| Ceyda Senel Tekin University of Oxford, Certificate Program In Psychodynamic Studies Abstract I describe the concept of repression, "the corner stone of psychoanalysis" ; paying particular attention to its historical development. 13 December 2000 Contents 1) Introduction 2) History of repression 3)Primal repression and repression proper 4)Conclusion Introduction Repression is one of the most important concepts in psychoanalysis. A naive description would be: in repression impulses or memories that are too frightening or painful are pushed aside from conscious awareness. I will refine this definition a little later. The repressed material may consist of memories that provoke guilt, shame or self-depreciation. The defining property of repression is that the repressed data in general is out of the reach of voluntary recall. As far as the human development is concerned, repression is believed to occur in two stages. Freud, who essentially introduced the concept of repression, defined the "primal repression" as the first stage of repression occurring in early childhood. Freud" s description of primal repression is " A denial of entry into consciousness to the mental presentation of the instinct" [6]. The second stage is coined as "repression proper". In this category one includes the repressed material consisting of experiences and impulses which at one time have been in the conscious awareness. What was Freud's role in the development of the theory of repression? It is fair to say that Freud is the originator of this concept who also put a lot of emphasis on it and considered it to be central to the psychoanalytic theory and practice. In 1923 Freud wrote "The state in which the ideas existed before being made conscious is called by us repression and we assert that the force which instituted the repression and maintains it is perceived as resistance during the work of analysis". Freud believed that repression of certain childhood impulses is universal. For example he insisted that all young boys have feeling of sexual attraction toward their mothers and feelings of rivalry and hostility toward their fathers. Freud coined this as Oedipal conflict. In an autobiographical study in 1924 he also wrote " I named this process repression; it was a novelty, and nothing like it had ever before been recognized in mental life. This discovery, lay at the heart of psychoanalytic ideas and the theory of repression is the corner-stone on which the whole structure of psychoanalysis rests"[7). From these we learn that Freud took much pride of his invention of the concept of repression. On the other hand one of his strong critics, Matthew Erdelyi, did not share Freud's enthusiasm of this discovery and argued that since Freud was not clear about what he meant by repression we can still use it cognitively, i.e equating repression with "forgetting" [4]. 1 will give an account of the ideas of the critics of repression in the conclusion. I should say that repression is not necessarily pathological, it can be considered as an adaptation mechanism of the body. As the following example reveals it might play an important role in coping with anxiety. A 43 year old and wealthy lady who lived with her two children and husband had complaints about depression. In the therapy it became clear that she was very close to her father who suddenly died at the age of 43 before the client was able to complete her Oedipal complex. When her father died she wanted to die with him. Now that she was at the same exact age as her father, her desire to die relapsed [14)]. How do we know that repression takes place? Or stated in an other way why should one think that repression is a viable theory? The key to answer these questions is to realize that the repression is not a hundred percent successful process all the time. If this was not the case and if none of the repressed data could ever in principle be recalled, it could have been quite meaningless to talk about the existence of repression in general. Therefore in principle there is a possibility of resurfacing of a repressed material. This claim will be evident when one considers the dynamics of repression. A repressed material is not necessarily in a static form; in fact since it is usually a strong drive or wish it exerts some pressure to become conscious. For this reason there is certain amount of psychic energy used to keep the repressed material becoming conscious. Because of this dynamic process repressed material has a potential to become conscious. Therefore according to the psychoanalytic theory of repression the repressed material is in fact not totally gone or totally forgotten but it remains unconscious and active and it could change in form and influence other mental activities. To illustrate our point I will give the following case as an example of recollection of a repressed memory. This is the story, as stated in Crews [3], of how E. L. recovered a 20 year old memory of her father G. F. raping and murdering her eight year old friend Sudan. E. L. underwent several sessions in therapy and