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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 this, her described a "transposition," a "[[displacement]]" connected with an economic charge (for example, anxiety or [[sexual ]] excitement) and with a "[[complex ]] of representations" (in a process of [[symbolic ]] transposition), these two [[processes ]] [[being ]] able to function separately.

Freud resorted frequently to this [[idea ]] in the following years: this was, in fact, a key notion in the [[metapsychology ]] he was drafting, since he was describing the [[mechanism ]] by which the [[repressed ]] element could succeed in returning to [[conscious ]] [[life ]] and to [[behavior]]. At first, he limited the application of this mechanism to [[obsessional ]] neurosis. But the [[dual ]] function attributed to it (economic [[discharge ]] and symbolic transposition), the unification of the field of the [[return ]] of the repressed (including [[neurotic ]] [[symptoms]], [[dreams]], [[slips of the tongue]], failed actions, and some "normal" behavior), its contiguity with related notions (like those of compromise formation or reactive formation), and the deepening of Freud's [[thoughts ]] on mechanisms of defense, all led him to the expression of much wider views on the [[subject ]] in 1915 (notably in "[[Repression]]" [1915d] and "The [[Unconscious]]" [1915e]). He revised it even further in Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety (1926d), as part of his overall views on [[symptom ]] formation and his second [[theory ]] of anxiety.

See also: Compromise formation; [[Formations ]] of the unconscious; Psychogenic blindness; [[Reaction-formation]]; Repressed, derivative of the, [[derivative of the unconscious]]; "Repression," Substitute/substitutive formation.[[Bibliography]]