THE THOMIST A SPECULATIVE QUARTERLY REVIEW OF THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY EDITORS: THE DoMINICAN FATHERS oF THE PROVINCE OF ST. JosEPH Publishers: VoL. XXV The Thomist Press, Washington 17, D. C. OCTOBER, No.4 A THOMI$TIC ANALYSIS OF THE CONCEPT OF REPRESSION A KEY idea in the theory of psychoanalysis is the idea of repression, the concept of a dynamic and unwitting expulsion of certain images, ideas and affects from the consciousness of the mind. From one point of view, repression is invoked to account for the existence of unconscious thoughts and motivations; from another, it is conceived as a primary agent of neurotic states and of behavior which is more or less pathological; and from still another, it it allotted an important role in normal psychological growth and development. From any of these points of view, it is a phenomenon worthy of close study. The evidence concerning repression is tqday so varied and extensive that its existence can no longer be reasonably doubted. Nevertheless, the concept has not been universally accepted by psychologists, outside of the psychoanalytic schools, and possibly to some extent because there are still problems to be solved in understanding precisely what repressiOn Is. 468 464 MICHAEL STOCK It is not likely that many descriptions of repression will be found in text books of scholastic psychology, and this is unfortunate. The psychoanalytic investigations and descriptions of repression are, after some years of refining and re-defining, worthy of serious attention. This present article will attempt to summarize the salient features of the theory of repression, and show how it might fit into a scholastic development of psychology, and, in particular, into the psychology of St. Thomas Aquinas. I. DEsCRIPTION oF REPRESSION FROM PsYcHOANALYTIC LITER- ATURE. A. The General Idea of Repression. Repression belongs generically to the category of psychological reactions which in psychoanalytic literature_ are called mechanisms of defence. The context in which mechanisms of defence are discussed is mental anguish, which is variously termed mental pain or psychological tension or anxiety. Given a state of mental distress, distinct from physical pain, the mind might adopt, or perhaps we should say, experience, a psychological response whose aim is to escape from the disagreeable situation. The various psychological respon!les (about ten are generally recognized) are the mechanisms of defence, among which repression holds a unique place. There are many ordinary kinds of responses which people might employ to diminish mental distress. They might try to work it off, or to dist:.;act themselves with pleasures, or go to sleep, or talk it over with a friend-these are not mechanisms of defence. The term is restricted to largely spontaneous and indeliberate psychological reactions which work almost like reflexes (hence the term ' mechanism ') and which in fact succeed in one way or another in overcoming mental pain. One of the more commonly recognized mechanisms of defence is projection. By this reaction, a person who is experiencing a disagreeable feeling of hatred for another, escapes the sense of guilt by attributing the hate to the other; he begins to believe A THOMISTIC ANALYSIS OF THE CONCEPT OF REPRESSION 465 that he is hated. Another defence mechanism is reaction formation: a person overcomes disagreeable feelings of hate by overcompensating expressions. of kindness and benevolence, and vehement protestations (to himself and others) of his good will. A third mode of defending against an unwanted feeling of hate towards another is to turn it against oneself, to let it expend its force in self-recriminations. All of these mechanisms have one thing in common-they distort a feeling or attitude and make it unrecognizable to its possessor. Repression, which is like them in being an attempt to escape a disagreeable feeling, differs in its mode of operation. It does not distort 11 feeling, image or idea; it simply expels it from consciousness. It is crucial to the concept of repression to understand that it does not annul or annihilate the feeling or idea that it expels. It simply removes it from the sphere of awareness. It is a negating action vis-a-vis internal perception, a blocking off or inhibiting of consciousness concerning some mental phenomenon. The phenomenon persists afterwards in a state of unconsciousness. Among the mechanisms of defence, repression holds a unique place. It accomplishes more than the others, in terms of quantity, for it can master powerful instinctual impulses in the face of which the other mechanisms are ineffective. It acts once and for all, while the others have to be employed whenever the distressing situation recurs. It is the most dangerous, for, while the other mechanisms may distort or deform conscious activities, repression removes whole areas of life from any conscious surveillance. It produces gaps and blanks in psychic life which might impair personal integrity for good and alJ.1 Otto Fenichel makes an instructive comparison between repression and the phenomenon of fainting. 2 When an organism is overwhelmed by an intense influx of stimuli, he notes, it reacts by shutting off perception. When psychological excite1 Cf. Anna Freud, The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence, (London, The Hogarth Press, 1954), pp. 58-54. • See The Psychoanalytic TheOTy of Neurosis, (New York, W. W. Norton & Co., 1945)' pp. 86-87; ll8-ll9. 