it was determined by the jury that her recovered memory matched the known facts of the unsolved murder. G. F. was the first person to be convicted of murder based on evidence from the recovery of repressed memory. My interest in the concept and theory of repression started when I was in my senior year at the university where I was studying Psychology. Repression was one of the selfdefense mechanisms we were being lectured at when I had an experience which was quite similar to an example given by our lecturer at the time. My experience involved my forgetting of an appointment with my dentist who I was quite afraid to see. I had not given much thought to this incident up until I heard about the idea of repression in the lecture. When I learned in the lecture that this "forgetting" was essentially a way of defending myself from my fears I was much pleased and intrigued. To me, the theory of repression promised an explanation of what seemed like a random act of our brain. History of repression I shall now sketch a brief review of the history of how the concept of repression appeared in psychoanalysis. Repression ( verdrangung in German) appears to have been used as early as 1824 by the psychologist Herbart [12]. Since repression is inseparably connected with the unconscious, a quick review of the history of unconscious seems proper. A famous French psychotherapist Jean M. Charcot (1825-1893) played a significant role in demonstrating the existence of several levels of consciousness. His experiments led to the discovery of repressed data. Freud was well aware of the work of Charcot and he even had attended several of Charcot's demonstrations. In the late 19th century the experiments of Hipolyte-Marle Bernheim on hypnosis revealed that the memories of events during a hypnotic state are only apparently forgotten and can be recalled. A further step in the understanding of unconscious was taken by a student of Charcot, Pierre Janet (18591947). The German word das unbewusste (the unconscious) was used by Hartmann in 1869 [13]. In 1895, it was Joseph Breuer who originally brought this term to psychiatry terminology. After that Freud extensively used this term in his writings and established it as a more carefully defined concept . Repression, as I stated above is the process of keeping certain material in the unconscious which otherwise would be harmful. The key step to the discovery of repression was taken by Breuer who realized that some patients could be induced to remember their passed and forgotten/ repressed experiences which were emotionally painful. His fascinating discovery was that the recall of certain psychologically painful experiences could lead to permanent treatment of Conversion symptoms. His observation essentially proved the existence of the unconscious, the operating of repression,. Freud was interested in the work of Breuer and they collaborated for several years. They started using the term "repression" to define the dynamic process of pushing away the emotionally painful material from conscious to unconscious. In 1909 Freud visited United States and gave lectures at Clark University, Massachusetts. His recollection of how he came with the idea of repression is quite interesting that I would like to quote here. ... Since I was not able to alter the mental state of the majority of my patients I set about working with them in the normal state.At first , I must confess, this seemed a senseless and hopeless undertaking . I was sat the task of learning from the patient something that he did not know himself. How could one hope to elicit it.' But there came to my help a recollection of a most remarkable and instructive experiment which I had witnessed when I was with Bernheim at Nancy (in France some decades earlier). Bernheim showed us that people whom he had put into a state of hypnotic somnambulism, and who had had all kinds of experiences while they were in the state, only appeared to have lost the memory of what they experienced during somnambulism; it was possible to revive these memories in their normal state. It is true that when he questioned them about their somnambulistic experiences, they began by maintaining that they knew nothing about them; but if he refused to )( give way -and insisted , and assured them that they did know it all the same, and that they had only to say it; and I ventured to declare that the right memory would occur to them at the moment at which I laid my hand on their forehead. In that way I succeeded without using hypnosis. In obtaining from the patients whatever was required to establishing the connection between the pathogenic scenes they had forgotten and the symptoms left over from those scenes. But it was laborious procedure and in the long run an exhausting one; and it was unsuited to serve as a permanent technique. I did not abandon it, however before the observations I made during my use of it afforded me decisive evidences. I found confirmation of the fact that the forgotten memories were not lost. They were in the patient's possession and were ready to emerge