A Case of Partial Repression.

Now there is one important difference between, this case and the cause of claustrophobia. My friend had not so completely forgotten the fears of childhood as the young officer had forgotten the terrifying experience in the dark passage. Indeed, my friend recalled fairly readily these childish fears, though I gathered he had rarely thought of them since boyhood, and had never associated them with the occasional paroxysms of unreasoning fear which he had felt in recent years. Yet it seemed probable that the boyish experiences were the origin of the fears of manhood, as will appear more clearly when I give further details in describing later the method of psychoanalysis used.

We have had in these two examples, two cases in which the degree of forgetting was different. When the repression was complete there was much more serious trouble. It seems indeed possible to find cases illustrating a whole series of stages of repressions, some even slighter than the case of my friend, and with even milder consequences, of which I will give examples in later chapters. We have some more extreme in which insanity ensues (or, perhaps, we should say which accompany some cases of insanity), but which also show the possibility of the influence of past forgotten experiences on the conscious processes of to-day. Taking the extreme case of insanity, we may note the following instance.* A young woman was engaged to be married to a cobbler. At the last moment he jilted her. The emotional shock was very severe, and resulted eventually in a type of insanity. The actual events of the engagement and the jilting were entirely forgotten; but their continued influence on the mind of the unhappy girl was shown by the fact that all day long and every day she continued to make movements like those performed by a cobbler in sewing shoes. This way of a buried group of ideas and impulses finding its release in some symbolic form of action is very characteristic, and we shall have to refer to it again in dealing with dreams.

Such cases of entire forgetting may seem very mysterious. But we can readily bring them into line with generally accepted psychological laws. It is a recognised general tendency of the mind (through not an invariable habit) to turn away from the unpleasant. It is true that for the sake of some ulterior end, we may continue to attend to the unpleasant; in some cases fundamental instincts and interests compel us to attend even to the unpleasant, and sometimes, indeed, the unpleasant and the horrible fascinate us; but the mind is here in conflict with itself, for there is undoubtedly this general tendency to turn from the unpleasant qua unpleasant. Now suppose we turn repeatedly from some unpleasant memory, putting it out of mind, as we say, we are doing something very like acquiring a habit; so that we may regard a successful confirmed repression as a sort of habit which the mind has acquired in relation to a particular idea or set of ideas, and which, as in the case of many habitual acts, may occur automatically without entering consciousness, unless and until attention is specially called to it.

Repression and the Avoidance of the Unpleasant.

* Cited by Dr. Hart in his admirable little book, The Psychology of Insanity: Cambridge University Press.

What is the psychological or biological value of such repression? It is evident that complete repression may save the mind from misery at the time. We see, indeed, a new meaning in the phrase "unbearable" misery, if we realise that the mind may entirely throw out all conscious memory of the experience when the pain becomes too great just as consciousness itself is ejected when physical pain becomes unbearable and the patient faints. Even minor unpleasantnesses may be forgotten with benefit to the mind. It would appear, however, that in many cases the saving c of pain by repression is accomplished at the expense of nervous energy, which we may regard as exhausted in the continued though unconscious act of repression.

We know how exhausting it is to try to attend to work when we have to ignore noises and other external impressions, which are interfering with complete attention, or when we have to keep expelling from the mind some more insistent and intensely interesting idea which has nothing to do with our work. The repression which takes place in abnormal cases may exhaust energy in a similar way; and we may also regard it physiologically as having the effect of cutting off a portion of the brain from its usual inter-connection with other parts, and thus interfering with the normal working of the supply of nervous energy.

So far we have considered examples of the repression of the memory of unpleasant experiences, and their continued influence, notwithstanding their being forgotten. But we must expand this idea of repression, if we are to understand Freud's theory. We must look on repression as applied in the first place to impulses and desires, and as one mode of solving problems of mental conflict.

Mental conflict may result from the existence of two desires which are incompatible with one another. The conflict is more serious when one desire is based on a strong fundamental instinct, such as that of sex, or pugnacity, or fear, and when it is opposed by another instinctive desire or by desires powerfully reinforced by moral training or by social convention. Repression of the sex instinct takes a prominent place in Freud's psychology, a far too prominent place in the judgment even of some of those who readily acknowledge the great value of much of his work. Possibly this is because Freud was chiefly concerned with neurotic patients, for unhappy or abnormal sex experiences are a frequent cause of nervous trouble.

Mental Conflict.

It is evident, however, that if repression of powerful impulses is of significance in mental life and health, the sex impulses are likely to be of special importance, in view not only of their strength in most individuals, but because they have to be kept in check more completely than have other impulses. Yet it is obvious that we often have to repress many varied impulses based upon other instincts or emotions. Thus the instinct of pugnacity, roused by a father's excessive severity, has to be repressed constantly by the youth, and irritation may often be repressed for the sake of the feelings or the good opinion of others. The repression of fear in warfare seems to have been a prolific cause of nervous trouble in the recent war, especially because of the abnormally prolonged strain, without the natural outlet for immediate reprisals or flight to which nature prompts. Anger and resentment has often to be repressed by the employee for fear of the employer, or, nowadays, vice versa.