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One of the commonest mechanisms encountered in psychoanalysis is that of displacement; yet there remains much clarification and definition to be achieved before we can claim to understand it. Substitute formation is another term which in psychoanalytic usage has never been clearly distinguished from it. Freud uses the two terms together when he refers to a “displacement substitute”; but when we attempt to define the process certain questions naturally arise as to: (1) what is displaced? (2) where is the energy involved in the displacement? (3) In what direction does displacement occur?
Basically the concept of displacement is a mechanistic or physical one inherent in the libido theory which represents libido as a more or less constant quantity of psychic or instinct energy available for the organism. Freud (17) states, “An instinct may be described as having a source, an object and an aim. The source is a state of excitation within the body, and its aim is to remove that excitation. We picture it as a certain sum of energy forcing its way in a certain direction.” So that answers our first question. We may say that psychic energy is displaced from one channel to another. A man who loses his eyesight does not continue to turn his energy to his ocular organ, but to the organs of hearings, taste, smell and touch which become sharper through the increased “cathexis” or flow of psychic energy to these parts. It is characteristic of the id or instincive energy that if its usual and normal channels are blocked, it will, like a fluid, find some other channel or channels.