Denial

is a defense mechanism postulated by Freud, in which a person is faced with a fact that is too uncomfortable to accept and rejects it instead, insisting that it is not true despite what may be overwhelming evidence.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross used denial as the first of five stages in the psychology of a dying patient, and the idea has been extended to include the reactions of survivors to news of a death. (See The Power Of Hope To Cope With Dying by Cathleen Fanslow-Brunjes)

The concept of denial is particularly important to the study of addiction. The concept of denial is important in twelve-step programs, where the abandonment or reversal of denial forms the basis of the first, fourth, fifth, eighth and tenth steps.

These are the original Twelve Steps as published by Alcoholics Anonymous:
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Other 12 Step Programs.
Debtors Anonymous http://www.debtorsanonymous.org/
Spenders Anonymous http://www.spenders.org/
Sexaholics Anonymous http://www.sa.org/
Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous http://www.slaafws.org/
Drug Addicts Anonymous http://www.daausa.org/
Sex Workers Anonymous http://sexworkersanonymous.org/Home.html
Cocaine Anonymous http://www.ca.org/