466 MICHAEL STOCK ment reaches an intolerably painful degree of intensity, the mind defends itself by blocking off any further stimulation. This is fainting, a most primitive method of ego defence. Repression can be understood as a partial fainting, as a · specific blocking off of the perceptions of particular instinctual demands. B. The Objeots of Repression. As Freud remarked, we do not escape external stimuli by repression; we try to escape them by flight or fight. 8 Repression properly falls on internal stimuli. These internal stimuli are the instinctual urges which have their roots in biological functions, and make themselves felt psychologically as needs to be satisfied by actions. Insofar as the satisfaction of these urges is simply pleasurable, there is no need for repression. Moreover, some internal needs can be satisfied only by their appropriate actions, for instance, hunger and thirst can eventually be quieted only by eating and drinking. For if the denial of an urge leads to the physical dissolution of the organism, it will not avail long to repress it. Repression), therefore, strikes only at those instinctual urges which for some reason present themselves as simultaneously painful and pleasurable, and which are in themselves susceptible to being somehow banished from consciousness without direct organic injury. In simple outline, the genesis of repression can be described as follows.4 Instinctual drives or urges such as sexuality and aggressiveness are represented psychologically in the images and ideas of the actions which provide their satisfaction, and are accompanied by various affects or feelings. Such drives may be called the rem:ote objects of repression, provided they are. not, as has been noted, survival urges like hunger. They Sigmund Freud, Reprfl81Jicm, Collected PapeTB, Vol. 4, (London, The Hogarth · • This description is an oversimplification of the nature of the case, as will be evident from the later discussion, but it is, worth presenting here as an introductory sketch. 8 Press, 1956) , pp. s4 :11. A THOMISTIC ANALYSIS OF THE CONCEPT OF REPRESSION 467 become proximate objects of repression when their overt satisfaction leads not simply to pleasure but also to a noteworthy amount of psychological pain or distress, either in fact or in anticipation. It generally happens that early in life certain kinds of behavior aimed at pleasurable satisfaction meet in fact with strong disapproval, ·condemnation and punishment. This reaction comes from the parents, as a general rule, who view the behavior in question as wrong or unacceptable or irritating. After this has happened, the reaction to the drive, when it next presents itself to consciousness for satisfaction, will be mixed. It announces itself with its natural anticipation of pleasurable accomplishment but it also brings up the foretaste of the pain or punishment which will ensue. The stronger the thrust of the drive, the more inevitable is the threat of the pain. It would be natural, then, to hold back from carrying out the proposed instinctual activity, since this lies within anyone's ordinary power. Overt behavior, or, as psychoanalysts say, access to motor activity, is controlled consciously. But the very presence itself of the urge in the mind can be unpleasant and even intolerable. Not only is it a reminder of punishment and condemnation, but it also occasions a rising mental tension, for the essential thrust of an instinct is not responsive to denials on merely rational or practical grounds. The urge presses on, and sets up a disagreeable state of strain, complicated by uncertainty-whether to act or not to act-and this persists as long as the unaccomplished drive remains in consciOusness. It is possible for a mature man to reduce the tensions produced by drives in a variety of reasonable ways. He can postpone satisfaction to more favorable times and circumstances, or deny the satisfaction for reasons weighty enough to make the denial seem worthwhile, or find substitute satisfactions, etc. It is hardly possible for a child to handle an urge in these ways. The reaction of infancy in such situations is an involuntary repression, expelling the urge and all its involvements out of consciousness and keeping It out. Unfortunately, this infantile habit can be retained even in adult 468 MICHAEL STOCK years, with no small impairment of mental maturity, as will be discussed further below. C. The Aim of Repression. Repression aims at eliminating mental tensions and distress by eliminating the mental irritant. The mind represses the instinctual drive and its representations and concomitant affects by effacing them from consciousness, and once they have been so effaced, repression operates to keep them permanently out of consciousness. From that point on, these particular images and the drives behind them are confined to the realm of buried memories, like rubbish swept under the rug. Like the rubbish, however, the imagery and ideas connected with the drive are not really removed; they are only hidden, and still cause trouble. Two points ought to be emphasized here about repression. First, it is not a simple act of forgetting, which can be ac:counted for by the mere passage of time and the uninteresting character of an experience. Repression concerns not uninteresting experiences, but precisely those experiences which have been intensely exciting. Repression then is not just a slipping out of memory; it is an active and positive denial of access to recall of highly charged emotional experiences. Second, repression is effected unconsciously. People do not realize that they are repressing ideas. As Freud puts it: " It happens silently; we receive no intelligence of it, but can only infer it from subsequent events." 