Complex (psychology) | Wikipedia Easy Search

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these template messages)

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.
Find sources: "Complex" psychology – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (February 2016) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (February 2008) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

(Learn how and when to remove this message)

Psychoanalysis
Part of a series of articles on

Concepts Psychosexual development Psychosocial development (Erikson) Unconscious Preconscious Consciousness Psychic apparatus Id, ego and superego Ego defenses Projection Introjection Libido Drive Transference Countertransference Resistance Denial Dreamwork Cathexis
Important figures Abraham Adler Balint Bion Breuer Chodorow Erikson Fairbairn Ferenczi Freud (Anna) Freud (Sigmund) Fromm Horney Jacobson Jones Jung Kohut Klein Kristeva Lacan Laing Laplanche Mahler Rank Reich Spielrein Stekel Sullivan Winnicott Žižek
Important works The Interpretation of Dreams (1899) The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901) Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905) Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) The Ego and the Id (1923)
Schools of thought Adlerian Ego psychology Jungian Lacanian Interpersonal Intersubjective Marxist Object relations Reichian Relational Self psychology
Training Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis British Psychoanalytic Council British Psychoanalytical Society Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research International Psychoanalytical Association World Association of Psychoanalysis List of schools of psychoanalysis
See also Child psychoanalysis Depth psychology Psychodynamics Psychoanalytic theory
Psychology portal
v t e

A complex is a structure in the unconscious that is objectified as an underlying theme—like a power or a status—by grouping clusters of emotions, memories, perceptions and wishes in response to a threat to the stability of the self. In psychoanalysis, it is antithetical to drives.^[1]^[2]

^ Marriott, David S. (2021). Lacan Noir: Lacan and Afro-pessimism. The Palgrave Lacan Series. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 55. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-74978-1. ISBN 978-3-030-74977-4. S2CID 242148951. Complex [:] It is antithetical to that of trieb[.] [I]t is a structure, just as it is a form, an activity. It represents ... experiences, behaviors, etc. ... what gets fixed, in the complex, is not reality as it is represented, but that which gets to be hallucinated as both a missing object and a 'state of objectification' (LFC, 21).
^ Schultz & Schultz 2009