On: Freud’s repression

In this essay, I shall describe repression and repression theory as an example of a fundamental concept in Freud’s work. For Freud, little was of greater import, it is the “cornerstone of our understanding of the neuroses”. In his Autobiographical Study, he called it “a novelty” and was clear that with his discovery, “nothing like it had ever before been recognized in mental life”. Once I have described and defined it, I aim to evaluate it, although historic evaluation including Freud’s own, about it being “a cornerstone”, not just of the understanding of neuroses, but of the psychoanalytic field, sets the bar high. From the outset, this concept is problematical, insofar as it is loosely defined, not least by Freud himself. In generic form, it is a psychic defence. This raises questions about what is being defended, how the defence works and what happens to repressed material. These are addressed below. Furthermore, Freud came to see repression as being two distinct things. Unhelpfully, what he called ‘repression proper’ turns out to be a derivative, whereas repression in what might be called its pure form, is described as ‘primal repression’. This essay restricts itself to Freud and his concept, but it is helpful to think of the term signifier, when thinking of the primal repressed, which was a word attached to it by French psychoanalyst, Jacques Lacan, later in the twentieth century. Billig (1999) described repression as a “willed forgetting” and explained that we have a need to forget our secrets, but also the fact of having forgotten them. The forgetting of the forgotten is successful repression.

I shall start with an attempt to define repression; what it is we must forget we have forgotten. It is when we cannot recall a memory from the past. We say it is repressed. But what does that mean? In the original, the German word verdrangung, described what was happening. The best translations of this seem to be ‘to push away’; ‘to thrust aside’. What is being thrust aside? Beliefs that cannot become conscious, because the content is so shocking, or painful, (such as a murderous rage towards one’s father) that something obstructs them ie thrusts aside and makes repressed. Freud’s terminology translated as an instinctual impulse, as that which is thrust aside. It is the impulse which passes into a state of repression. Freud explains that such a horror would inspire a fight or flight response, but given that “the ego cannot escape from itself”, it cannot fly.

In his short paper on Repression, first published in Zeitschrift, Freud grapples with why should something need repressing. If what is being repressed is the satisfaction of a need, a drive, that is inconsistent with the view that satisfying a need generates pleasure. Therefore, for this psychic mechanism to happen, it must be responding to the risk of unpleasure, in the case of a murderous rage, perhaps the subsequent guilt attached to parricide. Having the impulse met, the need satisfied is pleasurable, but it is the coexistence of unpleasures such as shame and the condemnation of society that causes the repression. None of this ever reaches the conscious level of the mind, but is fought out by the impulse and the defence. Freud explains that the force of the feelings of unpleasure overwhelm the pleasure of satisfying the unconscious impulse. It is at this point that he addresses the question of what happens to the repressed impulse. Freud understood that it is kept “at a distance” from conscious activity, but that it continues to exist.

This brings him to the theorising of two types, or components of repression. Primal repression is the first phase, much as described above – the impulse is denied entry to the conscious. He notes that what happens next, repression proper, is when psychic derivatives of the initial impulse attach themselves and make a renewed attempt to become conscious. These derivatives are also repressed, which is why Freud describes recession proper as an “after pressure”. Unlike primal repression the material that needs to be defended in repression proper, has once been available to the conscious but has been defended against. An early trauma is an example – too difficult and painful to tolerate, but available nonetheless. To remind his readers that repressed impulses continue to exist, he writes that repression only exists to act as a bar to one psychical system, namely the conscious. He suggests, moreover, that the repressed impulse “proliferates in the dark”. The “censorship of the conscious” is weakened by how far the derivative is from the initial primal repression, and sufficient distance can allow it access to the conscious, at which point they manifest as neurotic symptoms. Lastly, repression is not uniform. He highlights this to emphasise that a repression is not a permanent event, and for repression to succeed it needs a pressure, because it has to be able to resist the upward pressure of the unconscious, to which the impulse has returned, but not disappeared. He writes of these forces as “repressive cathexes”, which relax during periods of sleep and contribute to the formation of dreams as a renewed attempt of the unconscious impulse to break through.

