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=====Psychoanalytic Theory=====
The concept of [[repression]] is one of the most basic [[concepts]] in [[psychoanalytic theory]].
=====Unconscious=====
It denotes the process by which certain [[thought]]s or [[memory|memories]] are expelled from [[consciousness]] and confined to the [[unconscious]].
=====Sigmund Freud=====[[Freud]] was first led to hypothesise hypothesize the process of [[repression]] through his investigation into the amnesia of [[hysteria|hysterical]] [[patient]]s.
=====Primary and Secondary=====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]]).
=====Unconscious Formations=====
Since [[repression]] does not destroy the [[idea]]s or [[memories]] that are its target, but merely confines them to the [[unconscious]], the [[repressed]] [[material]] is always liable to return in a distorted form, in [[symptom]]s, [[dream]]s, [[slips of the tongue]], etc. (the [[return of the repressed]]).
=====Repressed Signifier=====
What is it that is repressed?
=====Primary and Secondary=====
[[Lacan]] also takes up [[Freud]]'s distinction between [[primal repression]] and secondary [[repression]]:
[[Primary repression]] is the [[repression]] of the first [[signifier]].
"From the moment he speaks, from that precise moment and not before, I understand that there is repression."<ref>{{S20}} p.53</ref> [[Lacan]] does not see [[primary repression]] as a specific psychical [[act]], localisable in [[time]], but as a structural feature of [[language]] itself - namely, its necessary incompleteness, the [[impossibility]] of ever saying "the truth about truth."<ref>{{Ec}} p.868</ref>
[[Lacan]] does not see [[primary repression]] as a specific psychical [[act]], localisable in [[time]], but as a structural feature of [[language]] itself - namely, its necessary incompleteness, the [[impossibility]] of ever saying "the truth about truth."<ref>{{Ec}} p. 868</ref>
[[Secondary repression]] (Ger. ''Verdr‰ngung'') is a specific psychical [[act]] by which a [[signifier]] is elided from the [[signifying chain]].
==See Also==
{{See}}
* [[Demand]]
* [[Drive]]
* [[Foreclosure]]
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* [[Formation]]
* [[Hysteria]]
* [[Memory]]
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* [[Neurosis]]
* [[Signifier]]
* [[Signifying chain]]
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* [[Structure]]
* [[Symptom]]
* [[Unconscious]]
{{Also}}
== References ==