5 D. Repression Primal and Proper. What happens ·to the unwanted instinctual urge and the imagery in which its satisfaction is clothed and represented, and the affects it stirs up, after it has been expelled from conscious awareness and appraisal? According to sound psychoanalytic theory, the act of repression does not change the drive in any 5 A Case of Paranoia, Collected Papers, Vol. 8, (New York, Basic Books Inc., 1959)' p. 458. A THOMISTIC ANALYSIS OF THE CONCEPT OF REPRESSION 469 essential way, and, in particular, it does not rob it of its dynamic character. The drive still presses for satisfaction, but now it presses from behind the barrier raised by repression. Moreover, as long as the drive was in consciousness, the form of satisfaction it was seeking might have been modified by the attractive possibilities of various objects and activities. It was not confined to one determined gratification. But after it has been repressed, it becomes fastened so to speak to the determinate ideas and fantasies by which it was represented and with which it was repressed. The first repression of a drive is called " primal repression." Its continued attachment to specified ideation and fantasy is called "fixation." Now, since primal repression is an event of infantile mental life, a fixation· implies a psychological attachment, all unconscious, to an infantile mode of pleasure seeking. This is one of the deleterious effects of repression. It entails a breaking off of psychological development at an infantile stage, and a fixation there of attitudes and responses which might unconsciously persist for a lifetime. Once primal repression and fixation have occurred, the stage is set for the subsequent development of what is called " repression proper." Repressions proper are subsequent repressive acts, similarly involuntary and unconscious, which fall on other ideas and images in consciousness, removing them from the sphere of conscious perceptibility, and this happens precisely in virtue of some connection between them and the primally repressed materials. The connection is always established from the primally repressed and fixated material. In the unconscious sphere, the repressed images and thoughts, with the pressure of the instinctual wishes behind them, associate among themselves, coalescing and dividing in all the variety of ways by which fantasies are known to establish connections. As a consequence, the originally repressed imagery and ideation become somehow hidden, distorted, and, in a sense, disguised. Moreover, the instinctual urgings can attach themselves now to one fantasy or aspect of a fantasy, now to 470 MICHAEL STOCK another (a process called "displacement"), always with the aim of finding a representation of some form of activity which will be acceptable to conscious scrutiny as a legitimate form of gratifying the old craving. Eventually a new idea presents itself to the consciousness, an idea derived somehow by unconscious processes from primally repressed experiences, but now, in virtue of having been re-worked unconsciously, quite different in appearance from them. This idea emerges into consciousness to associate with other conscious mental contents; perhaps its evocation is actually in virtue of its associability with some current ideas or experiences. Once an association has been made between conscious representations and the repressed material, and some of the wish strivings from the unconscious have become attached to the conscious ideas, the latter are called "derivatives" of the repressed materials. 6 Now the critical moment arrives. If the originally unacceptable striving is sufficiently disguised in· its new form of representation, its execution in the disguised form may be tolerated consciously. Thus the instinctual craving which is the dynamic force at the bottom of the whole affair obtains some kind of satisfaction. But if the original instinctual urge is not sufficiently disguised, if its originally reprehensible character still shows through, the newly emerged ideas along with all the other ideas with which they have become associated will be thrust into unconsciousness in toto. This is repression proper. Once unconscious, the amalgam of ideas again begins the process of associative change and development/ Thus more and more thoughts and images normal to conscious mental life may become associated with repressed • Freud spoke of an attractive force exercised by repressed materials on conscious contents, and said that unless the conscious ideas were drawn from below, they would not be repressed. Cf. A Case uf Paranoia, Coll. Papers, Vol. 8, p. 454. Otto Fenichel interprets this as meaning that the repressed contents of the mind, by making derivatives out of conscious contents, make them susceptible to repression. See The Paychoanalytic Theory of the Neuros.68, p. 149. ., Cf. Sigmund Freud, Repr68sion, Call. Papers, Vol. 4, p. 86. Also A Case uf Paranoia, Vol. 8, pp. 458-454; Analysis Terminable and Interminable, Vol. 5, pp. 828-829. A THOMISTIC ANALYSIS OF THE CONCEPT OF REPRESSION 471 contents of the mind and themselves suffer repression. The varieties of complexes formed in this way in the unconscious,. and