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In this paper McDougall puts forward the view that the term dissociation has been used indiscriminately to mean two processes essentially different and he would reserve the term dissociation as applying to one set of phenomena and apply to the other the term 'repression'. In support he puts forward a number of manifestations such as we should describe as conversion symptoms. He gives no examples of what he would describe as repression, but uses the term to describe manifestations of conflict.
He regards mind as being constructed of four systems or modes of growth. A logical structure, composed of two systems of growth:—
a.By differentiation of original germs, relatively simple innately given mental dispositions; differentiations achieved and perfected by innumerable acts of analytic discrimination; and
b.By occasional synthetic fusions of such systems achieved by acts of synthetic apperception. Thirdly, an historical structure which is a product of innumerable acts of association resulting in the formation of associative links or bonds. These are structural relations. The fourth is dynamic—an hierarchical system.
The first three systems, all of which he classes as associative, look very much like what we should call the ego. When this 'breaks down' we get dissociation. The fourth system looks very much like what we should call the super-ego, and when this breaks down we get disintegration, or if you like, conflict and repression, or perhaps a better term would be disharmony. He would reserve the term repression for cases in which the hierarchical system has intervened and suppressed a mental act.
This mental topography, it will be seen, excludes the unconscious and particularly the id, although it does seem to grant a measure of recognition to the super-ego.
Dissociation he speaks of as having a basis in cerebral anatomy while this does not apply to repression because the control of the hierarchical system upon the associative ones is a 'moral' one, similar to th