Psychological repression, also psychic repression or simply repression, is the psychological attempt by an individual to repel its own desires and impulses towards pleasurable instincts. Such desires, impulses, wishes, fantasies or feelings can be represented in the mind as thoughts, images and memories. The repression is caused when an external force puts itself in contrast with the desire, threatening to cause suffering if the desire is satisfied, thereby posing a conflict for the individual; the repressive response to the threat is to exclude the desire from one's consciousness and hold or subdue it in the unconscious. Repression plays a major role in many mental illnesses, and in the psyche of average people.^[1]

The concept is part of Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theory. Since Freud's work in psychoanalysis, repression is now accepted as a defense mechanism^[2] by psychoanalytic psychologists. Conversely, regarding the distinct subject of repressed memory, there remains instead some debate as to whether (or how often) memory repression really happens^[3] and mainstream psychology holds that true memory repression occurs only very rarely.^[4]

Stages

In the Primary Repression phase, an infant learns that some aspects of reality are pleasant, and others are unpleasant; that some are controllable, and others not. In order to define the "self", the infant must repress the natural assumption that all things are equal. Primary Repression then is the process of determining what is self, what is other; what is good, and what is bad. At the end of this phase, the child can now distinguish between desires, fears, self, and others. ^{[citation needed]}

Secondary Repression begins once the child realizes that acting on some desires may bring anxiety. This anxiety leads to repression of the desire. The threat of punishment related to this form of anxiety, when internalized becomes the superego, which intercedes against the desires of the id (which works on the basis of the pleasure principle) without the need for any identifiable external threat. This conflict manifests itself within the ego.^{[citation needed]}

Abnormal repression, or complex neurotic behavior involving repression and the superego, occurs when repression develops and/or continues to develop, due to the internalized feelings of anxiety, in ways leading to behavior that is illogical, self-destructive, or anti-social. ^{[citation needed]}

A psychotherapist may try to reduce this behavior by revealing and re-introducing the repressed aspects of the patient's mental process to her or his conscious awareness, and then teaching the patient how to reduce any anxieties felt in relation to these feelings and impulses. ^{[citation needed]}

Related concepts: repressed memories

It is often claimed that traumatic events are repressed, yet it appears that the trauma more often strengthens memories due to heightened emotional or physical sensations.^[5] (These sensations may also cause distortions, though human memory in general is filtered by layers of perception and incompletion). One problem from an objective research point of view is that a "memory" must be measured and recorded by a person's actions or conscious expressions, which may be filtered through current thoughts and motivations.

Some psychologists, such as Elizabeth Loftus, can implant false memories in individual. Despite claims of psychologists and psychiatrists about repressed memory, there is no evidence (except in the case of brain injury) of anyone for whom there is proof they have taken part in a traumatic event actually forgetting the event (eg car crashes, soldiers in battle). The main difficulty these people have is stopping remembering and thinking about the event.

Also due to ethical and methodological reasons—for example, a researcher cannot put an experimental group of people through a traumatic experience, and one could not prospectively secure a trauma-free control group, in essence—the information about repression that experimental research can provide is especially limited.

However, the ignoring (rather than suppression) of information chosen for consideration in the present or future - because it is viewed as aversive - has a powerful relationship to what will be drawn out of the unconscious to be made available for honest, conscious deliberation.^{[clarification needed]}.