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.