Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Email
Answers.com

encounter

Did you mean: encounter, Encounters (anthology), Encounters (TV series), Encounters (performed by Enigma), Encounters (1994 Album by Jessica Williams) More...

 
Dictionary: en·coun·ter   (ĕn-koun'tər) pronunciation
 
n.
  1. A meeting, especially one that is unplanned, unexpected, or brief: a chance encounter in the park.
    1. A hostile or adversarial confrontation; a contest: a tense naval encounter.
    2. An often violent meeting; a clash.

v., -tered, -ter·ing, -ters.

v.tr.
  1. To meet, especially unexpectedly; come upon: encountered an old friend on the street.
  2. To confront in battle or contention.
  3. To come up against: encounter numerous obstacles.
v.intr.

To meet, especially unexpectedly.

[Middle English encountre, from Old French, from encontrer, to meet, from Late Latin incontrāre : Latin in-, in; see en–1 + Latin contrā, against.]


Search unanswered questions...
Enter a word or phrase...
All Community Q&A Reference topics
Thesaurus: encounter
 

verb

  1. To come up against: confront, face, meet1, run into. See meet.
  2. To meet face-to-face, especially defiantly: accost, confront, face, front. See meet.
  3. To enter into conflict with: engage, meet1, take on. Idioms: dojoinbattle with. See conflict/cooperation, meet.

noun

  1. A face-to-face, usually hostile meeting: confrontation, face-off. See meet.
  2. A brief, hostile exposure to or contact with something such as danger or opposition: brush2, clash, run-in, skirmish. See touch/not touch.

 
Antonyms: encounter
Top

n

Definition: chance meeting
Antonyms: avoidance, evasion, retreat, shunning

n

Definition: fight
Antonyms: retreat, withdrawal

n

Definition: fight, argument
Antonyms: surrender, yielding

v

Definition: fight, attack
Antonyms: let go, surrender, yield

v

Definition: happen upon
Antonyms: avoid, evade, retreat, run away


 

Any meeting between two or more people in face-to-face interactions. Sporting competitions are made up of many such interactions.

 
Psychoanalysis: Encounter
Top

The word encounter designates the coming together of two elements, fortuitous or not, that are going to have an impact on each other. This notion is central to the theories of Piera Aulagnier, as it correlates to potentiality (psychotic potentiality). "To live is to experience in a continuous way what results from the situation of encounter," she wrote in 1975 (p. 2).

The notion of encounter in the wider sense of the word for psychoanalysis concerns everything that has the character of an event, when it seems as if it is not predetermined. Nevertheless, Freud had demonstrated that an event has no sense and meaning, except as a part of a preexisting structure. Therefore the event never has a purely objective meaning, even if it results from an encounter that comes from the outside. Such an event has, in fact, already been shaped by the psyche according to mnemonic traces anterior to the encounter. Piera Aulagnier, however, accorded the notion of encounter a more fundamental meaning, that of a permanent rapport established between the body and the psyche, or between the subject's psyche and that of the mother. The relation between the psyche and the world is born at the time of the primordial event of the encounter.

Aulagnier opted to situate the inaugural encounter at the beginnings of the rapport between the mouth and the breast, a prototype of what she called the "complementary object-zone" (1975/2001, p. 19). "At the moment when the mouth meets the breast it meets and swallows a first mouthful of the world" (p. 15). The representation that the psyche has of itself will be a function of further encounters, either the encounter of the psyche with the body, on the one hand, or with the productions of the maternal psyche on the other. Nevertheless, every encounter confronts psychic activity with an overload of information, up to the point where whatever was unrecognized returns to refute the representation (for example, the frustration of the real breast being missing, when a presence of the breast has been hallucinated).

This shows why the notion of encounter has been a useful one: It is opposed, in fact, to representations of the mother/infant relation in terms of fusion or dyad. Piera Auglagnier, on the contrary, affirmed that in the two psychic spaces, that of the mother and of the child, "the same object, the same experience of encounter will be inscribed by using two forms of writing and two heterogeneous relational schemata" (1975/2001, p. 15).

The notion of the "encounter" is also a necessary complement of "potentiality", since it is precisely on the occasion of the encounter that potentiality can be actualized. In this context it is close to the notion of the event, when the latter is thought of as a triggering cause. However, in the context of psychosis, Aulagnier proposed a more specific definition of encounter: "The passage from a potential state of identificatory conflict to one that is manifest can result from an encounter that takes place long after childhood is past; an encounter between the subject and another, to whom is imputed the same power, which in childhood was exerted by actors in a reality scene of such a nature that it was not internalized at the time" (1984).

It is evident that the notion of encounter allows Aulagnier to avoid any overly strict determinism, one that would isolate a particular moment, in the subject or family environment, to account for its later psychic destiny.

