Apart from scoptophilic interests the question serves the purpose of mastering anxiety. It is simultaneously a disguised wish, genetically related to the need to know and to master. The association between questioning, truth, and pain is reflected in the history of judicial enquiry and the search for truth through suffering. Today the question serves as an instrument of the superego—individually or collectively. The question may operate as a form of negation of reality. Both negation and the question have the aim of dealing with a feared repetition—their purpose is to safeguard repression.