Anticipation is a mature psychoanalytic defense mechanism in which a person copes with future discomfort by realistically planning for it ahead of time, rather than avoiding the thought of the difficulty or reacting to it only once it arrives. Alongside altruism, humor, sublimation, and suppression, it belongs to the mature level of the psychoanalytic defense hierarchy, the level considered most adaptive because it lets a person face a real future problem directly and prepare for it.
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