What do we know about Sigmund Freud's theories?

Encyclopedia of Opinion

Question: What do we know about Sigmund Freud's theories?
Position1 of 5›: Interpretation has changed over time
Argument‹3 of 3: Repression

Repression is to push down previous traumas on an unconscious level.

The argument

According to Freud, our personality develops from the interactions among the id, ego, and superego. Freud believed that these are in constant conflict and that adult personality and behaviour are rooted in the results of these internal struggles throughout childhood. Our efforts to find balance among what each of them “desires” determines how we behave and approach the world. What balance we strike in any given situation determines how we will resolve the conflict between two overarching behavioural tendencies: our biological aggressive and pleasure-seeking drives vs. our socialized internal control over those drives. Repression occurs when an experience is so painful (such as war trauma) that it is unconsciously forced from consciousness, while suppression is a conscious effort to do the same. These thoughts and feelings—and associated memories—could not, Freud argued, be banished from the mind, but could be banished from consciousness.

Premises

[P1]Freud held that personality develops from the constant conflict among the id, ego, and superego, rooted in childhood struggles. [P2] We behave according to the balance we strike between biological drives and socialised control over them. [P3] Repression occurs when an experience too painful to bear is unconsciously forced out of consciousness, though it cannot be banished from the mind itself. [C] Therefore, repression is part of what we know about Freud's theories, an interpretation that has changed over time.

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.