Recently, a woman was complaining about how an ex-boyfriend was badmouthing her around town because she broke up with him.  The friend she was talking to replied:  “Oh, he’s just being passive-aggressive.”  In fact, in his anger the boyfriend is deliberately trying to hurt this woman by smearing her reputation.  You can call it passive-aggressive, but [...]

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 [...]

  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 [...]

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 [...]