their effects on psychological health and growth are one of the major studies of psychoanalysis. The account of repression given in the seven preceding paragraphs attempts to describe its genesis and progress only in. a general way. An adequate understanding will require an additional and more detailed examination of the elements involved. In the first place, Freud believed that primal repression always fell on an infantile sexual experience: The only condition is that the experience be intensely distressing, or traumatic. His experience in actual psychoanalyses repeatedly brought to his attention associations of ideas leading back to and centering on some childhood sexual experience. These experiences could occur as early as the second year of life and as late as the age of eight or ten. In the beginning, he thought that the experiences were actual assaults on the child, or at least overtures, or perhaps merely witnessing or being told about sexual acts. 8 Later he came to the conclusion that spontaneous sexual feeli:pgs in the child were sufficient to account for the situations he found, as long as they had been traumatic and repressed. Primal repression of an anxiety-generating experience was the decisive factor in fixating sexual attitudes, and hence in preparing the ground for later repressions. 9 And finally it seems that the traumatic aspect of the experience which evokes repressive reactions is always an unacceptable sense , of passivity or femininity in the experience, whether the subject is a boy or a girU 0 This apparently is what is intensely distressing, and later on, when re-stimulated by new sexual experiences, the critical object of repressive anxiety. 8 Sigmund Freud, Further Remarks on the Defence Nooro-paychosea,Coll. Papers, Vol. 1, pp. 158-159. • Idem, My Views on the part played by Sexuality in the Neuroses, CoU. Papers, Vol. 1, p. 272. 10 Idem, The Origins of Psychoanalysis, (New York, Doubleday Anchor Book, 1957), p. 207. "It is to be suspected that the essential repressed element is always femininity." See also footnote 289, on the same page. Cf. pp. 245, 885. Also Further Rrmtarks on the Defence Neuro-paychoaes, Coll. Papers, Vol. 1, p. 162. 472 MICHAEL STOCK It is not, however, simply the magnitude of distress or painfulness in an experience which is decisive in bringing about its repression. What is necessary for repression, according to Freud, is a memory trace which, when on the verge of being reactivated by a current experience, is capable of eliciting a more powerful anxiety than did the original experience itself. The reason he argued that this peculiarity in the situation was necessary to account for repression was that painful memories are not in fact invariably forgotten. Ordinarily, people leam to tolerate them, bracing themselves mentally, as it were, in the beginning, when they are fresher, and gradually growing accustomed to their recall as their vividness diminishes with the passage of time and the habit of self control. Why then are some memories repressed? Freud argued that if a recurring memory brings with it a fresh excitement, so that it is like a new occurrence of the original experience, its vividness does not fade and cannot be controlled. And this he argued further is uniquely the case with sexual memories. The reason for this is the variety of bodily changes which occur at the time of puberty and make a person not only physically more sensitive and excitable sexually, but also more easily aroused psychologically. Therefore, although the force of a repressed sexual memory from infancy might be diminished by the passage of time and the habit of control, it would also be powerfully reinforced and enlivened by the more highly developed sexual susceptibilities of adolescence. The re-awakening, then, of a memory trace from infancy would have the effect of releasing fresh emotional excitement, and if this excitement is associated with old anxieties, a fresh sense of distress. Hence repression must take place. 11 Thus a sexual experience after puberty, even 11 In his own account of repression, Otto Fenichel (op. cit., pp. 149-150) does not mention this physiological factor as crucial in accounting for repressions. He emphasizes rather the role of education. " Perhaps the fact that sexual impulses very often are repressed, whereas aggressive impluses are more often the subject of other defense mechanisms, is due to the circumstance that education frequently handles the subject of sex by simply not mentioning it, whereas the existence of aggressiveness is acknowledged but is designated as bad. The more consistently A THOMISTIC ANALYSIS OF THE CONCEPT OF REPRESSION 478 in thought or fantasy' alone, might re-awaken the memory of the infantile trauma, and in virtue of this connection, suffer repressiOn. Actually the memory of the infantile experience does not become conscious. It only comes close enough to consciousness to give a forewarning of what is on the way, or, as Freud says, to liberate the affect of anxiety, and then the current experience which is evoking it is silently banished from consciousness.12 E. The Consequences of Repression. From what has been said above, it is already evident that repression will have a profound influence on all aspects of psychological activity both conscious and unconscious. Perhaps its most characteristic effect is the production of gaps in conscious mental life. Memories of events which by all other reckoning ought to be