Transference — The unconscious redirection of feelings and expectations from past relationships onto a new person — for example, a therapist. A key concept in psychoanalysis.
Countertransference — The therapist's emotional reaction to a client, shaped by the therapist's own experience. Used as a tool for understanding the client.
Defense mechanisms — Unconscious mental processes that reduce anxiety and protect self-esteem. Examples: repression, projection, rationalization, denial.
Attachment — The emotional bond between a child and a significant caregiver (J. Bowlby). Attachment style influences adult relationships.
Cognitive distortions — Systematic thinking errors that affect perception of reality. Examples: catastrophizing, black-and-white thinking, personalization.
Empathy — The ability to understand and share another person's emotional state. Cognitive and affective empathy are distinguished.
Resilience — Psychological hardiness — the capacity to recover from stress, adapt to adversity, and maintain functioning.
Narcissism — In the clinical sense — a persistent pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and empathy deficit. Differs from healthy self-regard.
Repression — Involuntary exclusion of painful thoughts, memories, or desires from consciousness. The most fundamental defense mechanism according to Freud.
Projection — Unconscious attribution of one's own unacceptable feelings, impulses, or thoughts to another person.
Denial — Unconscious refusal to acknowledge a painful or threatening reality despite clear evidence. One of the most primitive defense mechanisms.
Catastrophizing — Tendency to imagine the worst possible outcome of a situation and treat it as inevitable. One of the most common cognitive distortions in anxiety and depression.
Black-and-white thinking — Tendency to evaluate experiences in extreme categories without intermediate nuances. Everything is perfect or disastrous, all or nothing. Also called dichotomous or polarized thinking.
Personalization — Tendency to attribute responsibility for external negative events to oneself without sufficient basis. Believing that everything happening around is related to oneself.
Overgeneralization — Drawing a general conclusion from a single incident or scanty evidence. Using words like 'always,' 'never,' 'everyone,' 'nobody' to describe patterns based on isolated cases.
Emotional reasoning — Taking emotions as evidence of reality: 'I feel worthless, therefore I must be worthless.' Confusion between feeling and being.
Personality disorders — Persistent and inflexible patterns of behavior, cognition, and inner experience that deviate from cultural expectations, causing distress or impairment. Classified into three clusters in DSM-5.
Borderline personality disorder — Pattern of instability in relationships, self-image, and affects, with marked impulsivity. Characterized by fear of abandonment, intense relationships, and rapid mood shifts.
Antisocial personality disorder — Pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others. Includes deceit, impulsivity, aggressiveness, irresponsibility, and lack of remorse. Related to the concept of psychopathy.
Manipulation tactics — Coercive interpersonal strategies used to control, confuse, or subjugate another person. Include DARVO, gaslighting, love bombing, triangulation, and others.
DARVO — Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender. A tactic of perpetrators who deny the abuse, attack the victim, and reverse roles, presenting themselves as victims.
Gaslighting — A form of psychological manipulation that makes the victim doubt their own perception, memory, and judgment. Named after the play 'Gas Light' (1938).
Therapeutic approaches — Major evidence-based models and methods of psychotherapeutic intervention.
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy — Therapeutic model focused on the relationship between thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, with extensive evidence of efficacy for multiple disorders.
Psychodynamic Therapy — Therapeutic approach rooted in the psychoanalytic tradition that explores unconscious conflicts, relational patterns, and transference to promote psychological change.
Humanistic Therapy — Person-centered therapeutic approach emphasizing self-actualization, unconditional positive regard, and the inherent growth potential of every individual.
Gestalt Therapy — Experiential therapeutic approach focused on present-moment awareness, authentic contact, and integration of dissociated aspects of experience.
Family/Systemic Therapy — Therapeutic approach that addresses psychological problems in the context of the family system, focusing on interaction patterns, communication, and relational structure.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy — Therapeutic approach developed by Marsha Linehan combining cognitive-behavioral techniques with acceptance and mindfulness principles, originally designed for borderline personality disorder.
Group Therapy — Therapeutic modality in which one or more therapists work simultaneously with several patients, leveraging group dynamics as an instrument of change.
Nonviolent Communication — A model of empathic communication developed by Marshall Rosenberg based on observations, feelings, needs, and requests.
Learned Helplessness — A psychological state in which an organism ceases attempts to escape aversive stimuli after repeated experiences of uncontrollability.
Positive Psychology — A branch of psychology focused on the scientific study of well-being, human strengths, and optimal functioning.
