Denial (Freud)

Part of a series of articles on
Psychoanalysis
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

Denial or abnegation (German: Verleugnung, Verneinung) is a psychological defense mechanism postulated by psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, in which a person is faced with a fact that is too uncomfortable to accept and rejects it instead, insisting that it is not true despite what may be overwhelming evidence.^[1][2]

The subject may use:

• simple denial: deny the reality of the unpleasant fact altogether
• minimisation: admit the fact but deny its seriousness (a combination of denial and rationalization)
• projection: admit both the fact and seriousness but deny responsibility by blaming somebody or something else