Repression

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repression (refoulement) The concept of repression is one of the

most basic concepts in psychoanalytic theory, and denotes the process by

which certain thoughts or 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 hysterical patients.

He later distinguished between primal repression (a 'mythical' 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). Since repression does not destroy

the ideas 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 symptoms, dreams, slips of the tongue, etc. (the return of the

repressed).

     For Lacan, repression is the fundamental operation which distinguishes

neurosis from the other clinical structures. Whereas psychotics foreclose,

and perverts disavow, only neurotics repress.

     What is it that is repressed? At one point Lacan speaks of the signified as the

object of repression (E, 55), but he soon abandons this view and argues instead

that it is always a signifier that is repressed, never a signified (Sl1, 218). 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.

     Lacan also takes up Freud's distinction between primal repression and

secondary repression:

     1. Primal repression (Ger. Urverdr‰ngung) is the alienation of desire when

need is articulated in demand (E, 286). It is also the unconscious signifying

chain (E, 314). 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' (S20, 53). 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' (Ec, 868).

     2. Secondary repression (Ger. Verdr‰ngung) is a specific psychical act by

which a signifier is elided from the signifying chain. Secondary repression is

structured like a metaphor, and always involves 'the return of the repressed',

whereby the repressed signifier reappears under the guise of the various

formations of the unconscious (i.e. symptoms, dreams, parapraxes, jokes,

etc.). In secondary repression, repression and the return of the repressed 'are

the same thing'.


def

The ego's mechanism for suppressing and forgetting its instinctual impulses.


References