Glossary Glossary – see also “memetic lexicon”
– Acting-out
A memecomplex, a mechanism where the individual acts without thought or consideration of negative consequences.
– Auto-toxic
Dangerous, deadly to oneself. Severe auto-toxic memes are self-limiting, causing the destruction of their hosts (martyrs, military indoctrination. (See exo-toxic)
– Bait
Part of a meme complex that promises “benefits” to the host. It aims to incentivize the replication and cloning of the meme complex. Rewards in many religions (salvation, eternal bliss, security, well-being, freedoms), the bait, the hook is to “spread the word.”
– Anxiety
Anticipation, tension, or discomfort arising from the anticipation of danger, which can be internal or external. Some define anxiety as distinct from fear: anxiety needs no concrete source, fear is a consciously experienced external threat or danger. Manifestations are identical and include tension, autonomic hyperactivity, apprehension, vigilance, and searching.
In Freud: Anxiety corresponds on the psychological level to what pain is on the physical. Anxiety covers a psychological discomfort of varying intensity, displeasure, anxiety, physical discomfort. Irritability, fatigue, and sleep difficulties are signs of anxiety. Different forms of anxiety can be discussed: identity and developmental anxiety, existential anxiety, unfreedom, meaninglessness, loneliness, death, or overload anxiety, suppressed anger or grief, guilt, or conscience anxiety.
Anxiety may be associated with a (self)touch or an irrational, unfounded fear that an experience or failure will repeat itself; anxiety-based conflicts arise when the self cannot simultaneously meet the needs of the Id and the demands of the Superego while being in harmony with the external world. That is, when incompatible demands are made by the three entities: external world, Id, and Superego.
In Kelly: the experience of a threatening, imminent, major change in one’s personal constructions.
– Application
Adaptation, application, affixing, attaching cut fabric figures to another fabric.
– Autistic fantasy
A mechanism in which the individual substitutes the search for interpersonal activity with pronounced daydreaming. Pathologically enclosing oneself in one’s own thoughts and failing emotional contact with the surroundings. Psychologically isolated.
– Situated learning
Situated learning is considered an activity where beginners acquire knowledge and skills to later participate maturely and more fully in socio-cultural activities. A learning process of a social nature that emerges initially as peripheral (developmental niche) and then moves towards the “center” with a greater degree of engagement and complexity in societal developmental interaction.
– Consciousness-space and span
A person can only be infected with and transmit a finite number of memes (span over time and space is limited). Memes compete for niches in the individual’s knowledge space and in the social space.
Kelly also finds that individuals possess a limited number of constructions.
– Denial
A mechanism in which the person does not acknowledge certain aspects of external reality, which are obvious and apparent to others.
– Id
In Freud, the Id is where impulses and drives reside. Drive energy (libido) is gathered and passed on to and managed by the Ego. The Id is unconscious, and besides drives, various repressed experiences are also found here.
– Dissociation
A mechanism in which the person undergoes a periodic disruption in the integrative functions of consciousness or (ego) identity.
– Emergence
The phenomenon where properties emerge in a whole that cannot be explained from the individual parts’ properties. The emergence of phenomena representing a higher level, which cannot be causally explained from the lower level they originate from or build upon. According to emergence theory, consciousness is a property that suddenly appears when an organism becomes sufficiently complex. The resulting structures are referred to in English as “emergents.”
– Defense mechanism (see also coping strategy)
Patterns in emotions, thoughts, and behavior that are relatively involuntary (Freud would say unconscious) and arise in response to the perception of psychological danger. They are designed to conceal or alleviate conflicts or stressful situations that can cause anxiety.
Certain defense mechanisms such as projection, splitting, or acting-out are almost certainly disruptive; others such as repression or denial can be disorganizing or constructive, depending on their intensity, inflexibility, and the situational context in which they occur. Other mechanisms are organizing, such as sublimation, humor.
– Repression
A mechanism in which the person generalizes or redirects a feeling for an object or response to an object to another less threatening object.
– Idealization
A behavior in which a person attributes wildly exaggerated positive qualities to oneself or others.
– Identity
The sense of self that provides a personality over time. Strong disturbances in identity or self-perceptions are seen in schizophrenic and borderline psychotic individuals.
– Illusion
A mistaken perception of external stimuli. For example, a rustling in the leaves of a tree is heard as voices, or a person sees themselves in the mirror and thinks their face is distorted.
– Intellectualization
A mechanism in which the person engages in highly abstract thinking to avoid the experience of disturbing emotions.
– Isolation
A mechanism in which a person is unable to simultaneously experience cognitive and emotional components in a situation because emotions are kept away from consciousness.
– Ego
The Ego contains the person’s sense of identity, reason, thinking, planning. It is through the “Ego” that the external world is sensed. The Ego regulates impressions from the external world and controls adaptation to reality (reality adaptation), considering the Superego.
– Attention
The ability to focus persistently on a single activity. Disturbance of attention can be expressed by difficulty in listening to initiated tasks, easily distracted, and difficulty concentrating on work.
– Superego
In Freud: The Superego is the character pole to which the conscience belongs and emanates from. The Superego has both conscious and unconscious elements. It gathers and contains the regulatory functions, normative and ethical-moral motives in the form of commands and prohibitions, partly stemming from the Ego’s experiences, partly taken over from parents and the social environment, environment, and culture.
– Passive aggression
A mechanism in which the person indirectly and involuntarily expresses aggression towards others.
– Personal construct
A concept in Kelly: a representation of the external world that the individual forms and tests on reality to anticipate events effectively and control the environment by anticipating events.
– Projection
A mechanism in which the person mistakenly attributes their own unrecognized feelings, impulses, or thoughts to others.
– Rationalization
A mechanism in which the person develops soothing, self-assuring but mistaken explanations for their own or others’ behavior.
– Reaction formation
A mechanism in which the person replaces behavior, thoughts, or feelings that are diametrically opposed to their unacceptable ones.
– Self
The Self refers to what is original, permanent, one’s absolute nature, developing into individuality and determined by necessity. What is not transitory. The Self is experienced as the “truth” about who we are when moving beyond the Ego, the personality. In the Self, we are like children, understood as symbiosis, an original dyadic or “oceanic” unity between child and mother, individual and nature, where no conflict exists between thought, feelings, and instinct. Thus, it designates the “true” nature, the basis for emotions, thinking, life energies, love, trust, curiosity,
