overdetermination

[ oh-ver-di-tur-muh-ney-shuhn ]

noun

, Psychoanalysis.

1. the concept that a single emotional symptom or event, as a dream or a slip of the tongue, may be caused by more than one factor.

Word History and Origins

Origin of overdetermination¹

1915–20; over- + determination, translation of German Überdeterminierung (Freud)

Example Sentences

One might take the fact that Roe relied on multiple constitutional provisions as proof of its overdetermination.

From Slate

Maxwell spent more than a year undergoing psychoanalysis with Theodore Reik, and while his fictions are hardly Freudian case studies, they are nonetheless profoundly analytical, propelled by a spirit of inquiry more than by the mechanics of plot, and animated by a belief in overdetermination.

From New York Times

Criminologists face a problem that’s common in many fields: overdetermination.

From The New Yorker

The movie’s narrowly dramatic technique, with its curtly informational scenes, is matched by the emotional overdetermination of the images.

From The New Yorker

“Basically, I wanted to be awkward. I could take advantage of fiction’s built-in tolerance of overdetermination, in which multiple possible causes for an outcome can be allowed to exist alongside each other without being resolved, or even given definitive weights.”

From New York Times