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Aleksandrowicz examines the thesis that there are physiological precursors to the psychological defense of repression. Both for the course of man's evolution
and for the individual's own development, pre-existing adaptive functions with similar properties are postulated. After discussing some of Freud's ideas about repression, the author stresses the concept that it is the fear of acting upon the impulse that mobilizes the defense. The ultimate task of repression is drive control or regulation of behavior. The blocking of instinctual impulses by repression may affect both internal and external stimuli, which are barred from awareness, but are not necessarily rendered inactive. The more mature individual uses repression to ward off instinctual demands, while the infant uses it as a flight from distress or overstimulation. Thus repression is a mechanism regulating behavior by means of selective central inhibition of afferent stimuli. The author compares this to habituation, a neurophysiological mechanism which shows quite similar characteristics. Habituation is defined as the decrement (or cessation) of a response to a repeated stimulus. This inhibiting mechanism can discriminate and "recognize" the stimuli to be inhibited. Thus, like repression, habituation is a ubiquitous, inhibiting mechanism capable of sorting out some stimuli and preventing the organism from directing its attention to them. A number of interesting references to experimental data are presented to further the author's thesis.