Substitutive Formation

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Substitute/Substitutive Formation "Substitute" or "substitutive formation" refers to the psyche's replacement of a fact or mental object through unconscious chains of association. In the substitution, an idea, thought, or object perceived as incompatible with the ego is repressed and exchanged for another. A number of synonyms are found in Sigmund Freud's writings: "ersatz," "substitutive formation," "equivalent," "stand-in," and "replacement." In "The Neuro-Psychoses of Defence" (1894a), Freud described the formation of an obsessional idea as a substitute for an...


Substitutive Formation The name "substitute formation" has been applied to the defensive process by which a symptom—but also, more generally, a failed act, slip of the tongue, or drea—is produced. The result of this process—for example, the act or manifest text of a dream—is that desire can find a way out, and its economic charge find an outlet. The notion of substitute formation appeared in Freud in 1895, in his article on anxiety neurosis (1895b), but it was anticipated in the previous year in his work on "The Neuro-Psychoses of Defense" (1894a). In...