A mental block is either a repression

Psychological repression

Psychological repression, also psychic repression or simply repression, is the psychological attempt by an individual to repel one's own desires and impulses towards pleasurable instincts by excluding the desire from one's consciousness and holding or subduing it in the unconscious...

 of painful thoughts, or an inability to continue a train of thought

Train of thought

The train of thought, stream of thought, trail of thought, or chain of thought refers to the interconnection in the sequence of ideas expressed during a connected discourse or thought, as well as the sequence itself, especially in discussion how this sequence leads from one idea to another.When a...

, like in the case of writer's block

Writer's block

Writer's block is a condition, primarily associated with writing as a profession, in which an author loses the ability to produce new work. The condition varies widely in intensity. It can be trivial, a temporary difficulty in dealing with the task at hand. At the other extreme, some "blocked"...

. A similar phenomenon occurs when one cannot solve a problem in mathematics

Mathematics

Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...

 which one would normally consider simple. In the case of writer's block, many find it helpful to take a break and revisit their topic. Another tactic that is used when people with mental blocks are learning new information is repetition. Mental blocks can be caused by physical disablities or simply a lack of focus. Mental blocks are also often used to describe a temporary inability to recall a name or other information.

See also

• Memory
  Memory
  In psychology, memory is an organism's ability to store, retain, and recall information and experiences. Traditional studies of memory began in the fields of philosophy, including techniques of artificially enhancing memory....
  
  
• Forgetting
  Forgetting
  Forgetting refers to apparent loss of information already encoded and stored in an individual's long term memory. It is a spontaneous or gradual process in which old memories are unable to be recalled from memory storage. It is subject to delicately balanced optimization that ensures that...
  
  
• Tip of the tongue
  Tip of the tongue
  The tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon is the failure to retrieve a word from memory, combined with partial recall and the feeling that retrieval is imminent...