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"[[disavowal]]" ([[Fr]]. ''[[déni]]'')
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[[Freud]] uses the term ''Verleugnung'' to denote "a specific mode of defence which consists in the subject's refusing to recognize the reality of a traumatic perception."<ref>Laplanche and Pontalia. 1967. p.118</ref>
He introduces the term 1923 in connection with the [[castration complex]], the traumatic perception being the sight of the female genitalia; when children first discover the [[absence]] of the [[penis]] in the girl, they "disavow the fact and believe that they do see a penis all the time."<ref>Freud. 1923e. SE XIX. p.143-4</ref>
[[Freud]] continues to employ the term throughout the rest of his work, linking it specifically both to [[psychosis]] and to [[fetishism]].
In these clinical conditions, [[disavowal]] is always accompanied by the opposite attitude (acceptance of reality), since it is "rarely or perhaps never" possible for "the ego's detachment from reality to be carried through completely."<ref>Freud. 1940a. SE XXIII. p.201</ref>
The coexistence in the [[ego]] of these two contradictory attitudes to reality leads to what [[Freud]] terms "the splitting of the ego."
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While [[Freud]]'s use of the term is quite consistent, he does not distinguish the term rigorously from the other related operations.
[[Lacan]], however, works the term into a rigorous theory, relating it and constrasting it specifically with the operations of [[repression]] and [[foreclosure]].
Whereas [[Freud]] had only linked [[disavowal]] to one form of [[perversion]], [[Lacan]] makes it the fundamental operation in all forms of [[perversion]].
And whereas [[Freud]] had also linked [[disavowal]] with [[psychosis]], [[Lacan]] limits [[disavowal]] exclusively to the [[structure]] of [[perversion]].
[[Disavowal]] is the fundamental operation in [[perversion]], just as [[repression]] and [[foreclosure]] are the fundamental operations in [[neurosis]] and [[psychosis]].
Thus, in [[Lacan]]'s account, [[disavowal]] is one way of responding to the [[castration]] of the [[Other]], whereas the [[neurotic]] [[repress]]es the realization of [[castration]], the [[pervert]] disavows it.
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Like [[Freud]], [[Lacan]] asserts that [[disavowal]] is always accompanied by a simultaneously acknowledgement of what is disavowed.
Thus the [[pervert]] is not simply ignorant of [[castration]]; he simultaneously knows it and denis it.
Whereas the term [[disavowal]] originally denotes, in [[Freud]]'s work, only one side of this operation (the side of denial), for [[Lacan]] the term comes to denote both sides, the simultaneous denial and recognition of [[castration]].
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Whereas [[Freud]] relates [[disavowal]] to the perception of the [[absence]] of the [[penis]] in [[women]], [[Lacan]] relates it to the realization of the [[absence]] of the [[phallus]] in the [[Other]].
The traumatic perception is, in [[Lacan]]'s account, the realization that the [[cause]] of [[desire]] is always a [[lack]].
It is this realization that [[disavowal]] concerns; [[disavowal]] is the failure to accept that [[lack]] causes [[desire]], the belief that [[desire]] is caused by a [[presence]] (e.g. the [[fetish]]).
