Repression, which Sigmund Freud also called “Motivated Forgetting”, is the inability to recall a threatening situation, person or event as a defense mechanism. The concept of Repression, now accepted as fact by psychologists was theorized by Sigmund Freud, an early pioneer in modern psychology, about how humans develop their personalities. According to Freud’s theory, 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. At the end of this phase, the child can now distinguish between desires, fears, self, and others.
The secondary stage of 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” without the need for any identifiable external threat. This conflict then manifests itself within the “ego”.
Elizabeth Loftus tried to use this theory to implant false memories in individuals in the late 20th century. However she could not complete her experiment because it was seen as unethical to implant someone with painful thoughts or memories. There’s an enormous amount of supporting research in the area of this subject started in the 1950s by Leon Festinger and other researchers.
Another way of understanding this is much simpler: a repressed, traumatic event arouses anxiety of the event without arousing the memory.
Author: Lucas Pscheidt
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