revocable are in fact apparently completely obliterated. Striking examples of these are the amnesias that follow violent accidents and shocks, such as battle amnesia. Other data on repression come to light when some acquaintance can supply the details of an experience which the subject of the repression can in no way recall. Most examples, of course, emerge in psychoanalysis, when the repressed memory is released by overcoming the mental resistances which had hitherto educators apply prohibitions by acting as if the objectionable things did not exist, the more repression proper is encouraged in children." If indeed the cha.nges which occur at the time of puberty are important in accounting for the occurrence of repressions proper, perhaps changes other than sexual would be of interest in psychoanalysis. For instance, there is the spirit of independence and rebellion which fir-st showed itself when the child was three or four, and after subsiding for a number of years, reasserts itself during adolescence. Similarly, the demand for responsibility which is first imposed .on a child at the ages of four to six, comes again to the fore during adolescence. If these attitudes were handled harshly the first time they made their appearances, they could be the cause, it would seem, of repressions when adolescence has reinforced an individual's sensitivity to them. 12 Cf. S. Freud, Further Remarks on the Defence Neuro-psychoses, CoU. Papers, Vol. I, pp. 160-168. Also The Interpretation of Dreams, (New York; Random House, 1988), p. 587; The Origins of Psychoanalysis, p. 149, pp. 178-180. 474 MICHAEL STOCK blocked it. These resistances themselves are prime examples of repressions; according to psychoanalytic theory, the force of resistence is the same force which originally repressed the unwanted experience. Resistances take many forms. Sometimes in the course of free association, the subject simply goes blank, reporting that nothing at all came to his mind at a given point in the flow of thoughts. At other times, resistance shows itself 'as hostility towards the analyst and a strong disinclination to continue treatment. In still other cases, resistance shows up as a strongly felt objection to an elucidation the analyst is giving concerning some phase of the subject's early psychological development. This last mentioned effect exemplifies a consequence of repression which is almost the opposite of the memory blanks. This is obsessional thinking, or, as Freud termed it early in his career, supervalent thinking. 13 When thoughts are excessively persistent or repeated, so that no amount of conscious or voluntary effort can change or dissipate them, the roots of the thought can generally be sought with profit in some unconscious and ·repressed materials. The exaggerated thoughts usually turn out to be the opposites of the repressed thoughts, deriving their abnormal reinforcement from the unconscious material, and perhaps in some way assisting the act of repression by their excessive and contrary character. But they can also be directly representative of the unconscious contents of the mind, drawing their force directly from them. Although repression as we have been describing it above is a powerful agent for expelling memories of various experiences from the possibility of voluntary recall, and for keeping them unconscious, it would be wrong to give the impression that repression always affects an experience in its totality. Actually repression can affect only parts of various experiences, it can affect an experience for part of the time. This latter case is exemplified in instances in which a repressed content of the 18 Idem, Fragment of an Analysis of a Oase of Hysteria, Ooll. Papers, Vol. 8, Pll· 66-67. A THOMISTIC ANALYSIS OF THE CONCEPT OF REPRESSION 475 mind is allowed at times to emerge in fantasy, as daydream.;, from which some sort of gratification is possible, and then obliterated when the daydreams approach a dangerous point.u The former cases are evidenced in instances in which memories are retained, or ideas are consciously recognized, but their connections, or their significance or emotion& value is altogether lacking. Often it is the affective part of an experience which is repressed, if the affects generated are the intolerable aspects, while the representational aspect of the event is allowed to remain revocable. ·This is shown from the fact that some subjects in analysis, eventually briD.g up memories of events they say they had long forgotten, while in other cases, the crucial incident in a psychological difficulty had not been forgotten, ·but it had been completely divested of meaning and emotion until the analysis was effected. Repression, whether of the whole or of a part of a mental event, is an energy consuming process. If, therefore, repression has become at all extensive in a subject's mental life, a further consequence of it will be a continual mental strain and fatigue. The general improverishment of mental energy which characterizes many neuroses, and the typical reports of nervous fatigue are well known. Some of the characteristic habitual reactions in neuroses also give signs of this metal debilitation-fears of new situation which might demand expenditure of energy or which might entail more strain on a psychic equilibrium already taxed. These consequences, described in the four preceding paragraphs, are manifested in conscious evidences. Another consequence, which has been mentioned briefly above, is effected in the unconscious sphere. This is the proliferation of unconscious thought and fantasy so extreme and so bizarre that its reality is hard to appreciate. Actually, of course, as long as it is unconscious, it cannot be appreciated. But when it does become conscious, when repressed contents break out of the restraining bonds, either in dreams or in parapraxes, or in "Cf. Otto Fenichel, up. cit., p. 149. 