On The Ontogenesis of Repression

Theories of the psychodynamic significance of repression have been systematically organized since the early writings of Sigmund Freud. These theories started with speculations regarding the “defense” by the organism against early traumatic experiences, the sexual impulse, and against anxiety. Subsequently, investigators have refined existing theory, but rarely have concerned themselves with just what repression is, how it arises, and what is its developmental course. The focus of this paper will be upon the nature of repression itself and on its ontogeny (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 12).

The major hypothesis of this paper is that repression is inner negativism or impulse negation which has become automatized and dropped out of awareness. This hypothesis grew out of observations made in the course of doing psychotherapy with both children and adults. I have been interested in what becomes of the extreme negativism of the “no-no” period. Very frequently, it tapers off rapidly without apparent cause. Adults in treatment will respond to an investigation of their inner negativism and will give clues to help answer this problem. Let me cite an example:

A young man had been undergoing reconstructive psychoanalysis for about one year when he gradually began expressing stronger and stronger premature impulses to break off treatment. This behavior on his part was a thinly veiled effort to prove his independence of the therapist through a show of opposition and defiance. This he had never done with his father, who deserted the family when the patient was five years old. He had rarely, if ever, expressed positive opposition to his mother, even in the unusual kind of invasion of his privacy in which she placed her bureau in his bedroom and entered almost every morning, often as he was in various stages of dressing. The exploration of the development of his inner “no” to, or negation of, his own retaliatory and outer oppositional strivings in the oedipal situation resulted in a sudden acute