Recently I came upon a blog post by “Jennifer” who rightfully complained that parents or separated or divorced partners will frequently use children as pawns in their covert wars with one another.  She wrote: Some parents get blinded by their own emotions and stuff going on in their lives that they fail to see the affects, hurt and damage caused by their actions. One of such examples is a parent who use and manipulate their... 

I recently read a blog post in which Jeremy presented submissions from his readers about the “psychobable” they find the most irritating.  Interestingly, two of the comments (numbers 4 and 9) are very much in line with my posts on “acting-out” and “denial,” which are part of a series I’m doing on the top 5 most frequently misused terms in mental health.  Here are some exerpts from Jeremy’s... 

  In the “jargon” of mental health professionals one frequently hears the term “acting-out.” It is amazing how frequently this term is misused. As was the case with “denial” true acting-out is an unconscious ego defense mechanism. Without knowing it, persons who act-out engage in some kind of behavior (as opposed to a psycho-physiological or other kind of “symptom”) that serves to ease the emotional pain and anxiety... 

Anyone familiar with the “jargon” of mental health professionals of all persuasions has undoubtedly heard the term denial.  What you may not know is that it’s fairly common not only for professionals but also for others to use the term improperly or in a poorly defined or over-generalized manner.  In classical (psychodynamic) psychology, denial is an unconscious ego defense mechanism.  Basically, that means that a... 

In most unhealthy relationships, at least one of the persons is likely to have a significant disturbance of character. Relationships can be particularly unhealthy if one person is significantly character disturbed and the other is overly neurotic. The primary defining qualities of the disturbed character are a deficient, immature, or absent conscience, ego inflation, problematic attitudes and thinking patterns, and irresponsible behavior... 

At a psychological level, the art of manipulation primarily involves two things: concealing aggressive intentions and behaviors and knowing the psychological vulnerabilities of your opponent well enough to know what tactics are likely to be the most effective weapons against them. Psychological manipulation is most often accomplished through covert-aggression or aggression that is so carefully veiled or so subtle that it’s not easily detected....