Displacement
Displacement is the shifting of interest or emotion away from its original object onto a different, less threatening one, which then comes to stand in for the original. The underlying feeling is genuine and often intense, but it is redirected somewhere safer to express than its true source, whether that source is a specific person, such as an intimidating boss, or a devastating loss too painful to confront directly.
Illustration
After a difficult, humiliating meeting with his manager, a man says nothing at work but comes home and snaps irritably at his children over a minor mess in the kitchen, the anger clearly out of proportion to the mess itself and much closer in size to what he could not express earlier that day.
Related phenomena
References
- Casey, P. & Kelly, B. (2019). Fish's Clinical Psychopathology, 4th ed. Appendix II, 'Defences and Distortions'.