n. in psychoanalytic theory, a process in which the ego withdraws psychic energy from certain unconscious wishes and ideas and uses it to strengthen other wishes and ideas capable of blocking the decathected material’s entrance into consciousness. The anticathected material may be similar to the original or opposite but related to it: For example, philanthropy may neutralize an unconscious wish to hoard. Also called countercathexis. See also cathexis. —anticathectedadj.