displacement

n.

1. 1. The act of displacing.
   2. The condition of having been displaced.
2. Chemistry. A reaction in which an atom, radical, or molecule replaces another in a compound.
3. Physics.
   1. A vector or the magnitude of a vector from the initial position to a subsequent position assumed by a body.
   2. The weight or volume of a fluid displaced by a floating body, used especially as a measurement of the weight or bulk of ships.
4. The volume displaced by a single stroke of a piston in an engine or pump.
5. Geology.
   1. The relative movement between the two sides of a fault.
   2. The distance between the two sides of a fault. Also called dislocation.
6. Psychiatry. A psychological defense mechanism in which there is an unconscious shift of emotions, affect, or desires from the original object to a more acceptable or immediate substitute.

Same as offset. See base/displacement.

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Involuntary movement of population by conversion of their homes to other uses.
Example: Highway Condemnation, Urban Renewal, Redevelopment and natural disasters cause displacement of more than a million people each year.

noun

A change in normal place or position: dislocation, disturbance, move, movement, rearrangement, shift. See move/halt.

1. A vector quantity which refers to the distance which an object has moved in a given direction. It is measured as the length of a straight line between the initial and final positions of a body. For example, in a race around one complete circuit of a 400 metre track, the displacement is 0 m. Compare distance.

2. Volume of fluid displaced by a body completely or partially submerged in a fluid

3. In psychology, applied to behaviours and emotions, which are transferred from their original object onto a more acceptable substitute. For example, a tennis player who feels aggrieved about an umpiring decision may throw his or her tennis racket at the ground rather than at the umpire.

For Freud, displacement (a primary process) means the transference of physical intensities (1900a, p. 306) along an "associative path," so that strongly cathected ideas have their charge displaced onto other, less strongly cathected ones. This process is active in the formation of hysterical or obsessional symptoms, in the dream work, in the production of jokes, and in the transference.

Between 1887 and 1902 the concept of displacement appeared several times in Freud's writings (in Drafts K and M in his correspondence with Wilhelm Fliess, in the "Project for a Scientific Psychology" [1950c (1895)], and in The Interpretation of Dreams [1900a]). It was introduced in connection with his clinical work, apropos of the analysis of neurotic symptoms and paranoia. In Draft M (1950a), Freud described the types of displacement that result in compromise-formations. He distinguished "Displacement by association: hysteria.; Displacement by (conceptual) similarity: obsessional neurosis (characteristic of the place at which the defence occurs, and perhaps also of the time).; Causal displacement: paranoia" (p. 252).

In addition, in his search for a model of psychic functioning still informed by the scientific thinking and medical research of the time, Freud noted: "Hysterical repression evidently takes place with the help of symbol-formation, of displacements on to other neurones. We might think, then, that the riddle resides only in the mechanism of this displacement, and that there is nothing to be explained about repression itself" (1950c [1895], p. 352). Displacement, at work to a pathological degree in hysteria, "is thus probably a primary process, since it can easily be demonstrated in dreams" (Ibid., p. 353).

It was in fact Freud's analysis of the dream work that led him to discover the importance of displacement. He noted in The Interpretation of Dreams that: a) "The consequence of the displacement is that the dream-content no longer resembles the core of the dream-thoughts and . . . the dream gives no more than a distortion of the dream-wish which exists in the unconscious" (p. 308); b) Dream distortion can be "traced . . . back to the censorship which is exercised by one psychical agency in the mind over another.... dream-displacement comes about through the influence of the same censorship" (p. 308); and c) "[A] transference and displacement of psychical intensities occurs in the process of dream-formation" (pp. 307-308).

The notion of displacement did not see much further development. In his various revisions to his theories on dreams, Freud focused more on the separation of images from the affects that had been attached to them, on the vicissitudes of these affects (displacement, conservation, metamorphosis), and on the fate of images (stripped of affect) in relation to the "sensory intensity of the image presented" (1900a, p. 306, n. 1). But it was above all in the process of refining the analysis of the transference during treatment and its different manifestations—lateral, indirect, and direct transference (Freud, 1915a; Sandór Ferenczi, 1909/1994; Michel Neyraut, 1974)—that the notion of displacement was expanded. It was further explored, too, by such authors as Jacques Lacan (1957/2002; 1958/2002) and Guy Rosolato (1969) who took as their starting point the work of linguists (Ullmann, 1952; Jakobson and Halle, 1956) on the relationship between signifier and signified, and on metonymy (displacement by contiguity) and metaphor (displacement by substitution).

Displacement is often linked to substitution. Not infrequently, this link is made without an adequate distinction being drawn in temporal terms between substitution where there is an immediate exchange based on the disavowal of one of the two poles involved (perceptual, hallucinatory, or conceptual substitutions), and substitution where deferred action comes into play.

Bibliography

Ferenczi, Sándor. (1909). Introjection and transference. In Final contribution to the problems and methods of psychoanalysis Michael Balint (Ed.). London: Karnac Books.

Freud, Sigmund. (1900a). The interpretation of dreams. Part 1, SE, 4: 1-338; Part 2, SE, 5: 339-625.

——. (1915a). Observations on transference love (Further recommendations on the technique of psychoanalysis III). SE, 12: 157-71.

