In psychology and philosophy, privation is the absence or lack of basic necessities.[1] The term can be used in a psychological context, often referring to a lack of relationships, or a philosophical context, where vital concepts are absent.
In psychology, privation occurs when a child has no opportunity to form a relationship with a parent figure, or when such relationship is distorted, due to their treatement.[2] It is different to deprivation, which occurs when an established relationship is severed.[3] It is understood that privation can produce social, emotional and intellectual problems for children; however, how inevitable such problems become as a result of privation, and the extent to which the can be reversed, remains an issue of debate among psychologists.[4]
In philosophy, privation is used to describe the absence of a necessary quality in the universe. The Augustinian theodicy denies the existence of evil as its own entity. Rather, evil is described to be a privation, or going wrong, of good.[5] Conversely, Maimonides argued that privation is not necessarily a bad thing: it would be trivial to regard the privation of hair - baldness - an evil. Moreover, it has been suggested that not all evil is due to a privation; malaria, for example, is due to not a lacking, but an excess (in this case, of disease).[6]