in association to what was still known by him; but there was some force that prevented them from becoming conscious and compelled them to remain unconscious. The existence of this force could be assumed with certainty, since one became aware of an effort corresponding to it if, in opposition to it, one tried to introduce the unconscious memories into the patient's consciousness. The force which was maintaining the pathological condition became apparent in the form of resistance on the part of the patient. Primal repression and repression proper Freud starts his famous 1915 article on repression by stating that "The essence of repression lies in turning something away and keeping it at a distance from the conscious [8]. Freud discriminated ordinary forgetting from repression which is active and motivated form of "forgetting". As a defense mechanism, he employed repression as the process of rendering some drives or wishes unconscious which at first seem pleasurable but have painful consequences. Sexual wishes might be good examples of these. The following case seems to fit this scenario. As outlined in Singer [15,A young woman in analysis who in one session started to describe in great detail her sexual feelings for the analyst and her sexual anxieties, in particular about childbirth, which were disturbing to her. On the following day she announced at the beginning of the session that she would like to continue talking about what she had been discussing the day before because she knew it had been important but that she could not remember any of it.As the session progressed, she found herself thinking of the novel The Good Earth and in particular of one scene in which the heroine goes out into the fields and gives birth. Although the analyst was fully expecting that at this point the patient would recall the previous session, the patient remained oblivious to the connection. Trying hard as she might, she could not recall what she knew to have been so, important. As I have stated in the introduction Freud categorized repression into two parts: primal repression" and "repression proper". According to Freud primal repression occurs earl3, childhood. He wrote "We have reason to assume that there is a primal repression, a first phase of repression which consists in the psychical (ideational) representative of the instinct being denied entrance into the conscious. With a fixation is established; the representative in question persists unaltered from then onwards and the instinct remains attached to it. Primal repression is of great importance in Freud's theory. It is considered as the main mechanism that carries the childhood influences to the later life. It is considered as the main means by which the ego and superego become separated from the id, and the central idea in Freudian explanations of mental illness and therapy. In a short period between 1883 and 1987 Freud believed that certain neuroses were caused by seductions in childhood. He noted: "I cannot say certain up to what age limit sexual injury falls within the aetiology of hysteria; but I doubt whether sexual passivity after the eighth to tenth year can evoke repression in the absence of the previous experiences of the same kind" "Repression of the memory of a painful sexual experience in maturer years is possible only for those people in whom this experience can re-active the memory trace of an infantile trauma" 191 Freud's belief is based on the fact that the patients he observed, showed childhood seductions. Therefore he conjectured that childhood experience was the specific prerequisite for the development of adult hysteria and obsessional neurosis. But then later he realized that these seductions were childhood fantasies more than real memories. He gave up the seduction aspect of the theory and he developed the-idea of pregenital sex to emphasis the role of childhood sexual experience and the notion that childhood fantasy, in the form of the Oedipal Complex, plays a significant role in development. Freud in his 1915 paper continues to describe the second phase of repression as "The second stage of repression, repression proper. affects mental derivation of the repressed representative, or such trains of thought as, originating elsewhere, have come to into associate connection with it. On account of this association, these ideas experience the same fate as what was primally repressed. Repression proper, therefore, is actually an after pressure. Moreover, it is a mistake to emphasize only the repulsion which operates from the direction of the conscious upon what is to be repressed; quite as important in the attraction exercised by what was primally repressed upon everything with which it can establish a connection. Probably the trend towards repression would fall in its purpose if these two forces did not cooperate, if there were not something previously repressed ready to receive what is repelled by the conscious." [11]. Freud points out to a very important case of repression which led him to formulate his theory of repression; the case of Elisabeth