CRITICALLY DISCUSS THE PSYCHOANALYTIC CONCEPT
OF REPRESSION
Repression is defined (White, 1964,p214) “the forgetting, or ejection from
consciousness of memories of threat, and especially the ejection from awareness
of impulses in oneself that might have objectionable consequences.”
In layman’s terms when forming a memory, the brain takes what we see, hear,
smell, feel and taste and fills in the blank spaces with information that we
have perceived from common knowledge and stores it as a memory. But sometimes
something happens that is so shocking that the mind grabs hold of the memory
and pushes it underground into some inaccessible corner of the unconscious.
The psychoanalytic concept of repression as a defense mechanism is closely
linked to the Freudian idea of an unconscious mind. Early Freudians saw the
unconscious mind as having the same properties as that of the conscious mind.
Just as the conscious mind was believed capable of consciously inhibiting
events by suppression, so the unconscious was considered capable of inhibition
or cognitive avoidance at the unconscious level by repression.
Suppression is said to happen, when one voluntary and consciously withholds a
response. Unconscious repression in contrast may function as an automatic
guardian against anxiety, a safety mechanism that prevents threatening material
from entering consciousness.
Symptoms are formed as a result of repression even though the patient may not
be aware of it. Freud says; (Freud, 1973, p335) “We must now form more definite
ideas about this process of repression. It is the precondition for the
construction of symptoms.” Symptoms serve as a substitute for the patient for
something that repression is holding back. Freud says; “A symptom like a dream,
represents something as fulfilled: a satisfaction in the infantile manner”
(Freud, 1973, p413).
Freudian therapy is like an entrance hall, with a room adjoining it, in which
consciousness is found also, but that between these two rooms resides a
watchman, who acts as a censor to those entering the second room from the
entrance hall. This watchman represents resistance in psychoanalysis, which is
present during psychoanalytic treatment, when the psychoanalyst endeavors to
uncover the repression. Resistances in psychoanalytic treatment if lifted are
able to bring the past into focus and act as support systems in the analysis.
In order to uncover the repression the analyst has to remove the resistance,
which is constantly changing during treatment, i.e. the intensity increases as
the analyst draws nearer to a new topic, or when a climax is drawing nearer to
the close of a topic. But it disappears once the topic has been disposed.
At this point one must realise that the patient is not consciously aware of any
of this.
We have formed the idea that in each individual there is a coherent
organization of mental processes, and we call this his ego. It is to this ego
that consciousness is attached; the ego is the mental agency which supervises
all its own constituent processes, and which goes to sleep at night, though
even then it exercises the censorship on dreams. From this ego proceed the
repressions; too by means of which it is sought to exclude certain trends in
the mind not merely from consciousness but also from other forms of effectiveness
and activity. In analysis these trends which have been shut out stand in
opposition to the ego, and the analysis is faced with the task of removing the
resistances which the ego displays against concerning itself with the
repressed. Now we find during analysis that, when we put certain tasks before
the patient, he gets into difficulties; his associations fail when they should
be coming near the repressed. We then tell him that he is dominated by a
resistance; but he is quite unaware of the fact, and even, if he guesses from
his unpleasurable feelings that a resistance is now at work in him, he does not
know what it is or how to describe it.
At this stage dreams play an important part in the treatment, as is the case
for neurotics. They helped to discover the sense of his symptoms, and what
wishful impulses have been repressed. And for some (normal) patients in
psychoanalytic treatment it plays an important part over a long period of time,
because everyone has dreams no matter if you’re ‘sane’ or ‘insane’. We have
established from our reading of dreams that sleep allows repression to relax to
a certain extent in this way repression is able to express itself within dreams
far more clearly than through symptoms. Dreams therefore become the key to gaining
access to the repressed unconscious.
Therefore once the unconscious material has become conscious the symptom
disappears. This is the task of psychoanalytic treatment according to Freud;
“Our therapy works by transforming what is unconscious into what is conscious,
and it works only in so far as it is in a position to effect that
transformation” (Freud, 1973, p323). But what is important to note is that we
can never endeavor to be rid of repression it is a part of our psychic to help
us cope with everyday life, and if we were able to eliminate ourselves of it,
we will never be able to survive.
From what I have read on repression I have come to understand repression in
this way:
Repression maintains equilibrium in the individual by repressing memories and
wishes to the level of the unconscious, where they will be out of sight, if not
out of mind. The ability to repress dangerous or unsettling thoughts turns out
to be vital to the individual’s ability to negotiate his way through life. For
instance if a child never learned to repress the urge to steal his sister’s ice
cream cone, he would have spent years in punishment. If the boss at work cannot
repress her sexual desires for her secretary, she will be unable to function,
her mind consumed by illicit, inappropriate and impossible urges. Only the
timely repression of harmful impulses and urges gives the individual the
capacity to move on and meet the demands of an ever - changing world.
Although repression functions as a vital coping tool, it also can cause great
anguish. A repressed urge, though it may be in the unconscious, still affects
the actions and thoughts of the individual. Indeed, conflicting urges or
painful memories thus repressed have the potential to cause great anxiety,
though the individual will not understand what causes it. As the repressed
items teem and surge beneath the conscious surface, they sap vital psychic
energy and constantly force the individual to maintain lines of defense
mechanisms against his own unconscious. But as the urges boil up, the
individual eventually will find release, through some external displacement,
displaced emotion, or other mechanism. This release, coming as it does from
uncontrollable and often unfathomable depths, can cause unpredictable,
sometimes unimaginable reactions: the wife who has repressed her anger at her
husband for fifteen years suddenly lights him and his bed on fire. The
repression causes anxiety, discomfort, even neurosis, and the release causes
massive emotional and often physical damage. But it is not all negative, the
ability to find release, is a positive thing, since we cannot bottle everything
up all the time. However it is how we release these repressed emotions that is
the cause for concern.
Freud’s conception of the mind is characterized by primarily by dynamism, seen
in the distribution of psychic energy, the interplay between the different
levels of consciousness, and the interaction between the various functions of
the mind. The single function of the mind, which brings together these various
aspects, is repression, the maintenance of what is and what isn’t appropriately
retained in the conscious mind.
There is no easy answer or explanation to the theory of repression and
retrieval, but until psychologists can drag our unconsciousness into the light,
retrieval of repressed memories will be left in the dark.