Transgression

The notion of transgression entered psychoanalysis only gradually. In fact, the word already had a well-established meaning in ethnology, a science from which Sigmund Freud drew inspiration. Its definition was to some extent a negative one, in opposition to taboo (a term that was itself borrowed from the Polynesian language), prohibition, and law. Transgression is anything that involves the contravention of explicit or implicit rules, both in the course of the treatment and in conflictual unconscious.