Undoing is a defense mechanism in which a person tries to cancel out or remove an unhealthy, destructive or otherwise threatening thought or action by engaging in contrary behavior.
Undoing refers to the phenomenon whereby a person tries to alter the past in some way to avoid or feign disappearance of an adversity or mishap.
[4] Freud then went on to use '"undoing" what has been done...[as] good enough grounds for re-introducing the old concept of defence, which can cover all these processes that have the same purpose—namely the protection of the ego against instinctual demands'[5]—one of the major technical advances of his later years.
Anna Freud listed it among the ego mechanisms; Ernest Jones and Ella Freeman Sharpe both wrote articles linking it with 'actions and attitudes aimed at the undoing of imaginative destructions.
B. Pontalis laid stress on how 'Undoing in the pathological sense is directed at the act's very reality, and the aim is to suppress it absolutely, as though time were reversed'.
This theory, as stipulated by Medvec, Madey and Gilovich (1995) states that Undoing can occur as an automatic response to a situation.
These negative emotions are influenced by the physiological support mechanisms, such as the physical energy, that relies on the body to mobilize at an optimal level for individual action to react.
In the attack or flee situation, it produces heightened cardiovascular re-activity that redistributes blood flow to relevant skeletal muscles.
[14] Undoing is tentatively classified at the "Mental inhibitions (compromise formation) level" in DSM-IV-TR's proposed Defensive Functioning Scale (under Appendix B, "Criteria Sets and Axes Provided for Further Study.