Repression was the first defense mechanism that Freud
discovered, and arguably the most important. Repression is an unconscious
mechanism employed by the ego to keep disturbing or threatening thoughts from
becoming conscious.
At some point, Freud moved away from hypnosis, and towards
urging his patients to remember the past in a conscious state, “the very difficulty
and laboriousness of the process led Freud to a crucial insight”. The intensity
of his struggles to get his patients to recall past memories led him to
conclude that “there was some force that prevented them from becoming conscious
and compelled them to remain unconscious...pushed the pathogenetic experiences
in question out of consciousness. I gave the name of repression to this
hypothetical process”.
Freud would later call the theory of repression "the
corner-stone on which the whole structure of psychoanalysis rests"
("On the History of the Psycho-Analytic Movement").
Repression and suppression are very similar defense
mechanisms. They both involve a process of pulling thoughts into the unconscious,
and preventing painful or dangerous thoughts from entering consciousness. The
difference is that repression is an unconscious force, while suppression is a
conscious process, a conscious choice not to think about something.
What is Repression?
Repression involves placing uncomfortable thoughts in
relatively inaccessible areas of the subconscious mind. Thus when things occur
that we are unable to cope with now, we push them away, either planning to deal
with them at another time or hoping that they will fade away on their own
accord.
The level of “forgetting” in repression can vary from a
temporary abolition of uncomfortable thoughts to a high level of amnesia, where
events that caused the anxiety are buried very deep.
Repressed memories do not disappear. They can have an
accumulative effect and reappear as unattributable anxiety or dysfunctional
behavior. A high level of repression can cause a high level of anxiety or
dysfunction, although this may also be caused by the repression of one
particularly traumatic incident.
Because repression is unconscious, it manifests itself
through a symptom, or series of symptoms, sometimes called the "return of
the repressed." A repressed sexual desire, for example, might re-surface
in the form of a nervous cough, vivid dreams, or a slip of the tongue. In this
way, although the subject is not conscious of the desire and so cannot speak it
out loud, the subject's body can still articulate the forbidden desire through
the symptom.
It has often been claimed that traumatic events are
"repressed," yet it appears that it is more likely that the
occurrence of these events is remembered in a distorted manner. One problem
from an objective research point of view with this situation is that a
"memory" is usually defined as what someone says or does. It cannot
be measured or recorded objectively, since there is no way to verify the
existence and/or accuracy of a memory except through its correspondence to some
other, independent representation of past events (written records, photographs;
reports of others, etc).
What is Suppression?
Suppression is very similar defense mechanism, when you
consciously forget something, or make the choice to avoid thinking about it. The
term "suppression" in its broadest sense was used by Sigmund Freud to
describe a conscious mechanism intended to eliminate undesirable psychical
content from consciousness. This is where the person consciously and
deliberately pushes down any thoughts that lead to feelings of anxiety. Actions
that take the person into anxiety-creating situations may also be avoided.
This approach is also used to suppress desires and urges
that the person considers to be unworthy of them. This may range from sexual
desires to feelings of anger towards other people for whatever reason.
The difference between suppression and repression lies in
the fact that this latter defense mechanism is unconscious and under its
influence repressed content becomes or remains unconscious.
Repression Examples
* A child who is abused by a parent later has no recollection
of the events, but has trouble forming relationships.
* A woman who found childbirth particularly painful
continues to have children (and each time the level of pain is surprising).
* An optimist remembers the past with a rosy glow and
constantly repeats mistakes.
* A man has a phobia of spiders but cannot remember the
first time he was afraid of them.
* A person greets another with “pleased to beat you” (the
repressed idea of violence toward the other person creeping through).
Suppression Examples
* An older man has sexual feelings towards a teenager and
quickly suppresses the thought.
* I want to kick the living **** out of an idiot at the
office. Instead, I smile at them and try to feel sorry for their Freudian
plight.
* I am about to take a short-cut down an alleyway. There are
some people down there. I decide to take the longer, but more “interesting”
route.
Therapy Approach
Repression (sometimes called motivated forgetting) is
a primary ego defense mechanism since the other ego mechanisms use it in tandem
with other methods. Repression is unconscious. When we deliberately and
consciously try to push away thoughts, this is suppression. It is not all bad. If all uncomfortable
memories were easily brought to mind we would be faced with a non-stop pain of
reliving them. To Freud, the goal of treatment, i.e., of psychoanalysis, was to
bring repressed memories, fears and thoughts back to the conscious level of
awareness.
Talking about suppression, it is understandable that by
avoiding situations or thoughts that lead to anxiety, the person minimizes
their discomfort. However, as the feelings are still held in the subconscious,
they continue to gnaw and create a sense of underlying and wearying low-level
discomfort. To work with suppressed
feelings, the person should try to create environment that there will be no
reasons for being suppressed. For example, person, who is in love with Jazz,
should find away to sneak out from the hypothetic social environment where the classical
music is only acceptable. Another approach would be to analyze the incidents in
the past, where the feelings were originally suppressed, and then use
therapeutic methods to enable them to re-experience the situation more
appropriately.
Suppression generally has more positive results than does
repression. First of all, it deals with unpleasant but not totally despicable
actions or thoughts. It actually may be even useful and rational to focus on
one thing at a time, suppressing other problems until that one is solved.
Counting to ten when angry—prior to taking action—is not only an example of
suppression, it is also a technique very useful in everyday life.
Sources and Additional
Information:
