Denial, in ordinary English usage, is asserting that a statement or allegation is not true. The same word, and also
abnegation , is used for a
psychological defense mechanism postulated by
psychoanalyst Sigmund 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. An individual that exhibits such behaviour is described as a denialist or
true believer. Denial also could mean denying the happening of an event or the reliability of information, which can lead to a feeling of aloofness and to the ignoring of possibly beneficial information.