High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Intellectualization is a defense mechanism where reasoning is used to block confrontation with an unconscious conflict and its associated emotional stress, by `using excessive and abstract ideation to avoid difficult feelings`. It involves removing one`s self, emotionally, from a stressful event. Intellectualization may accompany, but `differs from rationalization, which is justification of irrational behavior through cliches, stories, and pat explanation`.