Disavowal: A Review of Applications in Recent Literature

Psychoanalysis has always been fundamentally concerned with the content and process of what is included or excluded from awareness, yet disavowal has been assigned various explanations as psychoanalytic metapsychology and clinical theory have evolved. This paper will examine the variety of meanings assigned to the phenomenon of disavowal as influential critiques and revisions of psychoanalysis in recent years have broadened its emphasis from a specific defense to a more inclusive concept. Rather than attempting an exhaustive review, the intent of this work is to highlight the expanding application of disavowal and to suggest some implications of its current use. At present, disavowal is assigned its broadest meaning as a description of the brain's ordinary process of selectively screening the affective significance of information in the service of overall ordered function. As such, it forms a basis for personality organization and defense. In a narrower application, disavowal refers to a mode of selective attention utilizing pre-operational thought in the service of defense. It is suggested that disavowal in its current use serves as a bridge between clinical observations of self-protective processes and the general study of the circumstances and methods in which the integration of affectively laden information is facilitated or foreclosed.

Kohut (1971) focused attention on disavowal when he postulated that it was the operant defense in patients who seemed to have two conscious, but noncommunicating aspects in their mental life. He wondered about the nature of the defense which created a barrier that did not allow the