Freud was not the discoverer of the unconscious; he himself notes the many artists and philosophers who had an understanding that it might exist, but the theory of repression is his unique work. In his paper, “The Ego and the Id”, Freud noted that we obtain our concept of the unconscious, “from the theory of repression”. Whilst an awareness of the probability of the unconscious had been acknowledged, he thinks the theory of repression allows it to be conceptualised. Herein lies its significance. He thinks the ego itself is the mechanism of repression and in his later years he asserted that the work of the analytical treatment was to strengthen the ego in its battle with id. This is a curio, because one might interpret it as an invitation for more repression. Was he advocating that, consciously or unconsciously?

If it can be satisfactorily defined, we might get around to asking, is it a necessary process? Does it have any sort of protective function? Also, does it always work? The strength of one’s defences is not consistent. At times of weakness it allows unconscious material to intrude, hence parapraxes. More familiarly, our defence is weak when we sleep. Dreams, the things that when interpreted are the “royal road to the unconscious”, are the best example, alongside symptoms. For Freud, this is the return of the repressed and is linked to the repetition compulsion. Freud notes that repression is a mechanism originating in the ego, and also that it is unconscious. He had come to understand that ego is not exclusively conscious. Achieving that understanding was a consequence of the work on repression, giving weight to its significance to the development of psychoanalysis. We accept that the return of the repressed is an inevitability, because we have not overcome it.

What might we think about the nature of repression at a societal level? This is important because we come to ask if repression is important. It seems to be something that protects us from feelings of guilt and shame, which might be too debilitating to carry on living. In this way, it might be thought of as a kind of uber-defence. Either way, the significance of his theory is its impact on futures, individually and collectively. In “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” he explores what the analyst can achieve working with something the analysand cannot remember: “The patient cannot remember the whole of what is repressed in him, and what he cannot remember may be the essential part of it”. It is in this essay that Freud writes about a repetition compulsion. “He is obliged to repeat the repressed material as a contemporary experience…” For me, it is this quality of the theory of repression, that it begot more ideas, that highlights its enormous worth. That something so radical could be taken up by future generations of analysts gives weight in any evaluation of repression.

In applying his discovery to treatments, specifically for neuroses, Freud started by believing that repressing material generated anxieties. An anxiety was the consequence of a repression because the energy associated with the unconscious drive had not been released – no pleasure. Patients were aware that something needed to be resolved, but not really what that was. Hence an anxiety. However, many years later he revised his thinking. In his revised view, anxiety begets repression, not being a consequence of it. An idea in the unconscious that is threatening to the integrity of the ego becomes the thing that the ego acts to repress. The anxiety came first; the defence, repression, was the response.

By evaluating repression, one is attempting to determine its significance, and to consider its strengths and also its limitations. How does one evaluate a “cornerstone”? Cohen and Kinston (1984) took the view that when Freud said that repression takes place only after a “sharp cleavage” between conscious and unconscious activity, and that in some papers he seemed to exclude some ages such as the pre-pubertal; that he might have wished to exclude some conditions, and they speculate those to be psychoses. It allows them to develop what they claim are long-standing theoretical inconsistencies, mostly linked with Freud’s views that primal repression was linked to trauma. They review the literature on borderline, psychotic and narcissistic patients in examining whether the theory of repression is inapplicable. Even if there is some merit to their argument, I am not convinced it truly damages the “cornerstone” or threatens to bring the structure down. In another criticism, they explore the use of cathexes and suggest that this is a convenient “economic metaphor” Freud used when he wanted or needed to avoid detailed definitions. They summarise that Freud allowed for ambiguity or for further research by using both a ‘cathexis hypothesis’ which mapped to his topographical model of the mind and concurrently working with a form hypothesis, which blends elements of both the topographical and the structural models of the mind. When one is dealing with something as dynamic as the unconscious, I take the view that it is wise to not be absolutist, and to leave room for fresh thinking. One final criticism the authors level is to take issue with the lack of “clearly stated hypotheses” regarding the formation and the “mechanism of primal repression”. This seems more justifiable, but Freud himself understood it, and it was his willingness to consider the impact of “environment” that allowed him to wrestle free from an impulse being realised as a potential source of unpleasure, not pleasure, and hence the cathexis for repression overwhelmed the cathexis to break into consciousness.