R. [5] She came to Freud complaining about pains in her leg. Freud initially applied electric currents with no positive consequence. He suspected that this was a hysteria case and tried to apply hypnosis to the patient. She was resilient so Freud invented the technique of free association. Freud would ask the patient to remember and talk about everything. From her recollections Freud realized that Elisabeth's family lived " many misfortunes and not much happiness". Elisabeth's father died after suffering a long illness. Her mother also had a serious eye operation. She had two sister one of who married an unpleasant man. Her other sister married a man whom Elisabeth thought highly of and considered to be an ideal husband. Then this second sister died of a poor health. Freud at this point asked what her thoughts were regarding the death of her sister and observed that Elisabeth had much difficulty in answering. Freud conjectured that Elisabeth was hiding erotic desires and fantasies which were too disagreeable to tell. After much work Freud helps Elisabeth remember what she thought when she saw her dead sister in her bed. She recalls that she thought " Now her husband is free again I can be his wife" After this undoing of repression Elisabeth R. recovered from her illness. As quoted in [2] Freud noted We may assume with certainty that this idea, which betrayed to her consciousness the intense love for her brother-in-law of which she had not herself been conscious was surrendered to repression a moment later, owing to the revolt of her feelings. Repression proper emanates from the more highly developed system' of the ego systems which are capable of being conscious and may in fact be described as a process of "after pressure". It gives an impression of being an essentially active process, while fixation appears in fact to be a passive lagging behind. What undergoes in repression may either be the psychical derivatives of the original lagging instincts, when these have come reinforced and so come into conflict with the ego (or ego-syntonic instincts), or they may be psychical trends which have for other reasons aroused strong aversion. but this aversion would not in it self lead to repression, unless some connection had been established between the unwelcomed trends which have to be repressed and those which have been repressed already. Where this is so the repulsion exercised by the conscious system and the attraction exercised by the unconscious one tend in the same direction towards bringing about repression. The two possibilities which are here treated separately may in practice, perhaps be less sharply differentiated, and the distinction between them may merely depend upon the greater or lesser degree in which the primarily repressed instincts contribute to the result. Conclusion To summarize I have presented the repression theory; "the corner stone of psychoanalysis". Most of the views I laid out are due to Freud who founded the theory almost from scratch. 1 described the history of this concept as well as defining the two stages of repression " primal repression " and "repression proper". The concept of repression is rather complicated therefore I have given many examples as possible cases of repression which might illustrate the idea behind the theory of repression. Even a cursory look at the theory of repression leaves one with quite a bit of amusement and fascination. The main idea of repression theory is to answer the question; Why do we forget some memories in a manner which we can not voluntarily recall? Why do we put things at a deep level of the unconscious, so that only under extraordinary circumstances can we dig them up , and then, maybe, only in disguised forms. Freud's explanation of these questions was novel but not simple and complete. He argued that we can not bear to remember certain memories. In forgetting we repress that which we can't confront. We repress it because it is unbearable. Although it seems naive at first sight; all the structure of repression resides on this simple fact. Based upon this fact one can formulate three main hypothesis of repression which were implicitly laid out by Freud; I) the primal repression exists in early stages of childhood, 11) repression proper or adult repression exists, 111) repression proper is a consequence of primal repression. There are some experiments which were inspired by the theory of repression. Although it is an arguable issue whether an artificially induced repression would help us understand the mechanism and dynamics of repression theory; I would still like to point out to one of these experiments below. This experiment has the characteristics of most of the experiments conducted along the line of understanding repression. It was carried out by Zeller. Zeller's [18] subjects were divided into two groups, the experimental group and the control group. Both of the groups were asked to memorize thirty something meaningless syllables. Experimental group were subjected to depreciating remarks and insults about their performances. The control group was subjected to the similar task but with no insulting remarks on their intelligence. Both groups were asked to recall what they have memorized and the experimental group performed poorly. Several days later the experiment was carried out again but now the experimental group was praised for their performance instead of being insulted. A new recall test showed that the experimental group performed better than their first test. The failure of recall after insult was interpreted by Zeller as consistent with the theory of repression, and the improvement after praise a s proof that the repression had been "lifted", though the Zeller acknowledged that other interpretations were equally plausible. There is a considerable number of critics of the concepts we have presented here. For example Royal College of Psychiatrists in Britain banned its members from using therapies to undo repression of the memories of childhood sexual abuses. The argument for this is that there is not enough scientific evidence to prove that a) childhood sexual abuses always cause psychological problems in adults, b) memories of childhood sexual abuse are unconsciously repressed and c) undoing repression of memories of childhood sexual abuse leads to a development of the individual. In contrast to the case we presented in the introduction where "a previously repressed memory" was considered to be a reliable enough evidence to prosecute a criminal; in an other case Judge William J. Groff of New Jersey refused to accept the validity of such a memory as evidence in 1995 and wrote that "... the phenomenon of memory repression, and the process of therapy used in these cases to recover the memories, have not gained acceptance in the field of psychology, and are not scienfically reliable [17]. The False Memory Syndrome Foundation also claims that most of the recovered memories are simply planted by the therapists. The claim is that the patients under repressed memory therapies are' guided by their therapists to create false memories and fantasies of sexual abuse or other kinds. There have been lawsuits by patients against their former therapists, claiming that during the therapy sessions they were led to create false memories which ruined their lives. I do not agree with most of the sceptics of the theory of repression. It is certainly true that there are some ad-hoc assumptions and unexplained parts in the theory. For example it is not exactly clear how the dynamics of repression work. Some of the shortcomings of the theory were acknowledged by many people including Freud. But overall validity of repression theory carries no doubt as many of the recorded cases positively point out to the same direction. We may still have to work and think hard to fill the gaps in the repression theory but this does not mean that therapists should have 'to wait for a fullfletched understanding of this concept to help their patients get better by undoing their repressed memories which could be cause of their-problems. We should also not forget that repression theory offers a nice explanation of forgetting in terms of motivation and self-defense. REFERENCES 1) Breuer, J., and Freud, S. Studied uber Hysterie. Leipsig, Autick, 1895. 2) Billig, M.,(1999) "Repression Conversation Creating The Unconscious", Cambridge University Press. 3) Crews,F (1994) Revenge of the repressed, New York Review, November 17. 4) Erdelyi, M.H (1990) Repression reconstruction, and defense, "History and integration of the psychoanalitic and experimental frameworks". 5) Freud, S., Breuer, J. (1893-95) The complete Psychological works of Sigmund Freud," Studies On Hysteria". Volume 11, Hogarth Press, London, (1955). 6) Freud (1911), Psychoanalytic notes upon an autobiographical account of a case of paranoia (dementia paranoids) standard edition 12:3-82 London: Hogarth Press 1957. 7) Freud (1925-1926), The complete Psychological works of Sigmund Freud, An autobiographical study and other works, London: Hogarth press and institute of psychoanalysis , volume xx,1959. 8) Freud (1915a), Repression, standard edition V,London: Hogarth Press, 1957. 9) Freud (1883-1987) Further Remarks on the defense neuro-psychoses-CP, I-London: Hogarth, 1950 10) Freud (1910), Five Lecturers on psychoanalysis. Standard Edition, London Hogarth Press,1957. 11) Freud (1915b) Repression,standard edit ion,XIV, London: Hogarth Press,1957. 12) Herbart, J.E. Psychologi asl Wissenschatt. Konigsberg, 1924. 13) Hartmann, E. von Philosophiedis unbewussten. Berlin, 1869 14) Ersevim, I. (In Turkish) "Freud ve Psikanalizin Temel Ilkeleri" Nobel Tip Kitap Evi, Istanbul, 1997. 15) Jerome, L, Singer , Repression and Dissociation, The University of Chicago press/ Chicago and London, 1990. 17 Schacter, D.L., & Curran,T.(1995). The cognitive neuroscience of false memories . Psychiatric Annals,25. 18) Zeller, A.F. "An Experimental Analogue Of Repression 111. Effects of Induced Failure and Success On Memory Measures By Recall ". Journal of Experimental Psychology. 1951. - |
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