——. (1950a [1887-1902]), Extracts from the Fliess papers. SE, 1: 173-280.

——. (1950c [1895]). Project for a scientific psychology. SE, 1: 295-391.

——. (1985c [1887-1904]). The complete letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess 1887-1904( Jeffrey M. Masson, Ed. and Trans.). Cambridge, MA: Belknap/Harvard University Press.

Jakobson, Roman, and Halle, Morris. (1956). Fundamentals of language (4th ed.). The Hague, New York: Mouton.

Lacan, Jacques. (2002). The agency of the letter in the unconscious or reason since Freud. InÉcrits: A selection (Bruce Fink, Trans.). New York: W. W. Norton. (Original work published 1957) ——. (2002). The signification of the phallus. InÉcrits: A selection (Bruce Fink, Trans.). New York: W. W. Norton. (Original work published 1958

Neyraut, Michel. (1974). Le transfert. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Rosolato, Guy. (1969). Essais sur le symbolique. Paris: Gallimard.

Ullmann, Stephen. (1952). Précis de sémantique française. Bern: Francke.

—ELSA SCHMIDT-KITSIKIS

A term used in parapsychology for a form of extrasensory perception (ESP) in a test series, in which correct information about targets is displaced backward or forward from the actual target. If there is a consistent pattern of scoring one or two places from the target, this might have significance for ESP instead of just being a series of misses.

Removal to an abnormal location or position.

• d. of abomasum — see left, right abomasal displacement.
• fracture d. — the movement of fractured bone fragments away from their relatively normal alignment.
• inherited d. of molar teeth — see inherited displacement of molar teeth.
• left dorsal colon d. — see left colon displacement colic.
• liver d. — see liver displacement.

How to describe the true weight of a boat correctly
It’s important to understand the word displacement because it is a vital part of the description of any boat. To many people, displacement is simply the “weight” of a boat—but the weight of boats changes as crew, water, fuel, stores, and gear come aboard, so there is a need for a better definition.At any given moment, the true displacement of a boat is equal to the volume or weight of the fluid she displaces while she’s floating free. To a naval architect, however, displacement is the total weight of a vessel and her full crew, with all tanks two-thirds full and two-thirds of her stores aboard.Because a boat’s displacement literally equals the weight of the water displaced, it’s also a measure of her underwater volume; that is, the volume from the waterline downward. Salt water weighs 64 pounds per cubic foot, so you can calculate underwater volume by simply dividing displacement in pounds by 64.Unfortunately, displacement is still ill-defined in many circles, and is often used too loosely by boatbuilders and sales agents for their own benefit. The displacement figures you see in sales brochures are often “light displacements”: no fuel, no stores, no gear, no passengers.See also Displacement Ratio; Tonnages.

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Although many aspects of the personality theory formulated by Sigmund Freud have been rejected by contemporary analysts, Freud was nevertheless responsible for a significant number of insights into human nature that have been generally accepted. Among these insights are the Freudian "defense mechanisms," one of which is displacement. In displacement we repress a certain urge, which is then redirected to another object or person. A familiar example is the employee who is yelled at by his boss, and who then goes home and yells at his spouse. What he really wants to do is to yell back at his boss, but he redirects the urge and takes out his anger on a safer target. A roughly similar process takes place in dreams.

According to Freud, dreams provide an avenue for the expression of normally repressed desires while simultaneously disguising and censoring our real urges. In this view the purpose of dreams is to allow us to satisfy in fantasies the instinctual urges that society judges to be unacceptable in some way, such as the urge to kill a bullying employer. If, however, we were to dream about the actual, overt murder of our boss, the emotions evoked by he dream would wake us up. So that our sleep is not continually disturbed by such dreams, the mind modifies and disguises the content of our dreams so that strong emotions are not evoked. Thus, instead of killing our boss, we might, for example, dream about our employer's automobile being accidentally crushed by a runaway garbage truck.

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Dansk (Danish)
n. - flytning, forskydning, deplacement, emotionsoverførsel, forskydningsgrad

Nederlands (Dutch)
verplaatsing, verdringing, vervanging

Français (French)
n. - déplacement, destitution, remplacement par, (Géol) faille

Deutsch (German)
n. - Umräumung, Ersetzung, Verdrängung

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - (ογκομετρικό) εκτόπισμα, (γεωλ.) μετάπτωση, μετακίνηση, μετατόπιση ή μετάθεση

Italiano (Italian)
spostamento

Português (Portuguese)
n. - deslocamento (m), demissão (f), fratura de massas rochosas (f) (Geol.)

Русский (Russian)
перемещение, вытеснение

Español (Spanish)
n. - desplazamiento, sustitución, reemplazo, cambio de sitio, traslado

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - omflyttning, bil. cylindervolym

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
移置, 取代, 转移

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 移置, 取代, 轉移

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 파면, 치환, 배출량

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 転置, 変位, 排除, 解職, 排除量, 排気量

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) استبدال, الإزاحه, تنحيه‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮דחיקה, סילוק, תפוסה, העתקת מקום, מעתק, כמות הנוזל המועתקת ממקומה ע"י מוצק השרוי בו, החלפת רעיון או דחף באחר, מידת ההתקה של דבר ממקומו‬

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