What does “primitive” mean as it is used in paragraph 9?
In coping mechanism Denial is the refusal to accept truth or fact. People are said to be “in denial” when they act as if the problem doesn’t exist, refusing to acknowledge the reality of a situation. Sigmund Freud, the famous psychoanalyst4 who was the first person to study the significance of dreams, is credited with popularizing the idea of denial. He explains it as the moment when a person is faced with a fact too uncomfortable to accept. Instead of facing the problem, the person decides to reject its existence or minimize its importance despite overwhelming evidence proving the contrary.5 Freud believed that denial was a primitive coping mechanism — one that babies develop in early childhood.