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The need for a sound understanding of the theory of repression in order to comprehend neurosis was one of Freud's important tenets. He felt that taking repression as a center, it is possible to bring all the elements of psycho-analytic theory into relation with it.
Despite the necessity for a fuller understanding of repression, relatively little is known concerning this activity.
The purpose of my thesis is to present another point of view regarding repression, one which utilizes a wider application of some principles of descriptive psychology than is usually noted in repression theory.
In view of the fact that Freud made the most exhaustive description of repression, applying dynamic conceptions almost exclusively, it is evident why psychological literature on the whole reveals little thought given the subject from perspectives other than the dynamic one.
A recent presentation by Dollard and Miller (3) give a systematic analysis of neurosis and psychotherapy in terms of the psychological principles and social conditions of learning, stating that “a naturalistic account is given of the immensely important mechanism of repression. Repression is explained as the inhibition of the cue producing responses which mediate thinking and reasoning—the concepts of repression and suppression are supplemented by the parallel ones of inhibition and restraint.”
While the authors approach the subject from a behavioristic point of view, which tends to minimize the dynamic relationship between unconscious instinctual forces and reality situations, attention is drawn to certain principles of learning or conditioning, as it were, as an explanation of repression and its mechanisms. This is in contrast to the psychoanalytic conception, which, in brief, considers