476 MICHAEL STOCK neurotic symptoms of various kinds, or in psychoanalysis, the ramifications and grotesque quality of unconscious thinking processes become apparent, and are somewhat startling to the unsuspecting. A description of all of the unconscious mental processes operating to form the bizarre end-products which eventually emerge would take this brief account of repression far afield. Two of the processes, however, are worth singling out for special mention. The first is condensation, a process by which many different aspects of many experiences and objects of experience are coalesced into one figure or image. The features of different persons, the forms and attitudes of animals, various kinds of analagous actions and attitudes, for example, can be merged into one new whole mental event, which can thereafter appear in dreams or psychoanalytic reports as such, and seem quite far· removed from any actual event in the subject's personal history, and equally removed from the possibility of reasonable interpretation. The second process worth mentioning is displacement. By displacement the instinctual drive or emotional values originally attaching to one object become transferred to similar or analagous objects. Condensation and displacement operating together produce the world of psychological symbolism, in which objects and activities far removed from the primary objects and aims of instinctual drives take on a substitutive character and role, and, in fact, function in the mind as the original objects and aims functioned. Once the fundamental psychology of these processes is elucidated, much of the peculiarity of concrete cases of symbolism becomes intelligible and even inevitable. Basically, symbol production is a psychological process which is inescapable, given the fact of repression and the unconscious working of the mind. F. The Value of Repression. All that has been said so far about repression and its consequences has perhaps unavoidably prompted the conclusion, at least implicitly, that repression is a per se psychological hazard. A THOMISTIC ANALYSIS OF THE CONCEPT OF REPRESSION 477 It might seem to follow that avoiding repression ought to be the prime aim of good education of the young, and undoing whatever repressions have . been unwittingly established the major purpose of psychological therapy. In fact, many have caricaturized Freudian psychoanalysis in very much these terms. The truth, however, is quite different. Perhaps it was inevitable that Freudian · psychoanalysis, born as a mode of mental and nervous therapy, and always geared consciously to the therapeutic situation, should have emphasized in its literature the injurious aspects of repression. It was the injurious repressions that absorbed so much of psychoanalysis' effort and ingenuity. However, even early in his career Freud noted the valuable role repressions play in normal psychological development, and, currently, when psychoanalysis is extending its concepts to embrace explanations of the whole man, the normal functioning of repression is being given more and more attention. As early as 1905, Freud theorized that repression was necessary for normal sexual development. If the child starts out with instinctual urges ill-defined and chaotic, their channeling eventually into the forms and patterns consonant with their purposes in maturity will require the suppression of the many vagaries, and this Freud held to be one of the roles of repression. Normal sexual functioning develops, he wrote, through the repression of some of the components of the variegated constitutional disposition of the child.15 If, for instance, a child is completely self-centered in his emotional life, demanding, wholly dependent, impatient of any delays in satisfying his wants, fiercely jealous, and if all his emotions are settled principally on his mother, his affections will have to undergo considerable pruning and re-aligning before they will suit a mature affective life. So Freud considered repression a normal part of psychological growth and maturation. He did not doubt at all, however, that it was something considerably less than the ideal instru10 S. Freud, Sexuality in the Neuroses, CoU. Papers, Vol. 1, p. 280. 478 MICHAEL STOCK ment for self-control. Mature people, for instance, learn to delay the satisfaction of instinctual demands, or to re-form the undesirable aspects of their cravings in a different way. They recognize the facts of a given situation, appraise them realistically, try to make a sound judgment about the alternative modes of satisfaction open to them, and then take appropriate action. Freud calls this process 'condemnation.' But for children these steps are rather obviously out of the question. They do not have the capacities requisite to a process of condemnation. They do, however, experience and feel an insistent need for some device to control their feelings. When their emotional demands are vehement, and when these demands set up strong internal stresses, some device must be employed to achieve internal peace and security. In