Freud's theory of repression and modern psychological critique

Freud's Theory Of Repression

Freud is popularly known as the father of psychoanalysis and the idea of psychological repression of memories and urges, even though he was neither the first psychoanalyst or even the first to posit the existence of repression. His justifiable fame comes both from the way he popularized psychoanalysis, and from his further development of its theories. He is commonly attributed with creating the theory of the conscious and subconscious, of the many sexual complexes and drives which run our lives and our subconscious, and with the idea that things which are not socially acceptable will be hidden away within the subconscious. Freud called this process of burying the unacceptable aspects of life away into the subconscious regression, which he was to eventually succinctly defined thus: "the essence of repression lies simply in the function of rejecting and keeping something out of consciousness." (Rieff, 147) It is generally believed (though there appear to be exceptions to this belief) that Freud considered all repression to be a subconscious act, a sort of "defense mechanism" against the uncomfortable or painful facts of life.

Repression can be as harmless as repressing a subversive or rude thought, or as destructive as repressing entire categories of experience or disregarding and repressing sexual urges. Freud considered that those things which were repressed eventually displayed themselves in various forms. His earliest work on dreams, accidental slips of the tongue, and on joking and humor, all showed a belief that humans can take their destructive or illicit desires and convert them into something which is socially acceptable where the actual fulfillment of that desire would not be. For example, even in Freud's sexually paranoid time, it was socially licit for even a married woman to make a slip of the tongue of some sort, to have a symbolically erotic dream (for example, a dream about a male friend walking around with a sword and slaying dragons in her cave), or to make "innocent" jokes about cheating on her husband. The woman might not even realize that these were all actions showing a wish to have an affair with her doctor -- her lack of awareness shows that this desire had been well repressed. Though some of Freud's discussion of repression deals with such relatively minor repressions, he is better known for his theories regarding major repressions.

Freud is particularly famous for his theories regarding life stages (in which humans go through a number of different sexual stages, in which arousal and fulfillment is gained through various means, from the oral to anal to genital) and the idea that childhood sexuality which is left unfulfilled and childhood fantasies (such as sexually desiring the opposite sex parent or hating the same-sex parent) which cause guilt or fear, are all repressed and forgotten. Until they are re-earthed and dealt with, the theory suggests, the individual is trapped within that stage by their unconscious memories. The idea that most repression is of a sexual nature, and is an unconscious act, has been one of the more frequently challenged of Freud's contentions. Recently, the idea of "repressed memories" of a sexual nature has led to what some people consider a witch-hunt, and others a true renaissance: the rise of psychologists aiding patients, and women in particular, to recover memories of sexual abuse which are at the root of their problems. Some debate exists as to whether this is what Freud had in mind when he spoke of repression -- some suggest that he turned away from the reality of incest in order to pursue his ideas of repressed fantasies materializing as memories, others suggest that his very idea of repression validates the recovered memories. (This debate is covered in scores, if not hundreds, of sources. A few have been listed in the bibliography, but no one in particular deserves special notice here). It can at least be said with some certainty that the question of repressed memories of sexual abuse and incest was not the most important factor of Freud's work on repression to the good doctor himself, especially in his later years. Freud was primarily concerned with the way that repression of our own socially unacceptable urges, fantasies, wishes, and instincts became repressed and even neurotic.

Jung's Response to Freud's Repression Theories

Carl Jung, who was a contemporary and at one point a friend of Freud, is one of the few early psychoanalysts who work may very well rival Freud's. His response to Freud's theories of repression is particularly important because for so long he was a significant advocate of Freud's work in general, and his own work drew strongly from many of Freud's ideas. Where Jung differed from Freud -- and what really drove them apart both as professionals and as friends -- was in his idea about the core nature of the human subconscious. Freud tended to think of the subconscious as almost exclusively urge-based. It was primarily psychosexual, and where repression occurred the repressed material was believed to generally be of a sexual or violent nature. Urges for sex or violence dominated the subconscious as Freud saw them, particularly in the realm of dreams. Jung, on the other hand, came to believe that the subconscious far transcended the mere animal instincts, and that it was not merely sexual or merely urge based. He came to speak of the subconscious as driven by archetypes, by ancient mythologies and legends and symbols, so that dreams were not necessarily sexual in nature but might give further insight both into life and into the supernatural. Jung was something of a rational mystic, and he spoke not only of the repression of sexual and violent urges, but of the repression of entire "archetypes" within the soul that were not allowed to surface within regular reality but continued to operate within the subconscious. While repression for Freud resulted in neurosis, for Jung in resulted in the creation of multiple inner archetype-selves, (this is a slight oversimplification of Jung's theories, of course) such as the shadow, the anima and animus, and so forth. Jung differed significantly from Freud in this matter, and it was apparently an issue of great contention, as reported in Jung's autobiography:

can still recall vividly how Freud said to me, 'My dear Jung, promise me never to abandon the sexual theory.... we must make a dogma of it, an unshakable bulwark.'... In some astonishment I asked him, 'A bulwark -- against what?' To which he replied, 'Against the black tide of mud' -- and here he hesitated for a moment, then added -- 'of occultism'" (quoted in: Gannon)

Charges of occultism are understandable in light of Jung's work. He refers to the experience of the repressed subconscious self as "a daemon, a human being, or a process... Essentially, therefore, it is a mythological figure" (in: Gannon) and unlike Freud's grim sexualization of the alienated subconscious mind, Jung creates a joyous almost deific self: "a little piece of human psychology and human fate, a remnant of the joys and sorrows that have been repeated countless times in our ancestral history." (in: Gannon) At the same time, there is a degree to which Jung's work is indebted to Freud's, and related to it. The idea of the subconscious and of repression, which are the medium for Jung's mystical approach to psychoanalysis, are owing to his study and early belief in Freud.

