Concepts in psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis is a discipline in which there are many difficult and often-misunderstood concepts. Here are some straightforward explanations of many of them.

Abjection: a state of deep and sickening horror.
The chora: the initial chaotic state in a child's life.
Counter-transference: is the effect that transference has on a person.
The depressive position: where good and bad are realized as one.
Desire: a component of loss and lack.
Good object, bad object: separating the comforting from the unpleasant.
The good-enough mother: who supports healthy development.
Identification: seeking to join with others.
Incorporation: primitive taking into the body.
Internalization: installation of objects in the ego.
Introjective identification: taking another's good objects.
Jouissance: pleasure too great to bear.
Life and death drives: Eros and Thanatos.
Mirror phase: image, self and misrecognition.
Narcissism: exclusive self-love.
The neonatal phase: early undifferentiated unity.
Object: something to which a Subject relates.
Object Relations Theory: relationships between people and their objects.
Oedipus Complex: mother, son, father, complications.
Other: Who is not the subject so creates the subject.
The paranoid-schizoid position: paranoid fear and projecting bad objects.
Phallus: A symbol of male power and female lack.
Phantasy vs. fantasy: unconscious vs. conscious imaginings.
Play: development and imagining.
Pleasure-pain principle: seeking immediate gratification, avoiding discomfort.
Projection and Introjection: taking in and pushing out objects.
Projective identification: expelling a bad object into another person.
Reality principle: Pragmatic deferral of pleasure.
Splitting: separating one item into two so they can be handled separately.
The Symbolic register: stage of acquiring language and symbols.
Three registers of human reality: real, imaginary, symbolic.
Transference: projecting one person's character onto another person.
The Transition Object: not-me and carer-substitute that helps transition.
True self, false self: healthy and not.

Concepts in psychoanalysis

See also