Blum (2003) has more to say on the significance of repression, especially in the dyadic analytical relationship because for him repression is indissolubly linked with transference. “Transference is a return of the repressed, with repressed memories embedded within a fundamental unconscious fantasy constellation.” It seems to me that this is critical in evaluating repression. Not only has it given psychoanalysis the theoretical foundation it required, and allowed us to explore unconscious, but it has been a productive tool in treatment. Blum’s essay is a response to an article penned by Peter Fonagy, who had disregarded the link between transference and repression. The enduring debates about Freud’s work are testament to its significance. Amongst Freud’s best-known and regarded psychoanalytic successors is Bion, who in his “Attention and Interpretation” also considered the analytical situation and the “experience of remembering a dream”. He thought memory should only be associated with a “conscious attempt to recall” and echoed Freud on the significance of repression proper making its renewed assaults on consciousness, often in dreams, when reminding us that “dream-like memory is the memory of psychic reality and is the stuff of analysis” (my emphasis).

This essay has described repression, one of Freud’s fundamental concepts, generally as a psychic defence, and more specifically, in explaining the way that primal repression forms and is repressed, and repression proper, which is sometimes repressed, and is an “after-pressure”. In the second half of this essay I have considered the significance of Freud’s great discovery, and his own view that it was first, a “cornerstone”, in the understanding of neuroses, and more boldly a “cornerstone” for psychoanalysis itself. In evaluating the discovery, I have reviewed papers that regard the definition and mechanism of primal repression as ambiguous and I have considered the significance of how the theory of repression has enhanced treatment, especially with regard to working with transference. I conclude that repression is fundamental to modern clinical technique and to the history, concepts and theoretical bases for psychoanalysis. Truly a cornerstone.

References

Billig, M. (2000) Freud’s Different Versions of forgetting “Signorelli”. Int. J. Psychoanal., (81)(3):483-498

Billig, M. (1999). Freudian repression: Conversation creating the unconscious. Cambridge University Press.

Bion, W. R. (Ed.). (2013). Attention and interpretation: A scientific approach to insight in psycho-analysis and groups (Vol. 4). Routledge.

Blum, H. (2003) Repression, transference and reconstruction International Journal of Psychoanalysis (84) (3) pp. 497-503

Cohen, J. & Kingston, W. (1984) Repression Theory: A New Look at the Cornerstone International Journal of Psychoanalysis (65) pp. 411-22

Freud, S. (1995). The Freud Reader. (Ed. P. Gay) United Kingdom: Vintage.

Frosh, S. (2012). A Brief Introduction to Psychoanalytic Theory. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Dating and Desires now

A sexual face. Goods in sex shop a sexual face pack toys for adults sex shop carnival mask royalty free stock photography — Seduction and disguise. Dating and desire.

Sexuality defines us in healthy and essential ways. It is said that ‘there can be no sexuality without anxiety’. Repressing desire is unhealthy. Last weekend the FT carried an article by Madison Darbyshire in which she described how her love life was ‘flourishing’ under lockdown. At the same time, a psychotherapist friend of mine was discussing what happens to desire in these circumstances. The world is fairly familiar with Freud’s core ideas, especially that sexual repression and denial can be damaging mentally. Sexual theory was what he regarded as his most important work. We thought that post lockdown, more candour and less inhibited behaviour might be noticeable.

