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The term ==Sigmund Freud====''Verleugnung''==[[disavowalFreud]]uses the term ' (''Verleugnung'') (''déni'') - often translated as '[[disavowalDisavowal|denialVerleugnung]]' - denotes ' to denote "a mental specific mode of [[actdefence]] that which consists in rejecting the [[realitysubject]] 's refusing to recognize the reality of a [[traumatic]] [[perception on account ]]."<ref>Laplanche, Jean and Pontalis, Jean-Bertrand. ''The [[Language]] of its potentially [[traumaPsycho]]-[[Analysis]tic associations]'', trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith, [[London]]: Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1973 [1967]. p. 118</ref>

==Disavowal and FreudCastration Complex==The notion of [[disavowal]] made its appearance rather late in [[Freud]]'s work.For years he was content to describe the little boy's refusal to recognize He introduces the absence of a penis in a little girl, as observed in clinical practice, without employing a specific term. Thus, in his "On the Sexual Theories of Children" (1908c) and 1923 in connection with the case history of "Little Hans" (1909b), he noted the phenomenon and described it in terms of a rejection of perceptual evidence. Little boys, he argued, do not doubt "that a genital like [their] own is to be attributed to everyone [they] know. . . . This conviction is energetically maintained by boys, is obstinately defended against the contradictions which soon result from observation, and is only abandoned after severe internal struggles (the castration complex)." The period concerned]], lasting approximately from three to five years of age, Freud dubs the "phallic stage" in view of the narcissistic hypercathexis of the idea of the penis by which it is usually characterized—especially in the little boy, who finds it unthinkable that anyone worthy of respect should be without a penis, least of all his mother.The little girl cannot similarly reject the traumatic perception of her own lack of a penis. However, in certain young girls, Freud notes "the hope of some day obtaining a penis in spite of everything and so becoming like a man may persist to an incredibly late age and may become a motive for strange and otherwise unaccountable actions."Freud's first reference to the term was in the "[[Wolf Manbeing]]" case history,<ref>1918b [1914], see also 1914a</ref> where he conceived of the [[disavowalsight]] as operating between at least two regions of the [[egofemale]] which invalidated one another. Thus one region might accept the [[symbolicbiology|genitalia]] character of ; when [[castrationchild]] and ren first discover the [[sexual differenceabsence]] while the other embraced the all-or-nothing logic of the [[phallic structurepenis]], and everything proceeded as though in the two spheres had no influence upon each other at all.Beginning with the ''[[Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysisgirl]]'',<ref>1916-17a</ref> [[Freud]] began systematically using they "disavow the verb ''verleugnen'' to refer to the mental act of rejecting fact and believe that they do see a perception as inconceivable.The noun form — ''die Verleugnung'' ([[disavowal]]) — was not used to designate penis all the [[metapsychology|metapsychologicaltime]] concept until a little later."<ref>1925h</ref>It was mainly in his late work, in ''{{F}}. "[[A Short Account Works of Psychoanalysis]]''<ref>1940a [1938]</ref> and ''[[The Splitting of the Ego in the Process of Defense]]'',<ref>1940e [1938]</ref> that [[Sigmund Freud]] sought to anchor the specificity of [[disavowal]] by situating it within the particular [[topography]] of the split [[ego]].In ''[[|The Infantile Genital Organization]]''",<ref>1923e</ref> . [[FreudSE]] reasserted that only the male organ played a significant role in the mind of the child of either sex around three years of ageXIX. The child could understand the absence of a penis only as the result of castrationpp. It was therefore the manner in which the initial disavowal was overcome that determined the castration complex to which the individual would become subject. Returning to this crucial question in ''[[Psychical Consequences of the Anatomical Distinction between the Sexes]]'',<ref>1925j143-4</ref> [[Freud]] presented [[castration]] as a result of a '[[deferred action]],' the threatening nature of the possible [[absence]] of the [[penis]] assuming its full mental force only after a more or less extended period of [[disavowal]]. ==Psychosis and Fetishism==[[Freud]] also noted that continues to employ the persistence of such [[disavowal]] beyond term throughout the phallic period, into adolescence and adulthood, could lead to a form rest of his [[mental illnesswork]]: "The process I would like to describe as denial [''Verleugnung''] ... appears to be neither rare nor very dangerous for the mental life of the child, but in adults linking it could lead to psychosis."Moreover, Freud had published two observations of young men in whom denial of the lack of a penis appeared specifically both to determine the outbreak of [[psychosis|psychotic]] and to [[symptom|symptomsfetishism]].