Could anyone give me some real-life examples of "reaction formation"? I understand that it's the redirection of a denied impulse unto a substitute target, but I don't seem to be able to relate this to a specific kind of behavior or process.

-- visualize me (visualizeme@webtv.net), November 16, 2001

Answers

Norman Cameron & Ann Magaret, in Behavior Pathology (Houghton Mifflin, 1951) give the following example:

"A mother ... may initially dislike and reject her baby; but because of the guilt which this tabooo attitude arouses in her, she reacts instead with a chronically overprotective affection in which her hostility is almost buried. As son, whose aged father's death will bring riches and freedom, compensates for his half-recognized or unrecognized death-wishes by the exaggerated solicitude with which he watches over his father's health and guards him from mishap." (p. 377)

A real-life example might be a congressman who has an affair, pays for his girl-friend to have an abortion, then becomes an ardent anti- abortion advocate.

-- Hendrika Vande Kemp (hendrika@earthlink.net), November 16, 2001.

Thank you, Hendrika.

I believe it's a more complicated process than the ones you describe. I "googled" it but found nothing except that it wasn't defined by Freud as I had thought, but by his daugher Anna. So I tried to find her writings online, but no success.

-- visualize me (visualizeme@webtv.net), November 17, 2001.

The example that comes to my mind is common among young children: A little boy likes a little girl, so he hits her and is mean to her.

-- Sharon Cheairs (cjshrink@lcc.net), June 25, 2004.