For Freudians, human behaviour is driven by the ‘pleasure principle’. How much pleasure is there for a society in lockdown? He claimed that sexual desires were controlled by the ‘reality principle’ ie conforming to socially acceptable behaviour. Put another way, unbridled pleasure is repressed by the reality principle. It is the clash between Eros (sexual desire, intimacy and love) and Thanatos (death and the fear and attraction of death). It gets buried in the unconscious, where we defend ourselves from revealing our true selves. My friend and I think that is being exacerbated by current conditions.

Darbyshire claims a surge in ‘dating’ in the remote, lockdown world. She describes shared drinks, shared movies and shared card games. She notes that it has upended the expression ‘to date’. She quotes some Tinder statistics. ‘Conversations’ on the site are up 20% since mid-February, and on 29 March, it set a new record for ‘one day swipes’.

Dates, it seems, are now ‘planned with Zoom’. They are time limited, to satisfy the sharing of one drink. If it goes well, the Zoom time-clock is re-set and a second drink is poured and consumed. I liked her observation that “online dating has become anything but impersonal. A conversation with someone sitting in their kitchen, living room or bedroom is intimate in a way that a first drink in a bar can never be.”

Can video chatting stay exciting? It seems, so far, the answer is a resounding ‘yes’. There is some discovery of the multi-layers of two personalities. Alain de Botton’s School of Life has addressed dating at a distance in its promotional materials. Much of the School’s work is about conversations, about communications and about connection. It goes way beyond the intimate and personal spheres; more a manifesto for a better world. But in addressing dating, the point is made, “if a date is at heart an audition for emotional capacities required for the success of a long-term relationship, the real purpose of conversation must be to try to understand the deep self of the other person”.

Now, before we address the psychoanalytic challenge of whether any of us are comfortable knowing our own ‘deep self’, this seems to me to perfectly segue from Darbyshire’s article. The School of Life even sells ‘dating cards’ with examples of questions to ask. I quite like this premise. A couple of examples: “who would you like to go back and apologise to – and what for?” And, “what are the main points you would like to be covered in a speech at your funeral?”

Tasty fresh oysters with sliced lemon on cutting board. Aphrodisiac food for increasing sexual desire. stock photo — Aphrodisiac

This is something of a refresher for me. In my online dating experiences, shortly after I divorced, I became used to an almost formulaic timetable. Everything was lust/desire led. Sexual compatibility was the starting point for a possible emotional connection. A reversal from my pre-marital dating experiences. The ‘are we, or are we not’ establishment of sex potential was concluded by date 2, and some time later the momentum shifted from the physical to more emotional connection. I thought I may have met some unusually direct potential partners, but a number of my friends had similar experiences.

I very much enjoyed the whole experience, but wearied of it when I realised that even those suggesting they “only wanted some fun and some company” really were looking for much more emotional depth and engagement. I was too soon out of the most significant relationship I ever expect to have. Emotional engagement was beyond my capacity to share then. But I like what Alain de Botton is driving at with his cards for dating, and Ms Darbyshire’s points. Perhaps old-fashioned words and phrases like “Stepping out” and “courting” will enjoy a revival?

Darbyshire thinks that the ‘first date is a video date’ model, may survive the end of quarantining. It is cheaper, more time efficient, intimate, but easy to leave. I think she may be right. That is not to suggest that physical contact will be unfashionable. Which brings me to ‘desire’. My psychotherapist friend and I both think that there is likely to be a shift in behaviours, if quarantining gets relaxed. I don’t really like the war analogies for coronavirus, but the longer it goes on, the more one might expect the decadence of the Roaring Twenties, and the pick up in affairs and the collective sexual appetites of the late Forties.

