Changes

Jump to: navigation, search

Repression

3 bytes removed, 15:26, 4 August 2006
no edit summary
It denotes the process by which certain [[thought]]s or [[memory|memories]] are expelled from [[consciousness]] and confined to the [[unconscious]].
[[Freud]] was first led to hypothesise the process of [[repression]] through his investigation into the [[amnesia]] of [[hysteria|hysterical]] [[patient]]s.
He later distinguished between [[primal repression]] (a '[[myth]]ical' [[forgetting]] of something that was never [[conscious]] to begin with, an originary 'psychical act' by which the [[unconscious]] is first constituted) and [[secondary repression]] (concrete acts of [[repression]] whereby some idea or perception that was once [[conscious]] is expelled from the [[conscious]]).
What is it that is repressed?
At one point [[Lacan]] speaks of the [[signified]] as the [[object]] of repression,<ref>{{E}}} p.55</ref> but he soon abandons this view and argues instead that it is always a [[signifier]] that is [[repressed]], never a [[signified]].<ref>{{Sl1S11}} p.218</ref>  
This latter view seems to correspond more closely to [[Freud]]'s view that what is repressed is not the '[[affect]]' (which can only be displaced or transformed) but the 'ideational representative' of the [[drive]].
Root Admin, Bots, Bureaucrats, flow-bot, oversight, Administrators, Widget editors
24,654
edits

Navigation menu