What is repression?

Sigmund Freud, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

Sigmund Freud answers

Repression is the cornerstone of the whole psychoanalytic edifice — without it, neither the neurosis nor the cure makes sense. The simplest way to put it: some psychic process, striving toward consciousness, meets a violent antagonism and is turned back. It does not disappear; it subsists, but outside consciousness and outside memory, retaining its energy and its power to act.1

What distinguishes repression from ordinary condemnation or rejection of an impulse is precisely this: when an impulse is simply condemned, the struggle occurs with the full knowledge of the ego, the energy is withdrawn from the impulse, and a memory of the whole transaction remains. Under repression, none of that happens — the energy is preserved, no memory is left, and the ego knows nothing of what has taken place.2

Now, repression is not a single act but a process with two phases. There is first what I call primal repression: the ideational presentation of an instinct is denied entry into consciousness, and as a consequence a fixation occurs — that presentation persists unaltered, and the instinct remains bound to it indefinitely.3 Then there is repression proper, which is in effect an after-expulsion: the mental derivatives of the originally repressed material, or any trains of thought that have come into associative connection with it, are drawn down by the same fate.4

Here one must not make the mistake of thinking that repression operates only as a force pushing from above — from the side of consciousness. What was originally repressed exerts its own attraction upon everything with which it can establish a connection, and without that pull from below, the tendency to repress would frequently fail of its purpose.5

One further condition deserves emphasis. Repression is not a mechanism available from the very beginning of mental life; it can only arise once a sharp distinction has been established between what is conscious and what is unconscious, and it becomes operative when the avoidance of unpleasure has acquired more force than the pleasure that gratification would bring.6

Before that organization is in place, other vicissitudes — reversal into the opposite, turning round upon the subject — handle the task of mastering instinctual impulses. And what of the symptom? The repressed does not rest quietly. I used the image of a rowdy ejected from a lecture hall: the watchers at the door keep him out, but he hammers on the door and shouts, and the disturbance he creates outside is worse than anything he caused within.7

The symptom is that disturbance — the substitute for what could not reach consciousness, the return of the repressed in disguised form. The same force that built the symptom reveals itself in the analytic treatment as resistance, opposing every effort to carry the unconscious thought back into consciousness.8 To lift the repression, to make the unconscious conscious — that is the analytic work, and repression is the name for the obstacle it must overcome.

Sources

  1. Some violent antagonism must have been aroused to prevent the psychic process in question from reaching consciousness, and it therefore remained unconscious. As an unconscious thought it had the power to create a symptom.
    A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis
  2. In that case, it would retain its energy and there would be no memory of it left; in addition, the process of repression would be carried out without the knowledge of the ego.
    A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis
  3. Now we have reason for assuming a primal repression, a first phase of repression, which consists in a denial of entry into consciousness to the mental (ideational) presentation of the instinct. This is accompanied by a fixation; the ideational presentation in question persists unaltered from then onwards and the instinct remains attached to it.
    Chapter IV — Instincts And Their Vicissitudes
  4. The second phase of repression, repression proper, concerns mental derivatives of the repressed instinct-presentation, or such trains of thought as, originating elsewhere, have come into associative connection with it. On account of this association, these ideas experience the same fate as that which underwent primal repression. Repression proper, therefore, is actually an after-expulsion.
    Chapter V — Repression 1
  5. We have to consider just as much the attraction exercised by what was originally repressed upon everything with which it can establish a connection. Probably the tendency to repression would fail of its purpose if these forces did not co-operate, if there were not something previously repressed ready to assimilate that which is rejected from consciousness.
    Chapter V — Repression 1
  6. It is a condition of repression that the element of avoiding 'pain' shall have acquired more strength than the pleasure of gratification... repression is not a defence-mechanism present from the very beginning, and that it cannot occur until a sharp distinction has been established between what is conscious and what is unconscious.
    Chapter IV — Instincts And Their Vicissitudes
  7. He is no longer among us, we are free from his presence, his scornful laugh, his half-audible remarks, but in a certain sense the repression has miscarried, for he makes a terrible uproar outside, and by his outcries and by hammering on the door with his fists interferes with my lecture more than before.
    The Origin and Development of Psychoanalysis
  8. The same struggle during the analytic treatment opposes anew the efforts to carry this unconscious thought over into consciousness. This process we felt as a resistance. That pathogenic process which is made evident to us through the resistance, we will name repression.
    A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis