Repression

The pathogenic process which is demonstrated by the resistances we call REPRESSION. It will now be necessary to make our conception of this process of repression more precise. It is the essential preliminary condition for the development of symptoms

Freud defines repression as the pathogenic process evidenced by resistance, constituting the essential precondition for symptom formation and distinguishable from mere repudiation or condemnation of an impulse.

Freud, Sigmund, Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, 1917thesis

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By extending the unconscious into consciousness the repressions are raised, the conditions of symptom-formation are abolished, and the pathogenic conflict exchanged for a normal one which must be decided one way or the other.

Freud articulates the therapeutic inverse of repression: rendering the unconscious conscious dissolves repression, removes the conditions that generate symptoms, and replaces pathogenic conflict with a normal one.

Freud, Sigmund, Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, 1917thesis

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This process, whereby an inadmissible wish becomes unconscious, is called repression, as distinct from suppression, which presupposes that the wish remained conscious.

Jung adopts and clarifies the Freudian distinction between repression—where the inadmissible content becomes wholly unconscious—and suppression, where awareness is retained, noting that repressed content nonetheless exerts ongoing influence on conscious processes.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Civilization in Transition, 1964thesis

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Negation, according to Freud, is repression: ‘A negative judgment is the intellectual substitute for repression; the ‘No’ in which it is expressed is the hallmark of repression.’

Hillman, citing Freud, identifies repression with the logical act of negation, reading this equivalence through the lens of senex consciousness and asking why this particular form of consciousness must be the structure of repression.

Hillman, James, Senex & Puer, 2015thesis

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Our human repressions conserve psychic life from developing away from primordiality. Yes, they keep the complexes infantile, i.e., in their infancy—but does this not also mean: close to the imaginal?

Hillman revalues repression as a conserving force that keeps psychic contents close to the primordial imaginal realm, inverting the standard psychoanalytic pathologisation into a positive archetypal function.

Hillman, James, Senex & Puer, 2015thesis

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in contrast with repression, in which all contact with the dark contents which cause suffering is destroyed by the splitting-off of the unconscious components, suffering permits the suppressor to live a comparatively normal life.

Neumann differentiates repression from suppression on the basis of their respective severities: repression destroys all contact with the dark unconscious contents, whereas suppression allows them to remain as conscious problems, with both modes ultimately burdening the collective.

Neumann, Erich, Depth Psychology and a New Ethic, 1949thesis

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The unconscious comprises not only the repressed material but also all the other psychic components which do not attain the threshold of consciousness. The principle of repression does not suffice to explain why these components remain on the other side of the threshold of consciousness

Jung argues that the Freudian principle of repression is insufficient to account for the full content of the unconscious, since much that remains below the threshold of consciousness was never repressed but simply never reached it.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, 1953thesis

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if early schizoid mechanisms and anxieties have not been sufficiently overcome, the result may be that instead of a fluid boundary between the conscious and unconscious, a rigid barrier between them arises; this indicates that repression is excessive

Klein locates repression developmentally within the aftermath of early schizoid positions, arguing that unresolved primitive anxieties produce excessive repression manifested as a rigid rather than porous boundary between conscious and unconscious.

Klein, Melanie, Envy and Gratitude and Other Works 1946-1963, 1957thesis

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By seeking out the repression in this way, discovering the resistances, indicating the repressed, it is actually possible to accomplish the task, to overcome the resistances, to break down the repression, and to change something unconscious into something conscious.

Freud describes the practical analytic work of locating and dissolving repression through the identification of resistances, emphasising the resulting inner struggle between the forces that originally erected repression and the therapeutic motives now opposing it.

Freud, Sigmund, Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, 1917supporting

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THE CONCEPT OF REPRESSION Although the trauma theory gave distinct prominence to the predisposition, even insisting that some past trauma is the conditio sine qua non of neurosis, Freud with his brilliant empiricism had already discovered

Jung traces the historical emergence of Freud’s concept of repression from within the trauma theory, noting how the concept shifted the theoretical weight from predisposition toward environmental and psychological factors in the aetiology of neurosis.