Psychological Trauma — A psychological response to an event or series of events that overwhelm an individual's capacity to cope.
Psychological Boundaries — Personal limits that define where one individual ends and another begins, regulating closeness and distance in relationships.
Provocative Therapy — A therapeutic approach that uses humor, exaggeration, and provocation to challenge the client's self-defeating beliefs.
Attack Therapy — An abusive pseudotherapeutic practice of aggressive verbal group confrontation, condemned by all major professional organizations.
Free Association — The fundamental psychoanalytic technique in which the patient verbalizes everything that comes to mind without censorship or selection.
Resistance — Psychic forces that oppose the progress of therapeutic treatment and the awareness of unconscious material.
Anxiety — An emotional state characterized by feelings of tension, worry, and physiological changes that can range from a normal adaptive response to a debilitating disorder.
Depression — A mood disorder characterized by persistent sadness, loss of interest, and cognitive, emotional, and physiological changes that significantly affect daily functioning.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) — A mental disorder that develops following exposure to a traumatic event, characterized by intrusive memories, avoidance, cognitive alterations, and hyperarousal.
Dissociation — A disruption in the normal integration of consciousness, memory, identity, emotion, and perception of the environment, ranging from everyday experiences to severe clinical disorders.
Psychosomatics — The field of study examining the interaction between psychological processes and bodily symptoms or diseases, recognizing the functional unity of mind and body.
Self-Esteem — A person's overall evaluation of their own worth, reflecting the degree to which they consider themselves competent and valuable.
Mindfulness — The practice of deliberately paying attention to the present moment with an attitude of openness, curiosity, and acceptance.
Burnout — A syndrome of physical and emotional exhaustion resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.
Codependency — A relational pattern in which a person excessively subordinates their own needs to those of another, often in the context of addiction or dysfunction.
Shame — A painful self-conscious emotion involving a global negative evaluation of the self, as distinct from guilt which focuses on a specific behaviour.
Grief — A natural emotional, cognitive, and behavioural response to significant loss, especially the death of a loved one.
Narcissistic personality disorder — Pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and lack of empathy. Includes grandiose and vulnerable variants, rooted in self psychology and Kernberg's theory.
Histrionic personality disorder — Pervasive pattern of excessive emotionality and attention-seeking. Historically related to hysteria, requiring differential diagnosis from borderline and narcissistic disorders.
Avoidant personality disorder — Pervasive pattern of social inhibition, feelings of inadequacy, and hypersensitivity to negative evaluation. Often confused with social anxiety disorder.
Dependent personality disorder — Pervasive pattern of excessive need to be taken care of, leading to submissive, clinging behavior and fear of separation. Related to attachment theory and comorbidity with depression and anxiety.
Schizoid personality disorder — Pervasive pattern of detachment from social relationships and restricted emotional expression. Includes psychoanalytic understanding of the schizoid dilemma per Fairbairn and Guntrip.
Paranoid personality disorder — Pervasive pattern of distrust and suspiciousness of others whose motives are interpreted as malevolent. Requires differential diagnosis from delusional disorder.
Love Bombing — A manipulative tactic involving overwhelming a victim with excessive attention, affection, and gifts early in a relationship to establish emotional control.
Triangulation — A relational dynamic in which a third person is drawn into a dyadic conflict, either as a systemic mechanism or as a deliberate manipulation tactic.
Scapegoating — A process by which an individual or group is unjustly blamed for the problems of others, serving as a repository for collective tensions and aggression.
Trauma Bonding — An intense emotional bond that forms between a victim and their abuser as a result of repeated cycles of mistreatment followed by intermittent reinforcement.
Splitting — Division of representations of self and others into 'all-good' and 'all-bad' categories, without the capacity to integrate positive and negative aspects into a single image.
Projective Identification — Unconscious process in which a person projects intolerable parts of themselves into another person, who then behaves in accordance with what has been projected. Goes beyond simple projection.
Mental Filtering — Tendency to focus exclusively on negative details of a situation, filtering out all positive information. The entire experience becomes colored by a single negative element.
Should Statements — Rigid thinking pattern based on inflexible rules about how things should be. Generates guilt when applied to oneself and anger when applied to others.
Labeling — Extreme form of overgeneralization consisting of assigning a fixed, global label to oneself or others instead of describing specific behavior. 'I'm a loser' instead of 'I made a mistake.'
Stress — Psychophysiological response of the organism to demands that exceed its adaptive resources. Can be acute or chronic, with profound effects on physical and mental health.