Mr. Beckstead
Psychology
February 28, 2013
Repression
What is Repression? It is the attempt by an individual to repel one's own desires and impulses towards pleasurable instincts by excluding the desire from one's consciousness and holding or subduing it in the unconscious. Repression can be a mental illness to some people. It acts to keep information out of conscious awareness. However, these memories don't just disappear; they continue to influence our behavior. For example, a person who has repressed memories of abuse suffered as a child may later have difficulty forming relationships.
We can’t control repressed memory. It involves placing uncomfortable thoughts in areas of the subconscious mind. When something has happened to us but don’t want to mention it, we hide it. They can have an accumulative effect and reappear as unattributable anxiety or dysfunctional behavior. A high level of repression can cause a high level of anxiety or dysfunction, although this may also be caused by the repression of one particularly traumatic incident. For example, a child could have been abused as a child but as they grow up they have no recollection of the event but have a hard time trying to form relationships. Repression is unconscious, it doesn’t occur often. When we deliberately and consciously try to push away thoughts, this is an example of suppression. We us repression to describe the way emotionally painful events could be blocked out of conscious awareness so that our painful effects would not have to be experienced. It basically is when we block something out of our mind so we don’t have any responsibility for it. Many people might have or have experienced repressed memory but will never say anything, I know I have. Repression is a good thing to know about ,I have had repressed memory but never knew.
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