Jung, C.G., Collected Works Volume 4: Freud and Psychoanalysis, 1961supporting

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it is a problem that we need only here. It is enough for us to be clear that a transformation of affect does occur in the course of development… and it is related to the activity of the secondary s[ystem]

Freud identifies the essence of repression in The Interpretation of Dreams as a transformation of affect rather than mere exclusion of content, linking the process to the operation of the secondary psychical system and the developmental emergence of disgust.

Freud, Sigmund, The Interpretation of Dreams, 1900supporting

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I then stressed one feature in particular, repression (Freud), because precisely this feature seemed to me best to explain the inhibition of the correct reproduction… repression, i.e., resistance against reproduction while in the unconscious.

In his early experimental research, Jung operationalises Freudian repression as the resistance of complex-bound associations against correct reproduction, using word-association data to demonstrate the inhibitory action of repression on memory.

Jung, C. G., Experimental Researches, 1904supporting

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Were there not a secret purposiveness bound up with the supposedly devious path of the libido or with the supposed repression, it is certain that such a process could not take place so easily

Jung attributes purposive intentionality to repression, arguing that it cannot be understood as mere mechanical exclusion but implicates a directedness of the libido that serves psychic development.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Symbols of Transformation, 1952supporting

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psychic traits such as repression and negation become secondary to the actual libidinal zone of the anus. When psychic events derive from body, body becomes something different from psyche

Hillman critiques Norman O. Brown’s materialist reduction of repression to a bodily substrate, arguing that this subordination of psyche to body distorts the properly psychological character of repression and negation.

Hillman, James, Senex & Puer, 2015supporting

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Moreover, it is but a necessary preliminary condition, a pre-requisite, of symptom-formation. We know that the symptom is a substitute for some oth[er process]

Freud reiterates repression’s role as the necessary precondition rather than sufficient cause of symptom-formation, clarifying the structural relationship between the repressive mechanism and the substitute-formation that constitutes a symptom.

Freud, Sigmund, Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, 1917supporting

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The ‘denial of the negative’, its forcible and systematic exclusion, is a basic feature of this ethic.

Neumann contextualises repression within the old ethic’s systematic exclusion of all qualities incompatible with an absolute moral value, identifying collective repression as the structural feature of Western ethical formation.

Neumann, Erich, Depth Psychology and a New Ethic, 1949supporting

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The first time evil appeared was in 10, but at that stage it was obviously repressed, as there are strong inhibitions against the erotic complex in the subject’s present emotional life.

Jung demonstrates through word-association data how repression of the erotic complex manifests as associative distortion and inhibition, providing empirical grounding for the Freudian concept in experimental psychology.

Jung, C. G., Experimental Researches, 1904supporting

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the significance of libido-regression was recognized much later than that of repression. We may be sure that our points of view will undergo still further extensions and alterations

Freud acknowledges the historical priority of repression in his theorisation and its dominance over regression in the conceptual framework, while noting that integration of narcissistic neuroses will require further theoretical development.

Freud, Sigmund, Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, 1917supporting

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those suffering from persecution mania—like certain animals, especially dogs—can smell people’s hidden or repressed emotions and tendencies.

Ferenczi observes, in a speculative clinical aside, that paranoid patients possess a heightened sensitivity to repressed emotions in others, suggesting a physiological basis for the perception of what is unconsciously withheld.

Ferenczi, Sándor, The Clinical Diary of Sándor Ferenczi, 1932aside

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regression plays a no less important part in the theory of the formation of neurotic symptoms than it does in dreams. Three kinds of regression are thus to be distinguished

Freud situates regression alongside repression in the theory of neurotic symptoms, distinguishing three forms of regression as complementary but distinct mechanisms within the overall metapsychological schema.

Freud, Sigmund, The Interpretation of Dreams, 1900aside

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