Repression

The argument

Repression is the mechanism through which Freud's model of the mind explains why people are strangers to their own motives, and it follows directly from his account of how personality is formed. On that account, personality develops from the interactions among the id, the ego and the superego. Freud held that these are in constant conflict, and that adult personality and behaviour are rooted in the results of those internal struggles during childhood. The conflict is not an occasional crisis but the ordinary condition of mental life: the efforts a person makes to find a balance among what each of them wants determine how they behave and how they approach the world. The balance struck in any given situation decides how a person resolves the tension between two overarching behavioural tendencies — the biological drives towards aggression and pleasure on one side, and the socialised internal control over those drives on the other. Every situation requires the balance to be struck again, which is why the same person can act inconsistently without any of the acts being out of character. Repression is what happens when the conflict cannot be settled at all. It occurs when an experience is so painful — war trauma, for example — that it is unconsciously forced out of consciousness. Freud distinguished this from suppression, which is a conscious effort to do the same thing. The distinction is essential to the theory: suppression is something a person does and knows they are doing, while repression happens without their knowledge, which is why it cannot be reversed by deciding to remember. The crucial qualification is what happens to the material afterwards. Freud argued that these thoughts, feelings and the memories attached to them could not be banished from the mind, only from consciousness. They remain active and continue to shape behaviour from outside awareness — which is why repression forms part of what we know about Freud's theories, and why the interpretation of it has changed over time.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Despite Freud’s association with the recovery of repressed memory and subsequent child abuse allegations, Freud did not himself believe repression could cover actual child sexual abuse.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Freud's theory of repression is not as all-encompassing as has been described.