ABSTRACT
In a footnote in the Studies on Hysteria Freud drew attention to a state of mind which he described as the ‘blindness of the seeing eye’, in which ‘one knows and does not know a thing at the same time’ (Freud 1893-5:117). Later he was to use the noun Verleugnung, which Strachey translated as ‘disavowal’, to describe this non-psychotic form of denial (Freud 1924b, 1927b, 1938). In 1938 he wrote of it as a ‘half measure’ in which ‘the disavowal is always supplemented by an acknowledgement; two contrary and independent attitudes arise and result in…a splitting of the ego’ (Freud 1938:204). Basch (1983) has suggested that, unlike psychotic denial, disavowal obliterates only the significance of things, and not their perception. Steiner (1985) used the phrase ‘turning a blind eye’ for this defence, relating it to the Oedipus complex in particular. In Chapter 1 I described it as ‘the willing suspension of belief, which results in facts being known but not believed.
