Article
Repression
Die Verdrängung
The second of Freud's metapsychological papers of 1915, printed in the Internationale Zeitschrift für ärztliche Psychoanalyse. Repression is one of the vicissitudes a drive impulse may undergo when it meets resistance: since the ego cannot flee from itself as it can from an external stimulus, repression stands midway between flight and condemnation by judgement. It occurs when the unpleasure that satisfying a drive would cause elsewhere in the mind outweighs the pleasure it would bring. Its essence lies in turning something away from consciousness and keeping it at a distance, and it presupposes a sharp division between conscious and unconscious mental activity; before that division, reversal into the opposite and turning round upon the self do the work of defence. Freud separates primal repression, in which the drive's ideational representative is refused entry into consciousness and a fixation is established, from repression proper, an after-pressure that bears on the derivatives of the repressed and is helped by the attraction the primally repressed exerts. The repressed goes on living and proliferating in the unconscious, and derivatives distant or distorted enough reach consciousness, which the technique of free association turns to use. Repression is individual and mobile, demanding a constant expenditure of energy that is relaxed in sleep. The ideational representative and the quota of affect have separate fates: the affect may be suppressed, appear as an affect, or be turned into anxiety, and a repression that does not spare unpleasure has failed. Substitute formations and symptoms are signs of a return of the repressed. Three examples compare repression in anxiety hysteria (an animal phobia), conversion hysteria and obsessional neurosis.
Main ideas
- Repression is a vicissitude of a drive, midway between flight and condemnation by judgement; its essence is turning something away from consciousness and keeping it at a distance.
- Repression occurs when the unpleasure a drive's satisfaction would cause outweighs its pleasure; it is not an original defence but presupposes the division between conscious and unconscious activity.
- Primal repression refuses the drive's ideational representative entry into consciousness and creates a fixation; repression proper is an after-pressure on its derivatives, aided by the attraction of the primally repressed.
- The repressed goes on existing and proliferating in the unconscious; derivatives distant or distorted enough reach consciousness, which free association exploits, and symptoms are such derivatives.
- Repression is individual and mobile: it needs a constant counter-pressure and expenditure of energy, withdrawn in sleep, and the quantity of cathexis decides the fate of a derivative.
- The ideational representative and the quota of affect have separate fates; the affect is suppressed, appears as an affect or turns into anxiety, and a repression that does not spare unpleasure has failed.
- Substitute formations and symptoms are not made by repression itself but mark the return of the repressed; what all repressions share is the withdrawal of cathexis, of libido where the drives are sexual.
- In anxiety hysteria repression fails: by displacement an animal replaces the father, the libido becomes anxiety, and a phobia of avoidances follows.
- In conversion hysteria the affect can vanish entirely, and the symptom is a somatic innervation in which the repressed representative is condensed.
- In obsessional neurosis a hostile impulse towards a loved person is first repressed by reaction formation, but returns as self-reproach and displacement onto trifles, in an endless struggle.
What it shows
- 1915
Sigmund Freud introduced Primal repression
Freud named primal repression (Urverdrängung) in 'Repression' (1915) as a first phase in which a drive's psychical representative is denied entry into consciousness, an idea foreshadowed in the Schreber case (1911) as fixation. In Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety he returns to it as his own earlier concept, presupposed by later repressions.
- 1915
Sigmund Freud developed Repression
In the metapsychological paper Die Verdrängung Freud defines the essence of repression as turning something away from consciousness and keeping it at a distance, distinguishes primal repression from repression proper (after-pressure), and follows the separate fates of the idea and of the quota of affect.