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HE concept of displacement has long played an important role in the theory of neurosis. As early as 1894, Freud (2) said that phobias and obsessions were substitutes for unbearable sexual ideas. He saw sex as a form of energy which could be displaced from one idea to another, like an electric charge. This displacement mechanism operates in dreams (3) and in slips of the tongue (4). Hostile impulses, desires for prestige, and other nonsexual drives may also be expressed through displacement.The basic concept is that an impulse arouses too much anxiety to be admitted into consciousness or to be expressed directly. Therefore, a state of conflict exists. One way of resolving the conflict is to displace the impulse. This may be done in several ways: A man may unconsciously hate his father but dream of killing a policeman. Or, he may be conscious of hating his father but substitute quarreling with him for murdering him. Finally, he may be aware only of an ambition to be better than his father. Thus, displacement may take place from one stimulus to another, from one response to another, or from one drive to another. However, it is not clear from psychoanalytic theory just why a displaced form of an impulse is less anxiety arousing. Why can the man dream of killing a policeman but not his father?Recently Miller (6) has attempted to answer this question by relating displacement to the learning theory concept of generalization. If a response has been learned to one stimulus it may be elicited by similar stimuli. This is generalization. The more similar the generalized stimulus is to the original stimulus, the more likely it is to elicit the response. This is called the gradient of generalization. Miller assumes that a tendency to approach a goal

Degradation of behavior in combat hasalways occupied the attention of commanders. Behavior in battle may also maintain the prebattle level of proficiency, or surpass it even to the point of heroism; but this does not present a problem as does behavior that has visibly deteriorated under the stress of combat.

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