Update
The Oxford Biblical Studies Online and Oxford Islamic Studies Online have retired. Content you previously purchased on Oxford Biblical Studies Online or Oxford Islamic Studies Online has now moved to Oxford Reference, Oxford Handbooks Online, Oxford Scholarship Online, or What Everyone Needs to Know®. For information on how to continue to view articles visit the subscriber services page.
Dismiss

Related Content

More Like This

Show all results sharing these subjects:

  • Science and technology
  • Psychology

GO

Show Summary Details

Overview

compromise formation


Quick Reference

In psychoanalysis, a form assumed by a repressed wish, idea, or memory to gain admission to consciousness as a symptom, usually neurotic (1), a dream (1), a parapraxis, or some other manifestation of unconscious activity, the original idea being distorted beyond recognition so that the unconscious element that needs to be repressed and consciousness that needs to be protected from it are both partially satisfied by the compromise. The idea was introduced by Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) in 1896 in his article ‘Further Remarks on the Neuro-Psychoses of Defence’ (Standard Edition, III, pp. 162–85, at p. 170) and developed further in his book Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (1916–17): ‘The two forces which have fallen out meet once again in the symptom and are reconciled. It is for that reason, too, that the symptom is so resistant: it is supported from both sides’ (Standard Edition, XV-XVI, at pp. 358–9). See also choice of neurosis, return of the repressed, substitute formation, symptom formation.


Reference entries