complex motives

simultaneous, multiple desires to achieve one or more goals. For example, desires may be compatible and oriented toward the same goal (e.g., working hard due to a desire for success as well as a desire for money) or incompatible and oriented toward opposing goals (e.g., desiring to achieve success through work while simultaneously desiring to relax by not working).

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Psychology term of the day

March 17th 2025

enactment

1. the acting out of an important life event rather than expressing it in words. See psychodrama.

2. in some forms of psychoanalytic psychotherapy, the patient’s reliving of past relationships in the transference relationship with the therapist and, conversely, the therapist’s move away from active neutrality to unwittingly intertwine personal issues into symbolic interactions with the patient (a countertransference phenomenon). Attunement to the relational patterns that emerge in this therapeutic relationship offers the therapist an opportunity to help the patient acknowledge and work through similar patterns in the patient’s relationships with others. See also relational psychoanalysis; self psychology.

3. in some forms of couples therapy, a technique in which the therapist recreates areas of conflict between partners in order to facilitate bonding moments.

4. see structural family therapy.