Before revision: Psychoanalytic views Psychoanalysis considers that whereas isolation separates thoughts from feeling, compartmentalization separates different (incompatible) cognitions from each other.Nancy McWilliams, Psychoanalytic Diagnosis (2011) p. 135-6 As a secondary, intellectual defense, it may be linked to rationalization.McWilliams, p. 200 and p. 136 It is also related to the phenomenon of neurotic typing, whereby everything must be classified into mutually exclusive and watertight categories.Otto Fenichel, The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis (1946) p. 286
After revision: It has been said that when thinking about death people end up compartmentalizing, and they are in a mode of denial and acceptance about it, but they both have the result of making the thinking individual very passive.Psychoanalytic views Psychoanalysis considers that whereas isolation separates thoughts from feeling, compartmentalization separates different (incompatible) cognitions from each other.Nancy McWilliams, Psychoanalytic Diagnosis (2011) p. 135-6 As a secondary, intellectual defense, it may be linked to rationalization.McWilliams, p. 200 and p. 136 It is also related to the phenomenon of neurotic typing, whereby everything must be classified into mutually exclusive and watertight categories.Otto Fenichel, The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis (1946) p. 286