<ref>1914a</ref>The first was =="Splitting of the famous Ego"==In these [[Wolf Mantreatment|clinical conditions]]," whom Freud claimed had "dismissed" [''verwarf''] the "[[realitydisavowal]] [sic] is always accompanied by the opposite attitude (acceptance of [[castrationreality]]),since it is " that he "refused to know anything about it, in the sense of repressing it. He did not actually pass judgment as to whether it existed rarely or not, [castration] but effectively it did not.perhaps never" This rejection, as inconceivable, of the possible [[absence]] of for "the [[penis]] was what triggered the [[patient]]ego's returning [[hallucination]] of a severed little finger. For [[Freud]], then, the [[psychosis|psychotic]] [[ego]] disavowed perceptual [[detachment from reality]] in a way somewhat akin to the way a [[neurosis|neurotic]] [[repression|repressed]] certain [[instincts|instinctual]] [[demand]]sbe carried through completely.But "<ref>{{F}} ''[[Works of Sigmund Freud]] subsequently went on to broaden his clinical work on [[disavowal]] well beyond the realm |An Outline of [[psychosisPsycho-Analysis]]. In '', 1940a. [[FetishismSE]]''<ref>1927eXXIII. p. 201</ref> he reported a case of two young men each of whom denied  The coexistence in the [[deathego]] of his these two contradictory attitudes to reality leads to what [[fatherFreud]]. However, Freud notes, neither of them developed a [[psychosisterms]], even though a "piece of reality which was undoubtedly important has been disavowed [''verleugnet''], just as the unwelcome fact of women's castration is disavowed in fetishists."He then returned to the notion of the [[splitting of the ego]], presenting it as the [[topology|topographical]] corollary of the mechanism of [[disavowal]]: the possible juxtaposition in the [[psyche]] of at least two incompatible mental attitudes that appeared to have no influence on one anotherego. It was no longer a question, therefore, of treating [[disavowal]] as the disavowal "of" something but rather as a mutual disavowal, a disjunction "between" two discrete realms of the split [[ego]]. Similar disavowals were common, [[Freud]] noted, and not merely among [[fetishism|fetishists]]. In his later works Freud maintained that [[disavowal]] was present to varying degrees in [[psychosis]], [[perversion]], and very possibly too in all normal [[subject]]s. ==Jacques Lacan==He offered an instance from his personal experience in a public letter to Romain Roll - ==Repression and ("A Disturbance of Memory on the Acropolis," 1936a, p. 245).Foreclosure==It was also in his paper on "Fetishism" that While [[Freud]] showed that disavowal, unlike [[repression]], did not erase the idea or perception in question but only its meaning; this was why he rejected the term '[[scotomization]]' proposed by René Laforgue.<ref>1927e, pp. 153-54</ref>[[Disavowal]] was in fact a suspension s use of the function of judgmentterm is quite consistent, of that same attributing judgment he felt was decisive in does not distinguish the formation of term rigorously from the [[ego]]other related operations. As a consequence of his methodological concern more clearly to distinguish [[disavowal]] and [[repressionLacan]], he ended by suggesting that repression treated however, works the term into a rigorous [[affecttheory]] as disavowal treated the idea, which may be taken to mean that [[repression]] no more eliminates the [[affect]] (relating it is only displaced) than disavowal erases the idea (whose meaning alone remains obscure).This having been said, and contrasting it is important to recognize that all specifically with the clinical illustrations operations of disavowal supplied by [[Freud]] over a thirty-year period are based on two canonical illustrations: the disavowal of [[women]]'s [[lack]] of a [[penisrepression]] and the disavowal of the [[death]] of the [[fatherforeclosure]]. [[Disavowal]] is thus always a disavowal of [[absence]], which is why it is so important in the process of symbolization. In fact, ==Perversion==Whereas [[Freud]] specifies as a prerequisite of [[symbolization]] the ability to represent the [[object]] to oneself as something that can be absent: an object, he says, can had only be symbolized in absentia. The linked [[disavowal]] (of [[absence]]) therefore constitutes a fundamental obstacle to the very process of constructing psychic one [[reality]form], and in this it is quite distinct from [[negation]], which operates as the starting point of the ([[preconscious]]) mental recognition of something: disavowal and negation are radically different in their logical functions.[[Disavowalperversion]], as opposed to [[negationLacan]], is a [[narcissism|narcissistic]] expedient whereby the [[individual]] seeks to avoid acknowledging absences or shortcomings of key parental figures ([[castration]] of the [[mother]], [[death]] of the [[father]]). In practice, however, makes it transpires that persistent disavowal hardly allows the subject to overcome the [[trauma]]tic burden of the representations fundamental operation in question; indeed the potential latent virulence of these representations appears rather to be made permanent by the invalidation all forms of possible [[symbolicperversion]] links. Moreover, whatever suffering [[disavowal]] and [[splitting]] may spare the [[subject]]'s [[consciousness]] is generally proportionately visited upon those around him.In the And whereas [[treatmentFreud]] of [[patient]]s afflicted by enduring had also linked [[disavowal]], everything suggests that they want to leave the responsibility of thinking what is for them unthinkable, of integrating what they cannot integrate, up to the "other" member in the therapeutic relationship. This occurs primarily through the mechanism of with [[projection|projectivepsychosis]] [[identification]], which requires considerable psychic expenditure on the part of that other person, often within a very painful experiential realm. This kind of detour through the mental economy of the therapist is seemingly a necessary but not sufficient condition for the subject's successful integration of such elements into a symbolic interplay thanks to which the [[pleasure principle]] can again become effective.[[Jacques Lacan]] in his 1956-1957 [[seminar]] on ''[[Object Relations]]'', talks about limits [[disavowal]] (he uses exclusively to the French ''démenti'') as a fundamental mechanism of the so-called [[perversion|perverse structure]], with its characteristic manner of treating [[castration]]: simultaneously rejecting and accepting it. He employs the term '[[foreclosure]]' to refer to the mechanism of [[symbolic]] [[denial]], which he feels is a key factor in [[psychosisperversion]].

