Intellectualization

In psychology, intellectualization is a defense mechanism in which reasoning is used to block confrontation with an unconscious conflict and its associated emotional stress, so that thinking is substituted for feeling and a person emotionally removes themselves from a stressful event. It is different from rationalization, the pseudo-rational justification of irrational acts, even though the two may accompany each other. Intellectualization was among the first defense mechanisms identified by Sigmund Freud, who believed that memories carry both conscious and unconscious aspects and that intellectualization allows an event to be consciously analyzed in a way that does not itself provoke anxiety.