My friend said that she herself was finding that her mind was much more filled with erotic thoughts, and that she felt the lockdown was stirring her unconscious. She thought that that might be true more widely. The collective unconscious is being stirred. She was sure that her id was wresting control from her ego. She was more in touch with her primary drives. For Freud, of course, sexual drive is at the core of his approach to uncovering the archaeology of the mind. He worked through stages of psychosexual development and asserted that even neonates were sexual creatures.

From the outset, the baby sucking at the teat is establishing a bond. This is the oral stage. The infant feeds and pleasures by engaging with the mother’s nipple. The mother becomes the first love object replacing the breast as the first object of desire. Films of infants’ faces after they have suckled and sated their needs, show remarkable similarity of expression to an adult male’s face, when he is sexually sated, and has ejaculated.

The oral phase is replaced by the anal phase. The child has its first sense of mastery ie of the anal orifice. Admired for the timing of his or her defecation, it has an effect on adult attitudes to tidiness and to messiness. The use of the disparaging, he or she “is so anal” is quite common when describing adult contemporaries. The phallic phase follows. Despite its name it applies to boys and to girls. It is a period of fascination with one’s own genitalia and introduces Freud’s ideas on the Oedipus Complex and the Electra Complex. This is the realm of castration anxiety and penis envy.

Much of his work here has been discredited, but the ideas have remarkable durability. It is a time of separation anxiety and for most children coincides with leaving their mother at the school gate and how they manage that challenge. The ego becomes trained to follow the ‘reality principle’ and to control the ‘pleasure principle’. Conformity applies, social conventions are followed.

Latency follows. This is when there is acceptance of the mother’s place in the father’s affections. The Oedipal drives become contained. A period of relative indifference to one’s sexuality, until a blossoming into the genital phase, a resolution of transitioning from latency to mature sexuality, when a love object to replace the primary caregiver (mother/father) is found. Some people get stuck in the latent phase. This manifests itself in adult ‘immaturity’ and an inability to form fulfilling, lasting relationships.

I can observe the impact of desire and frustrated desire on my own family. One daughter is fortunate enough to be quarantined with her boyfriend. The other has had to endure my flatmate skills, whilst not being able to be with her man, who was very ill with the virus. My son is isolated and has the frustration that his girlfriend lives nearby, but as a NHS worker, sharing a home with a front-line nurse, is very high risk. He is having to manage without seeing her. I wonder what it is doing in other homes? Is it even worse for adults together, but sharing small living spaces with their young adult children?

I see changing habits on Instagram and other social media. Some of the content today is much more about exercising the ‘look at me’ gene, typically associated with actors and performers. I think that this has shifted in just four weeks. An academic at my university used to post pictures of sunsets and sunrises from her South London vantage point, and I ‘followed’ her. Now she has taken to displaying her ballet dancing skills. She videos herself doing very demanding stretch exercises and steps, attired in ever-briefer, tighter, dance and gym garments. I suspect this may be related to frustration.

A former colleague posted a video of her skill in removing a pair of pyjama bottoms, by dragging one foot against her leg, whilst maintaining a handstand. Once free of the pyjamas, she is clad in quite a skimpy crop top and pants, and reveals a finely-toned body. Would these videos have been shared pre-COVID? My suspicion is that they would not.

My psychotherapist friend wanted to explore what desire and frustration was doing to us and to people we knew. She was interested to hear about how my playwriting partner and I share scripts, which we edit together, thanks to the wonder of googledocs. Her response was to suggest that we attempted to co-write an ‘erotic journal’. Would this relieve our desires and frustrations, or merely exacerbate them? It turns out, that there is a reason why writers think that writing about sex is the most difficult thing to do. There is an equally good reason why the ‘Bad Sex’ writing awards generate so much mirth. I have never worked with a couples’ therapist, or been a client of one, but I imagine this is an exercise they recommend.

