This further research in the series of investigations of the leveling-sharpening principle of cognitive behavior shows that levelers rely upon repression as a preferred mode of defense, tend toward assimilation between perceptual registration and memory traces, and form relatively undifferentiated memory organizations, all in contrast to sharpeners. Quantitatively, sharpeners are superior to levelers in their recall of a story while qualitative differences were consistent with predictions of their stable memory organization and greater differentiation of memories. That the leveling and sharpening principle seems to operate in old memories, such as in the test story of the Pied Piper and in laboratory experiments, implies that this principle is a generalized and enduring aspect of cognitive organization.