Editor Jerome Singer's introduction to Repression and Dissociation places the concept of repression, defined as the avoidance of conscious awareness of experiences associated with conflict, at the heart of Freud's psychoanalytic theory. He notes that many cognitive and behavioural scientists have extended and altered Freud's original definition of the term. The compendium brings together leading academic psychiatrists and psychologists from both psychoanalytic and cognitive psychological perspectives to examine the historical origins of the concept of repression, to survey the clinical and research evidence for its existence as a psychological function and to summarize the major theories of repression extant today. The contributors review historical, theoretical and methodological issues surrounding the concept of