Meeting of the New York Psychoanalytic Society

January 15, 1957. THE NATURE AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE CONCEPT OF REPRESSION IN FREUD'S WRITINGS. Charles Brenner, M.D.

The development of Freud's concept of repression is traced from his introduction of the term to his last formulation as influenced by new clinical observations and changing theoretical formulations of mental functioning. There are four principal stages in this development at which Freud made significant changes or additions to this concept, corresponding to the years 1894-1896, 1900-1906, 1911-1915, and 1923-1936.

From 1894 to 1896, Freud defined repression as the suppression of a memory. He first thought this was volitional, but he soon recognized that it took place unconsciously. Memories repressed in adult life were invariably painful ones. Such repression was possible only in those individuals who had had sexual experiences in childhood which though pleasurable at the time were later considered intolerably bad or shameful. Repression was a pathological mental process characteristic of the 'defense neuropsychosis'. Obsessions were compromises and represented a return of the repressed.

During the period 1900-1906, Freud's investigation of the function of dreams, and of the significance of jokes and symptomatic acts made him conclude that repression was a part of normal psychic functioning. Without repression of certain infantile components adult sexuality could not be achieved. He came to the conclusion at this time that what was repressed was often the memory of fantasies and not of experiences: repression, that is, was chiefly a defense against prohibited libidinal drives rather than against the memory of similar sexual experiences. On the basis of theoretical concepts formulated in chapter seven of The Interpretation of Dreams, he initially discussed repression, in terms of infantile experiences, which occurs before the development of the system preconscious. This leaves a store of infantile memories that would never be accessible to th