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A rationalization is a logical or moral justification for an action or attitude that is provided by a subject whose (unconscious) motives are inaccessible. Two examples are justifying a fear of cancer by referring to other family members who suffered from the disease and justifying one's compulsive washing by offering sanitary concerns. The term was introduced in psychoanalysis by Ernest Jones (1908).

Rationalization is not really a symptom. It is more a way of masking and denying the symptom. Nor is it a compromise formation, since within certain limits it satisfies the drive. Nor is it a defense mechanism, since it is not directed toward any libidinal satisfaction. It is more of a way to keep from recognizing neurotic conflicts. It is the conscious secondary thought process of covering the symptom with a screen.

Rationalization is primarily found in cases of neurosis: "Compulsive acts [that occur] in two successive stages, of which the second neutralizes the first, are a typical occurrence in obsessional neuroses. The patient's consciousness naturally misunderstand them and puts forward a set of secondary motives to account for them—rationalizes them, in short" (Freud 1909d, p. 192).

Can the notion of rationalization be applied to delusion in particular, the logical delusion of paranoiacs? Some psychiatric studies have made use of an analogous concept to show how megalomania is caused by a need to explain and justify the feeling of persecution. In his essay on Judge Schreber, Freud rejects this formulation: "to ascribe such important affective consequences to a rationalization is, as it seems to us, an entirely unpsychological proceeding; and we would consequently draw a sharp distinction between our opinion and the one which we have quoted from the textbooks. We are making no claim, for the moment, to knowing the origin of the megalomania" (1911c [1910], p. 49).

Rationalization is sometimes compared to intellectualization, but the two concepts must be distinguished. In intellectualization, one distances oneself from psychic processes by cathecting one's own intellectual processes and thought. Rationalization, in contrast, primarily finds support in systems of thought, representations, and beliefs that are socially constituted and accepted.

MICHÈLE BERTRAND

See also: Intellectualization; Jones, Ernest; Negative, work of the; Paranoia; Secondary revision; Thought.