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A basic working concept in psychology and psychoanalysis is that of denial . Every individual denies some realities that are too painful, traumatic, or evoke otherwise uncomfortable emotions. The acknowledgment of affect associated with certain realities also may be denied. Individuals who deny reality avoid confrontation with painful information and facts by repression, avoidance, or projection of guilt and responsibility away from the self and onto others. Every psychiatrist knows, however, that although this denial brings about temporary relief from feelings of discomfort, in the long run it may be a dysfunctional adaptation, inhibiting reality-based coping and setting up an unrealistic and unhealthy response to conflict situations (Broucek, 1991; A. Freud and Sandler, 1985; Milburn and Conrad, 1996.) Increasingly, it is not only psychiatrists and psychologists who recognize denial. The concept has entered the mainstream of American discourse, as illustrated daily on television talk shows, where host, guests, and “experts” are closely aligned in their ability to recognize and confront someone “in denial.”
At the same time that the American public has become aware of individual denial responses, however, they are quite blind to civic collusion to deny social aspects of reality. One can posit a form of denial within societal groups that parallels psychological denial on the part of the ego. This is a kind of social denial. When social denial is initiated by, or colluded in by those with direct or indirect local, state, or national authority to portray the past, it can be called civic denial. Civic denial can be defined as a faulty recreation of discrediting events by those with direct or indirect governmental authority, in order to make these events