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Methodological studies have not been popular with psychoanalysts, as the need to understand our individual patient is usually much more pressing than the need to understand in theoretical terms how we go about our work. However Home (1966) has recently stimulated thought on this matter with such provocative statements as
Freud took the psycho-analytic study of neurosis out of the world of science into the world of the humanities.
On this Guntrip (1967) comments
The basic emerging problem is that of the status and nature of specifically psycho-dynamic studies
and adds that Home
pursued an important line of argument to its bitter end, and so highlighted all the problems involved.
In stressing the great importance of identification and empathic understanding, Home has disregarded some other, and possibly more "scientific" aspects of the analytic method. Many of these were considered by Rapaport (1967) who states succinctly
The method used determines what you get as observations and determines the theories you build upon them.
This paper is an attempt to examine one aspect of this determination; the relationship between observations made in the psychoanalytic situation and the concept of repression, by examining a definition of repression and the methodological issues which arise when we attempt to fit the observations to it.
Fenichel (1946) gives a comprehensive definition.