Perhaps the differences between Jung and Freud's theories sprung for their differences in experience. Freud worked primarily with upper to middle class neurotics, many of them very bored and socially repressed women. Jung did far more work with middle to lower-class psychotics. Freud himself had sexual issues from childhood (he reported having seen his mother naked, for example) and appears to have had a cocaine addiction. Jung, on the other hand, was overcome by strange, sweeping mystic visions and spent years studying mythology across the world. It is possible that some element of their difference may have stemmed from these social and professional differences -- certainly Freud's theories seem to lend themselves to an artificially sterile social world where every little nuance is judged and in which sexual repression was something of an art form, while Jung's lend themselves to a world where the real pressures of life might push individuals into a more primitive, archetypical understanding of themselves and the world, and sex is less of a worry than sanity.

Skinner: Denying --and Repeating?-- Freud's Theories

If there was one group of psychologists who could be said to be most against Freud's theories of psychoanalysis, it would be the behaviorists, led by B.F. Skinner. These behaviorists suggest that the psychological does not matter, and are skeptical about its very existence. Rather they suggest that the human being, like any other animal, is merely conditioned by the positive and negative reinforcements of their environment. When Skinner wrote his infamous utopian novel Walden Two about a world in which all the citizens were programmed (through behaviorist reinforcement and training) from birth to be happy, productive, and void of the "anxiety of choice," he very much created the image of a place in which psychoanalysis would be not only unnecessary, but even absurd. According to behaviorists, repression as a psychological motivator and purpose for action in bunk. Repression in simplest sense -- the forgetting of unpleasant things -- has no psychological charge or effect, but is merely the conditioned (and perhaps even wise) avoidance of pain. Of course, Freud would have used repression and the subconscious to explain many actions which Skinner would have attributed to environmental factors. Despite these significant differences, some critics have noticed an uncanny similarity between Skinner and Freud. As one writer comparing the two theorists writes:

Whereas behaviorism placed all its stress upon external environment (that is, upon stimuli from the outer world) as the controlling factor in behavior, psychoanalysis placed its emphasis upon the internal environment (upon stimuli from within, in the form of drives and instincts).... [yet] For all its differences with behaviorism, Freudian theory agrees in the fundamental image of man as a stimulus-response machine, although the stimuli that work their will upon the human being come from within rather than from without. Freud's determinism was not environmental, like Watson 's, but psychogenetic; nevertheless, it was a determinism, and it left little room for spontaneity, creativity, rationality, or responsibility." (Matson)

Thomas Szasz, a noted critic of Skinner's, also points out the strange parallels. He writes that while Freud attributed the creative process to the broken workings of repressed sexuality, Skinner attributed it to the broken workings of evolution-created conditioned responses. "Anything will do, so long as it reduces the artist to the level of robot or rat." (Szasz, 3)

Billig: A Modern Voice on Freud's Humor and Repression

Michael Billig is an influential modern-day psychologists who writes and lectures frequently on Freud, and quite literally wrote the book on Freudian Repression. At a recent C.S. Meyers Lecture Conference, Billig gave a talk on the relationship between repression and humor as Freud envisioned it. Billig is different than the other three writers mentioned in that (at least from this lecture) he does not seem to have any significant theoretical problems with Freud. What he does do, and in a very important fashion, is point out where Freud failed to carry his own theories to their full and logical conclusions, and suggests slight adjustments to help his audience better appreciate the old master.

As mentioned earlier, according the Freud's theory of repression, humor is used as an outlet for the subversive, socially unacceptable elements of life. Billig points out the while this is true, it is odd that Freud never fully explored some of the implications of the darker side of humor. For example, despite his obvious obsession with sexuality in the realm of the repressed, Freud never goes into any detail about the psychology of dirty jokes, a " theoretically significant omission." (Billig, 453) Freud also fails to address the issue of truly racist jokes, or jokes perpetrated at the expense of the less fortunate. Freud suggests that most jokes which are race or class-based deal with reproducing stereotypes and with mocking those who have power. According to Freud, most joking is subversive -- it is the expression of repressed distress within a society, showing a societally acceptable form of aggression towards those with more power. Freud does not deal with situations where "the joke is not a rebel but a conservative who uses mockery to maintain social order and roles," (Billig, 454) nor does he address "the role of ridicule in maintaining social order... A deeply conservative function..." (Billig, 454) Billig further points out that a significant portion of racists jokes show pure hostility without stereotypes, such as the joke common at Freud's time which suggested the best way to baptize a Jew was to hold him under water for ten minutes. These are cases, Billig says, where "laughter becomes a sign of sympathy with the perpetrators of actual racist [or classist] aggression" (455) So, not only does Billig agree with Freud about the relationship between repression and humor -- that humor allows the unspeakable to be spoken -- but it takes it farther to apply it to situations Freud was afraid to approach.