 Thus, in [[Lacan]]'s account, [[disavowal ]] is one way of responding to the [[castration]] of the [[Other]]; , whereas the [[neurosis|neurotic]] represses [[repress]]es the realization of [[castration]], the [[perversion|pervert]] disavows it. ==Knowledge==Like [[Freud]], [[Lacan]] asserts that [[disavowal]] is always accompanied by a silmultaneous simultaneous [[knowledge|acknowledgement ]] of what is disavowed. Thus the [[perversion|pervert]] is not simply [[knowledge|ignorant ]] of [[castration]]; he simultaneously [[knowledge|knows ]] it and denies 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]]. ==Lack and Desire== 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 [[trauma]]tic perception is, in [[Lacan]]'s acccountaccount, the realization that the [[cause ]] of [[desire]] is always a [[lack]]. It is this realization that [[Disavowaldisavowal]] concerns; [[disavowal]] is the failure to accept that [[lack]] causes [[desire]], the [[belief]] that [[desire ]] is caused by a [[presence]] (e.g. the [[fetishism|fetish]]).

||* [[NegationForeclosure]]* [[RepudiationLack]]||* [[Neurosis]]* [[Perversion]]||* [[Phallus]]* [[Psychosis]]||* [[Repression]]* [[Speech]]{{Also}}

== References ==<div style="font-size:11px" class="references-small">

* Freud, Sigmund. (1909b). Analysis of a phobia in a five-year-old boy ("Little Hans"). SE, 10</div>[[Category: 5-147.Psychoanalysis]]* ——. (1914a). Fausse reconnaissance ("déjà raconté") in psychoanalytic treatment. SE, 13[[Category: 201-207.Jacques Lacan]]* ——. (1918b [1914[Category:Practice]). From the history of an infantile neurosis. SE, 17][[Category: 1-122.Treatment]]* ——. (1925j). Some psychical consequences of the anatomical distinction between the sexes. SE, 19[[Category: 241-258.Dictionary]]* ——. (1927e). Fetishism. SE, 21[[Category: 147-157.Symbolic]]* ——. (1936a). A disturbance of memory on the Acropolis. SE, 22[[Category: 239-248.Concepts]]* ——. (1940e [1938[Category:Terms]]). Splitting of the ego in the process of defence. SE, 23: 271-278.* Lacan, Jacques. (1956-1957). Le séminaire-livre IV, la relation d'objet. Paris: Le Seuil.{{OK}}