensity and the subject's unpreparedness, exceeds the capacity for psychic elaboration. It remains inscribed in the psyche and tends to return in the form of symptoms and repetitions.
Unconscious
The psychic system containing repressed representations, wishes and memories that are inaccessible to consciousness. It obeys its own laws (condensation, displacement) and determines a large part of human behavior.