Writing can allow fantasies to be expressed that may be too uncomfortable when said face to face, even to a loving partner; perhaps, especially to a loving partner. But for a loving couple the poor writing, or the tawdriness of it, can be an excuse for laughter, which is often a catalyst for intimacy. Sexual fantasies alarm us; they often include ‘perversions’. Having fantasies does not mean we need to act them out, but they can be a form of relief. I learned that any sort of erotic writing is painfully difficult and repeatedly asks questions of oneself. I am not good at it!

I mentioned it to a couple of friends. One lives on an island off the British mainland and his lover is in London. He almost has a double frustration. Urban dwellers can fantasise about lovers breaking lockdown, and stealing some passion, however inappropriate that might be, but he can hardly dream about his lover breaking quarantine and dashing to the coast and swimming into his arms! His remoteness made his need for intimacy all the greater. I doubt he will write though.

It is not as if it is a new thing. There is precedent for writing to work as relief. In the 1830’s, well-to-do translator, Sarah Austin, fell in love with the author of the book she was translating, a German Prince, Hermann von Puckler-Muskau. They did not meet for years and by then the ardour had drained, but for years, he was the release for her own sexual frustration. She told him, after a mutual acquaintance had been less than flattering about her beauty, that “all that is beneath the petticoat is worth one thousand times more than the rest”; her prospective lover would be pleased by what he found “in the dark”. It is assumed that she was not referring to the lighting in the room!

When describing her womanly qualities, “I like riding full gallop”, had nothing to do with equestrianism, and for emphasis and understanding, “what rapture it would be to minister in any way to the pleasures of a man who loved me”. She exuded sexual adventurism through her pen, “in your bed, I should be more glorious if I could invent a new pleasure for you”, and “Cleopatra herself could not exceed me as a bedfellow”.

Recensione: "Eyes Wide Shut" | IL BUIO IN SALA — *Eyes Wide Shut*

In Kubrick’s 1999 film, Eyes Wide Shut, Tom Cruise is improbably in a loveless, sexless union with Nicole Kidman. It is based on Schnitzler’s “Traumnovelle” or “Dream Story”. I enjoyed it when it was released, but I wonder if it is going to be better when I watch it next. It feels like a film for these times. The themes are desire, inequality, class distinction, and plague. The plutocrats who run and attend the orgy, cover themselves in gowns and masks to obscure their identity. Women wear masks but not much else. The costumes have been likened to those worn by C14 doctors treating the bubonic plague. The strange bird beak masks were used so that thyme and spices could be stuffed into the beaks to obstruct the airborne transmission of disease. The orgy is about being able to satisfy desire without emotional connection. Cruise’s doctor protagonist is literally unmasked, because he cares – in his case, for the prostitute, Domino. It was set to reflect its era, and the plague of the time, AIDS, but I think we might find fresh relevance in it. Again, it asks about what happens to desire, when it is frustrated.

In an article for London Review of Books, Adam Shatz (Dec, 2010), wrote that “the philosophy of desire” was born in 1969. Gilles Deleuze, a philosopher, and Felix Guattari, a psychoanalyst and political activist, co-wrote and thought that Freud was wrong in seeing desire rooted in absence, the fantasisation and the fetishisation of a missing object, namely the mother’s breast. They published ‘Anti-Oedipus’ to refute Freud, and posited that desire had no limits; it passes through everyone without belonging to anyone. But surely, in a quarantine era, that means that passing through everyone can only mean repression, when quarantined. Back to Freud, and the consequences of that repression.

Roger Scruton, the English philosopher wrote a book called “Sexual Desire”, much of which under-appreciated or under-recognised homosexual desire, and took the opportunity to critique Foucault, who wrote the “History of Sexuality”. Reviewing Scruton, the essayist John Royle (1986) wrote “the Utopian vision of sexual liberation has degenerated in practice into a set of hedonistic precepts that hardly constitute a moral system at all. This is the ‘terrain vague’ of our sexual life, the habitat of Eros”. Of course, a writer is a dreamer, finding outlets for his or her unconscious desires. I wonder if that is what has written these words for me.

Anyway, how is everyone getting on?