In one of her last writings, dating from 1990, and so liable to serve as a conclusion, she remarked: "The essence of the relation of cause and effect in the psyche . . . is that it is the effect alone that can make a cause of the event. Now this effect is not fixed once and for all; it is itself the effect of an encounter, to be recalled, renegotiated, reinterpreted by future experiences. Only over the course of a long and arduous work of reinterpretation of lived experiences and past traces can a current experience reactualize things, or the I transform its past—to make of it the source and cause of its present" (1992 [1990]).

Bibliography

Aulagnier, Piera. (1984). L'Apprenti-historien et le Maîtresorcier. Du discours identifiant au discours délirant. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

——. (1992 [1990]). Voies d'entrée dans la psychose. Topique, 49. 7-29.

——. (2001). Violence of Interpretation: From Pictogram to Statement. (Alan Sheridan, Trans.). East Sussex Philadelphia: Brunner-Routledge. (Original work published 1975).

Mijolla-Mellor, Sophie de. (1998). Penser la psychose. Une lecture de l'oeuvre de Piera Aulagnier. Paris: Dunod.

—SOPHIEDE MIJOLLA-MELLOR

 
Word Tutor: encounter
Top
pronunciation

IN BRIEF: A chance meeting. Also: A meeting in battle.

pronunciation Swallow a toad in the morning and you will encounter nothing more disgusting the rest of the day. — John Updike.

 
Wikipedia: Encounter
Top

Encounter may mean:

See also

The Kiefaber ‘Quote of the Day’

Some day—we don’t know when “Everything through the first five units of Moodle will be on your test.”

10/16/08 “Did Sam get these protractors? Cause I’m thinkin’ he got them from Mr. Couture.” (Yes. Sam was asked, by Keef, to go down to Mr. Couture’s room to get four protractors).

10/17/08 “No, these are textbook problems. I think some of them are evil, though.” (Referring to the questions on weekly moodle tests)

~Weekend~

10/22/08 “The law of conservation of momentum says that momentum is conserved.” (Response when asked what the Law of Conservation of Momentum is).

10/23/08 “That’s gonna equal the sum of the two fish combo…meal…” (Talking about a physics problem involving two fish of different sizes). “Superman’d be goin’ FAST!” (Yet another physics problem).

~Weekend~

10/27/08 “Are there any other cryptic questions?” (While taking a weekly quiz, one of the questions said something like “mc002-1.jpg” instead of “60”).

10/29/08 “Open up your Google…err, Moodle.” “And be good for Mr. Clark so I can make a funeral.” (Mr. Clark was watching our class so she could leave early to go to a funeral.)

11/5/08 “Any luck on cracking the moodle issue?” (To eyebrow-boy computer nerd. Apparently there was some problem in moodle that he was supposed to fix.)

11/7/08 “You could knit, Brian. You’ve got some fine motor skills…Of course, I don’t know how to knit.”

11/10/08 “I can’t get to my moodle!” (Something’s wrong with the computers today)

11/24/08 -Keef: “Every so often, a science teacher has to risk it all for the sake of her students and put her life on the limb.” -Brian: “Don’t you mean line?” -Keef: “Line, limb, whatever. Some precarious situation.” (She’s balancing on her bike)

“And now, my arm is dead. But all for the sake of science!” (Tire on a string)

Vacation

12/2/08 “If you get a crosswind on one of those solid wheels, it can be sketchy. Pretty sketchy.”(Talking about bike tires with disks instead of spokes)

12/4/08 -Colton: Why is there a keyhole in this desk? -Keef: To unlock the desk, duh! No, I actually have no idea.

“That’s 4 x 108 kilograms meters per squared.”

12/9/08 “I think eventually we will be sucked into the sun, many many many moons from now.” “You get into some pretty profound questions when you think about it.”

Keef-What happens when you square five? Kate Soucie-It gets bigger

Lots of elapsed time passes due to vacation, etc.

1/13/09 “Your final exam will be open book, open moodle.”

1/15/09 “Did you find you did any better, or less better, on the quiz?” (After doing the PowerPoint)

1/16/09 Brian-“Ms. Kiefaber, I need some help” Keef-“Oh, I love helping people”

1/26/09 “That’s rho, that little p thing. It’s a Greek rho.” “That’s pretty cool that you can type in words and it will pronounciate them pretty well. It’s pretty remarkable”

1/29/09 “Ugh, this doesn’t erase so good.”

2/5/09 “Something with nothing in it will always weigh less than something with something in it.”

2/6/09 “Yep. 1964. Born in ’64. Fine year.” “What we really need is an advanced Moodle class on SPDC…they asked me once and I was like, ‘no I’m not going to teach advanced Moodle!”

2/16/09 “To go from 0 degree…whoa! I just lost a ring!”

2/18/09 “Why do I have water all over the front of me?” (Just exploded a water balloon)

Vacation, etc

3/5/09 (Out of nowhere) “Baby that’s what I’m talking…about”

3/10/09 “Entropy rules.”

