The Seba library treats Reaction Formation in 5 passages, across 3 authors (including Freud, Sigmund, Jung, Carl Gustav, Jung, C. G.).
A sub-species of sublimation is to be found in suppression by reaction-formation, which, as we have seen, begins during a child’s period of latency and continues in favourable cases throughout his whole life.
Freud defines reaction formation as a subspecies of sublimation operative from latency onward, through which sexual excitations are inverted and consolidated into character.
, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, 1905thesis
this development is organically determined and fixed by heredity, and it can occasionally occur without any help from education
Freud argues that the developmental substrate underlying mechanisms such as reaction formation has an organic, not merely cultural, determination, qualifying the role of education in character formation.
, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, 1905supporting
whose effect is all the stronger the more they are consciously denied
Jung observes that archetypal contents whose conscious acknowledgment is refused intensify in their unconscious influence — a dynamic structurally analogous to reaction formation’s oppositional reinforcement.
, Mysterium Coniunctionis: An Inquiry into the Separation and Synthesis of Psychic Opposites in Alchemy, 1955supporting
the pure sound associations are repressed under normal conditions… sound associations are continually opposed by inhibitions, as they are, as a rule, quite inexpedient
Jung’s word-association data demonstrate that certain response-types are actively inhibited under normal conditions, providing an experimental correlate to the suppressive operations central to reaction formation.
, Experimental Researches, 1904supporting
Character-formation, 18-21
The index entry for character-formation in The Ego and the Id marks Freud’s sustained linkage between defensive mechanisms including reaction formation and the structuring of stable personality dispositions.
, The Ego and the Id, 1923aside