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THE MENTAL PHENOMENON WE CALL SUPPRESSION has been relatively neglected in the psychoanalytic literature. Among the major defenses it is unique in being the only one which has been identified as volitional. By that single trait, it immediately throws into question the generally accepted notion that defenses are necessarily unconscious processes. Clinical observation leads one to believe that there is probably a continuum from fully conscious defensive phenomena to unconscious ones. This has been suggested, in regard to suppression and repression, by Brenner (1955). Additionally, suppression merits our attention because, as Laplanche and Pontalis (1973) observed, it remains poorly delineated in theoretical terms. Such confusion is comprehensible given the traditional insistence on the unconscious nature of defenses. Suppression operates in a wide variety of ways: in the daily life of an individual, pathologically and adaptively; an, more specifically, in psychoanalytic treatment, where it may be used as resistence by the analyzand, and as a means for the analyst to maintain an optimal analytic stance. For the moment it will suffice to loosely define suppression as the conscious attempt to "put something out of one's mind."
People have long known that they are often capable of expelling unpleasant thoughts and feelings from awareness. Samuel Johnson advised Boswell to deal with his bouts of "melancholy," by making it
... an uninvariable and obligatory law to yourself, never to mention your mental diseases; If you are never to speak of them, you will think on them little, and if you