3/13/09

“Hey good lookin’! How are ya?” (Pav to Mrs. Reid. Not a Kiefaber quote, but I thought it was worthwhile to record it for posterity)

3/17/09 “What are you two doing in the corner looking like autistic children?…not that there’s anything wrong with being autistic…”

3/26/2009 “Look at that bridge wobble! That’s what you call oscillation” (watching footage of the Tacoma Bridge) “ How many of your teachers tell you not to use Wikipedia? Well, I think Wikipedia rocks.”

4/1/09 “Is there, like, porn on Youtube? Is that why it’s blocked?”

4/2/09 “I’m not very religious, but maybe I should find some religion. Dear God, please let everybody pass my physics class.”

4/7/09 “Nice play! I didn’t know you were the ‘heeroeen’”

4/8/09 “Oh, she got beeped!” (Crystal was making an announcement as the bell rang)

4/14/09 Overuse of the word “counterintuitive” throughout the past two weeks

4/21/09 “We can't actually talk about lenses without seeing a diverging and converging lens” “Counterintuitive”

4/24/09 “You’ll look a little autistic examining the raindrops on your window, but it’s a worthwhile thing”

Vacation

“ Do you pedal [your moped]?” No… “So why do they call it a moped?”




Oh Kiefaber, you made physics one of the strangest classes I've ever taken. I now have no interest in physics at all. Thank you...?


 
Translations: Encounter
Top

Dansk (Danish)
v. tr. - møde tilfældigt, støde på, stå over for
v. intr. - møde
n. - tilfældigt møde, sammenstød, brydning, sensitræningsgruppe

Nederlands (Dutch)
ontmoeten, strijden, treffen, ondervinden, confrontatie, gevecht, plotselinge, korte ontmoeting

Français (French)
v. tr. - rencontrer (à l'improviste), tomber sur, affronter (un ennemi, un danger), se heurter à (une opposition), éprouver (des difficultés)
v. intr. - rencontrer (à l'improviste)
n. - confrontation, rencontre, (Mil) engagement, combat

Deutsch (German)
v. - begegnen, treffen, stoßen auf
n. - Zusammenstoß, Begegnung

Ελληνική (Greek)
v. - συναντώ, ανταμώνω (τυχαία), αντιμετωπίζω (αναποδιά κ.λπ.), σκοντάφτω σε
n. - συναπάντημα, συνάντηση, συμπλοκή, σύγκρουση

Italiano (Italian)
incontrare, scontro, incontro

Português (Portuguese)
v. - enfrentar, encontrar
n. - batalha (f), encontro (m)

Русский (Russian)
встреча, столкновение, стычка, встретить, столкнуться

Español (Spanish)
v. tr. - encontrar, dar con
v. intr. - encontrarse, entrevistarse, luchar
n. - enfrentamiento, combate, encuentro

Svenska (Swedish)
v. - möta, stöta på
n. - sammanträffande

中文(简体)(Chinese (Simplified))
遇见, 会战, 邂逅, 偶然相遇, 相会, 遭遇, 相遇

中文(繁體)(Chinese (Traditional))
v. tr. - 遇見, 會戰, 邂逅
v. intr. - 偶然相遇
n. - 相會, 遭遇, 相遇

한국어 (Korean)
v. tr. - 마주치다, 대항하다
v. intr. - 마주치다
n. - 뜻밖의 만남, 시합

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 出会い, 対戦
v. - 出会う, 遭遇する, にあう

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(فعل) يصادم, يواجه (الاسم) لقاء غير متوقع, صدام‏

עברית (Hebrew)
v. tr. - ‮נתקל ב-, נפגש עם יריב או אויב‬
v. intr. - ‮נתקל ב-‬
n. - ‮היתקלות, פגישה מקרית, השתתפות במפגש קבוצתי לצרכי ריפוי נפשי‬


 
 

Did you mean: encounter, Encounters (anthology), Encounters (TV series), Encounters (performed by Enigma), Encounters (1994 Album by Jessica Williams) More...


 

Copyrights:

Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2007. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
Thesaurus. Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary Copyright © 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
Answers Corporation Antonyms. © 1999-2009 by Answers Corporation. All rights reserved.  Read more
Sports Science and Medicine. The Oxford Dictionary of Sports Science & Medicine. Copyright © Michael Kent 1998, 2006, 2007. All rights reserved.  Read more
Psychoanalysis. International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis. Copyright © 2005 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Word Tutor. Copyright © 2004-present by eSpindle Learning, a 501(c) nonprofit organization. All rights reserved.
eSpindle provides personalized spelling and vocabulary tutoring online; free trial Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Encounter" Read more
Translations. Copyright © 2007, WizCom Technologies Ltd. All rights reserved.  Read more