'shift, move') is an unconscious defence mechanism whereby the mind substitutes either a new aim or a new object for things felt in their original form to be dangerous or unacceptable.
[2] Initially he saw it as a means of dream-distortion, involving a shift of emphasis from important to unimportant elements,[3] or the replacement of something by a mere illusion.
A man who has had a bad day at the office, comes home and yells at his wife and children, is displacing his anger from the workplace onto his family.
[10] Among Freud's mainstream followers, Otto Fenichel highlighted the displacement of affect, either through postponement or by redirection, or both.
She introduced and analyzed ten of her own defense mechanisms and her work has been used and increased through the years by newer psychoanalysts.
As Lacan put it, "in the case of Verschiebung, 'displacement', the German term is closer to the idea of that veering off of signification that we see in metonymy, and which from its first appearance in Freud is represented as the most appropriate means used by the unconscious to foil censorship".
Business or athletic competition, or hunting, for instance, may offer opportunities for the expression of displaced aggression.
[19] The displacement of feelings and attitudes from past significant others onto the present-day ones constitutes a central aspect of the transference, particularly in the case of the neurotic.
[21] As of now encoded in subcortical neural pathways, material from our oblivious brain is pushed into our cognizant psyche as we attempt to manage mental wonders – typically agonizing – that we are encountering.
With the "help" of mind movement, we unknowingly re-surface and re-order struggle-ridden encounters as though the past were the present and one setting were another.