When we are faced by conflicting desires we may choose one path deliberately, or we may act somewhat impulsively in response to one impulse; in either case we may or may not consciously repress the other desire which disappears for a time. By repeated choice of one desire before others the rejected desires may eventually disappear, and we think them dead. According to the new psychology, however, many of these desires are not dead but only repressed; they exist still in the unconscious self, and they are only kept from entering clear consciousness by the constant, though unconscious, force of repression exerted by the mind - a habit of repression, as we have said.

One of the most important and difficult questions raised here is whether such repressions are necessarily harmful, as may at first seem to be the case judging from some of the pathological evidence.

This question we shall refer to again in later chapters, but we may say here that all that seems clearly established by the evidence of such cases as we have been considering is that, after the recall of repressed memories, cures are frequently effected. We have no absolute proof, however, that the actual repression was the cause of the original trouble. The forgetting might have been an accompaniment of the development of the disease, the disease itself being caused by a more ultimate cause - the violence of the conflict itself, for example. Further, even if the repression was the partial cause of the breakdown, we cannot say whether the consequences would not have been as bad even if repression had not ensued. For the time being at least repression may save the organism some immediate injury; this would be quite consistent with the possibility of still greater injury arising through its indefinite continuance. Lastly, assuming that in the type of neurotic case we have been considering, repression is harmful and is a cause of the nervous disease that ensues, we cannot at this stage infer that all repression in relatively healthy individuals, is also harmful.

In the preceding paragraphs we have several times referred to repression as though it was due to a conscious and deliberate decision of the mind to reject an unpleasant memory.

But this, as we have already hinted, does not always seem to be the case. Indeed, there is a marked trend of opinion towards the view that the processes of repression, especially those which succeed, are "unconscious." Throughout this book I distinguish the two types, when necessary, as deliberate repression and nondeliberate (instead of "unconscious") repression, because it seems to me that we cannot assume that non-deliberate repression does not contribute any element to the consciousness of the moment. Only when the deliberate or non - deliberate conscious repressions have succeeded, and when the effects of their activity continue without their own continuance as elements of consciousness, should we apply the term unconscious repression. Non-deliberate repression would be quite comprehensible from the point of view of normal psychology. We have already spoken of the general tendency of the mind to turn away from the unpleasant. This is sometimes conscious and deliberate. We do it of set purpose. We say we will not dwell on unhappy ideas.* But frequently, and probably far more often, we repress without conscious thought or deliberate decision. The tendency, indeed, is more fundamental than thought itself, and probably appears at the earliest stages in the evolution of living organism, in the form of an automatic turning from the unpleasant and towards the pleasant.

Types of Repression.

* Of itself, of course, this determination would never secure the forgetting of an unpleasant idea. The process is helped by the occupying of the mind with other thoughts. And it is doubtful whether such deliberate repression ever leads to more than temporary forgetting.

The clearest insight, however, into the problem of non-deliberate repression is, I think, to be gained from a study of the processes involved in the gradual learning of some skilled action, such as that involved in learning to use a typewriter or to play golf. This method of learning is called the method of trial and error or, better, of trial and elimination of error, and seems to be the method by which animals as well as human beings acquire habits of skill.

In practising golf a useless muscular contraction in one drive is gradually eliminated in succeeding ones, though we may be quite unable to say exactly what modifications took place in the succeeding drives. Only very gradually are the wrong movements eliminated and the right ones stamped in. "Probably the thrill of pleasure experienced when we feel that we have done the right thing helps to stamp in the tendency towards the performance of that action, so that on another occasion it is more likely to recur than it was previously."* It is quite likely that the unpleasantness of failure leads to an avoidance of a repetition of the useless action - an automatic tendency for it not to occur, which we may also call a repression. Now this inhibition of the unsuccessful action is usually quite unintentional if not unconscious. We can sometimes detect an erroneous movement, but normally, especially as we get more skilled, the modifications become more and more automatic, and whether we are "in form" or out of it depends on the working of these mysterious automatic inhibitions of wrong impulses, and the facilitation of the right ones.

Repression as a Form of "Trial and Error."

In some such way we may also suppose that impulses and desires which only lead to disappointment, the satisfaction of which is constantly denied by circumstances or by stronger conflicting desires, may tend to be inhibited, and eventually repressed, without any deliberate willing to repress them. It should be noted that we have no proof here of any repression which is unconscious in the strict sense of the term. Each repression of an impulse - even in its own tendency to withdraw owing to unpleasantness of conflict or to unsuccessful striving - may contribute an element in the total consciousness of the moment, even when there is no deliberate willing to repress, or even when we are unaware of any repression taking place.

* Quoted from the writer's Experimental Psychology and Education, Part ii. ch. x., where an experiment on the method of trial and error is described.

This so-called unconscious repression, which we have called non-deliberate, is thought to be especially characteristic of repression in childhood. That it should be so is consistent with the general nature of the infant mind which learns largely by the method of trial and error, the child not yet having reached the period in which conscious control and deliberate decision dominate.

Finally, it is quite possible that, even when there is a deliberate attempt to repress, there may also be accompanying it a non-deliberate repression, and this may be the really effective factor.

In the next chapter we shall consider the method used to discover the memories and repressed desires which have been "buried" in the unconscious.

Note on the Utility of Repression.

I am indebted to Professor Laird for a helpful common on an earlier paragraph of this chapter. He writes: "If as you do, you make repression part of the general process of turning away from what is painful, it is surely clear that in most cases such repression is useful, and this seems in line with your general point, i.e. that repression is [only] occasionally hurtful, and that the hurtful cases (at least when pronounced) are the neurotic ones."

I should agree that repression is always " useful " in the sense that it gets rid of some unpleasantness. And, usually, no doubt, there is a gain to mental health by any reduction of unpleasantness. But it does not seem to me certain that the gain through reduced pain may not be more than balanced by loss through repression of the impulse concerned. Some Freudians and neo-Freudians, indeed, lay special stress upon the value to mental health of facing and enduring, instead of repressing, the painful.*

* Cf. quotation from Jung, given later on p. 86. The Freudian doctrine of repression is expounded with great clarity by Ernest Jones in his Papers on Psycho-Analysis. For a searching discussion as to the nature and origin of repression from a biological point of view, reference should be made to W. H. R. Rivers' Instinct and the Unconscious.