In psychoanalytic theory, regression is a defense mechanism involving the reversion of the ego to an earlier stage of psychosexual development, as a reaction to an overwhelming external problem or internal conflict.
[1] Sigmund Freud invoked the notion of regression in relation to his theory of dreams (1900) and sexual perversions (1905), but the concept itself was first elaborated in his paper "The Disposition to Obsessional Neurosis" (1913).
This regression appears to be a twofold one: a temporal one, in so far as the libido, the erotic needs, hark back to stages of development that are earlier in time, and a formal one, in that the original and primitive methods of psychic expression are employed in manifesting those needs".
Carl Jung had earlier argued that 'the patient's regressive tendency...is not just a relapse into infantilism, but an attempt to get at something necessary...the universal feeling of childhood innocence, the sense of security, of protection, of reciprocated love, of trust'.
[13] Jungians had however already warned that 'romantic regression meant a surrender to the non-rational side which had to be paid for by a sacrifice of the rational and individual side';[14] and Freud for his part had dourly noted that 'this extraordinary plasticity of mental developments is not unrestricted in direction; it may be described as a special capacity for involution – regression – since it may well happen that a later and higher level of development, once abandoned, cannot be reached again'.
[15] Anna Freud (1936) ranked regression first in her enumeration of the defense mechanisms',[16] and similarly suggested that people act out behaviors from the stage of psychosexual development in which they are fixated.