PSY 130 Lecture Notes - Lecture 24: Unconscious Mind, Psych
Document Summary
Repression: freud called repression "the foundation upon which the entire psychoanalytic system rests" It"s the defense mechanisms obviously the most relevant. Repression is an aggressive reaction of the ego to force out of consciousness threatening information or to prevent certain information from ever entering consciousness. A boy, for example, sees his father physically attack his mother one night. When asked later about the encounter, the boy maintains he never saw anything like that at all. Instead, he may have considered the scene to be too disturbing to embrace and therefore actually repressed it out of conscience. According to freud, each of us is using repression, as we all have information in our unconscious mind that we would rather not bring to consciousness. It"s not without expense, as efficient as this seems. Since repression is a continuous, active process it allows the ego to exert energy constantly.
