When Denial Hurts the Children: An Argument for Accountability of Denial in Parental Decision Making.

Denial (psychology)

Refusal to admit the truth or reality of a situation or experience.

Repression-sensitization

Defense mechanisms involving approach and avoidance responses to threatening stimuli. The sensitizing process involves intellectualization in approaching or controlling the stimulus whereas repression involves unconscious denial in avoiding the stimulus.

Blindness, Cortical

Total loss of vision in all or part of the visual field due to bilateral OCCIPITAL LOBE (i.e., VISUAL CORTEX) damage or dysfunction. Anton syndrome is characterized by the psychic denial of true, organic cortical blindness. (Adams et al., Principles of Neurology, 6th ed, p460)

Alcoholism

A primary, chronic disease with genetic, psychosocial, and environmental factors influencing its development and manifestations. The disease is often progressive and fatal. It is characterized by impaired control over drinking, preoccupation with the drug alcohol, use of alcohol despite adverse consequences, and distortions in thinking, most notably denial. Each of these symptoms may be continuous or periodic. (Morse & Flavin for the Joint Commission of the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence and the American Society of Addiction Medicine to Study the Definition and Criteria for the Diagnosis of Alcoholism: in JAMA 1992;268:1012-4)

Wedge Argument

An assertion that an action apparently unobjectionable in itself would set in motion a train of events leading ultimately to an undesirable outcome. (From Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, 1995)