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The [[theory ]] of [[organic ]] repression was elaborated throughout [[Freud]]'s [[work ]] in [[order ]] to propose a synthetic, "psychobiological" solution to the problem of pathological repression and the [[choice ]] of [[neurosis]]. [[Civilization ]] was considered to be built on the [[model ]] of an "organic" repression of abandoned [[libidinal ]] zones, for example the abandonment of olfactory satisfactions as hominids evolved into standing upright. Throughout his [[life ]] Freud tried to find a "psychobiological" solution to the question posed by the [[psychic ]] organization, notably those of the choice of neurosis and pathological repression (Sulloway, 1979). The same Lamarckian and biogenetic model of [[human ]] [[development ]] inspired the earliest, as well as the latest [[Freudian ]] discoveries, giving rise to an underlying model of [[psychosexual ]] evolution meant to [[interpret ]] human [[behavior]]. Many of the phylogenetic points of view that Freud promulgated after <i>[[Totem ]] and [[Taboo]]</i> (1912-13a) had been adopted by him as early as the 1890s, as his correspondence with [[Fliess ]] shows.A few phases of the evolution of Freudian [[thought ]] concerning the problem of repression can be distinguished, in the course of which Freud perfected complementary theories, one [[psychological ]] and the [[other ]] organo-phylogenetic. The [[instincts ]] rooted in phylogenesis never stopped haunting his thought (Laplanche, 1993).After abandoning the [[seduction ]] theory in 1897, Freud replaced the [[notion ]] of [[defense ]] against [[real ]] [[traumatic ]] seductions linked to the [[environment ]] with an organic olfactory theory of repression. He explained the propensity of man toward [[sexual ]] neurosis by an excessive repression of the affects of [[pleasure]], which were associated with certain [[infantile ]] [[erogenous zones]], such as the mouth, the nose, throat, and anus ([[letter ]] to Fliess of November, 14, 1897). He took up this point of view again, in [[particular]], in "The [[case ]] of the [[Rat Man]]" (1909d), who had been a "sniffer" in his [[childhood]], [[identifying ]] [[people ]] through their particular odor. In this case study he wonders whether "the atrophy of the [[sense ]] of smell (which was an inevitable result of man's assumption of an erect posture) and the consequent organic repression of his pleasure in smell may not have had a considerable share in the origin of his susceptibility to the disease" (p. 248). In later writings, <i>[[Totem and Taboo]]</i>, in 1912, then <i>[[Civilization and its Discontents]]</i> (1930a [1929]), Freud will renew this evolutionist hypothesis of a relation between [[sexuality]], neurosis, and the erect posture of man.However, even before abandoning his theory of seduction in the autumn of 1897, he had developed his psychological theory of repression, appealing to the notion of "organic" [[reversal ]] of [[affect ]] (disgust, [[shame]]), associated with certain infantile sexual experiences. In the same "organic" perspective, he connected the acquisition of disgust and shame, in <i>[[Three ]] Essays on the Theory of Sexuality</i> (1905d), to "a development that is organically determined and fixed by heredity, and can occasionally occur without any [[help ]] at all from education" (p. 178-179).For a long [[time]], he had been considering the reaction of disgust at excrement as a phylogenetic consequence of the vertical [[position]]. He had already discussed this point of view with Fliess, referring to "abandoned erogenous zones": "I have often had a suspicion," he wrote him on November 14, 1897, "that something organic plays a part in repression; I was able once before to tell you that it was a question of the abandonment of former sexual zones. . . . The extinction of these initial sexual zones would have a [[counterpart ]] in the atrophy of certain [[internal ]] organs in the course of development" (<i>[[Complete ]] Letters to Fliess</i>, p. 279).On November 17, 1909, in the course of a debate at the [[Psychoanalytical ]] [[Society ]] of [[Vienna]], Freud explained "that there is no repression that does not have an organic core; this organic repression consists of the substitutions of unpleasurable sensations for pleasurable ones. Probably man's detachment from the soil is one of the basic [[conditions ]] for [the [[formation of]] of] a neurosis; the olfactory sense is prone, as a consequence of this detachment, toward repression, since it has become useless . . . the bigger the [[child ]] gets to be, the further it rises away from ground" (Nunberg, p. 323). This [[distinction ]] between the organic repression of childhood and the more psychological repressions of the [[adult ]] corresponds to the later Freudian dichotomy distinguishing between [[primal ]] repressions and secondary ones (1915d).Subsequently, the [[logic ]] of <i>Totem and Taboo</i> amplified the organic theory of repression proposed as first of all linked to odor. Along with the [[myth ]] of the [[primitive ]] [[murder ]] of the [[father]], "the ontogenetic acquisition of [[remorse]], [[guilt ]] and [[moral ]] sense now became conceivable to Freud as a phylogenetic precipitate from the primal father [[complex ]] of early man" (Sulloway, p. 373). At the time of the 1915 edition of the <i>Three Essays</i>, Freud added the following passage: "The [[barrier ]] against [[incest ]] is probably among the historical acquisitions of mankind, and, like other moral taboos, has no [[doubt ]] already become established in many persons by organic inheritance" (p. 225n).With <i>Civilization and its Discontents</i>, he summed up thirty years of [[reflection ]] on the question of the sexual etiology of [[neuroses]], suggesting that the propensity of [[civilized ]] man towards pathological repression should be imputed to [[prehistory ]] in the following manner. Man was first an [[animal ]] on four legs, responding to olfactory stimuli. When he adopted the vertical posture, [[visual ]] stimuli came to replace olfactory stimuli. This giant step towards hominization led to [[feelings ]] of shame ([[visible ]] sexual organs), as well as disgust, linked to organic repression of the odors of excrement and of the genitals. Olfactive repression opened the way then to the evolution of civilization toward cleanliness and the first displacements, repressions, or sublimations, leading to the "organic" [[rejection ]] of strong odors.Freud completed the biogenetic scenario of the repression founding civilization with the hypothesis of the [[parricide ]] that founded the human [[family]], already advanced in <i>Totem and Taboo</i>. He linked this phylogenetic point of view to the diphasic development characteristic of human sexuality.In 1930 Freud wrote one of the most comprehensive versions of his theory, expressing his conviction of the tight ties between sexuality, [[culture]], and neurosis. Ontogenetically, neurosis was conceived as a particular malady, linked to a specific [[stage ]] of libidinal [[fixation]], to which the [[libido ]] had to have regressed. The "hereditary" predisposition constituted a basic "scheme" for ontogenetic development, "provoking the fantastic rewriting of many infantile experiences, in conformity to the [[universal ]] grill of phylogenesis" (1930a).

# [[Freud, Sigmund]]. (1905d). Three essays on the theory of sexuality. SE, 7: 123-243.# ——. (1909d). [[Notes ]] upon a case of [[obsessional ]] neurosis. SE, 10 : 151-318.

# ——. (1985c [1887-1904]). The complete leters of [[Sigmund Freud ]] to [[Wilhelm Fliess ]] (Jeffrey Masson, Ed. and Trans.). Cambridge, MA/London: Belknap Press.# Laplanche, Jean. (1993). Le fourvoiement biologisant de la sexualité chez Freud. [[Paris]]: Les Empêcheurs de Penser en Rond.