children, the device is often repression. Repression generally succeeds in establishing an ample measure of internal peace, but sometimes the price paid for it is too high. If repression has been deep and extensive, and if the process of repression has become more or less habitual, development to a mature psychic state will almost inevitably be crippled. Somewhere along the line the unfolding of instinctual drives and emotional attitudes will be blocked. Often enough the blocked drives will assert themselves in the disturbing symptoms which mark mental pathology; at the very least, the personality will be burdened and constrained with infantile defensive reactions, over which it has no control and for which it no longer, when maturity is reached, has any real need. In severe cases, when repression dominates the psychic picture of a patient's mentality, it is the task of psychoanalysis to undo the repressions as far as this is possible. The purpose is not merely to release the impounded instinctual demands for the sake of release itself. The ultimate purpose is to release the demands into consciousness, so that they can there be re-assessed, and subjected to the devices of reasonable control, for the sake of reconstructing a more normal personality, and at the same time, a stronger personality, more capable of self- A THOMISTIC ANALYSIS OF THE CONCEPT OF REPRESSION 479 control to the degree that it is more capable of reasonable control. Ideally, a patient who has undergone therapy will be able to exercise normal and healthy instinctual demands, control reasonably those which are unacceptable, and allow the old pathological distortions to dissipate. 16 "Analysis replaces the process of repression, which is automatic and excessive, by a temperate and purposeful control on the part of the highest mental faculties. In a word, analysis replaces repression by condemnation." 17 G. The Failure of Repression. If repression is 'successful,' the drives it impedes are somehow barred from unacceptable modes of discharge, and diverted perhaps in some part to more acceptable modes of action, without any serious psychological maladjustments. But repres:sion is not always successful. Sometimes, as has been indicated, it effects its purpose only at an exorbitant price. At other times, it precisely fails to effect its purpose. This failure is marked by the irruption or impingement of the repressed materials directly or indirectly into the conscious life of the mind. Hallucinations, delusions, obsessions, phobias, hysterical outbursts, psychasthenias and nervous weaknesses, hypochondrias, perversions, psychosomatic sicknesses, are all witnesses of some failure of the repressive process. The reasons why a repression should give way are many. It could be due to an absolute increase in the intensity of the drives which have been repressed, as happens at the .time of puberty or the climacteric, or to some kind of change in the balance .of mental operations, as in temptations, disappointments and frustrations. Repressions could also fail if the repressing agents are weakened, as by fatigue or sickness, or if they have become temporarily relaxed, as by elation or intoxication. When repression fails to repress, the mind often has recourse to other mechanisms of defence, to exaggerated rationalizations 16 17 ldtmt, Analysis Terminable and Interminable, CoU. Papers, Vol. 5, pp. Idem, Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-year-old Boy, CoU. Papers, Vol. 8, p. 480 MICHAEL STOCK and soul-searchings, to obsessive speculations and rituals, to elaborate precautionary measures, to dreads of self-betrayal, to regressions to infantile ways of acting, to projections, selfcondemnations, innervations, etc. These in tum can lead to and harden into abnormalities such as phobias, superstitious obsessions, delusions and the like, as distressing and debilitating as repression itself. The real solution of psychological disorders which have their origin in repression is the undoing of the repression and the mastery of the released drives by reasonable methods of selfcontrol. Until this is done, the root of the trouble remains untouched and still pathogenic. The re-mastery of the drive, however, presupposes its re-admittance into consciousness for a new evaluation, and acceptance on new terms into the integral personality structure. That re-admittance is the work of psychoanalysis. II. ST. THoMAs ON PsYCHOLOGICAL MALFUNCTION. A. Introduction. Our purpose in the next few pages is to gather together and organize some of the widely scattered remarks in the writings of St. Thomas which have bearing on the question of psychological abnormality. More precisely, we are looking for points in his psychological doctrine at which a concept of repression can be interwoven without doing violence either to the concept or to the main fabric of Thomistic principles and conclusions. At best, we can hope to find something comparable to repression itself in these remarks; at least, we can hope to find something paralleling a description of the causes, and of the elements of process, and of the effects, of repressive mental action, into which the concept of repression itself might fit as a neat completion. It would be unrealistic to expect to find the concept of repression in St. Thomas' writings as it is described currently in psychoanalytic literature. Since St. Thomas worked out his psychology seven hundred years ago, there have been vast A THOMISTIC ANALYSIS OF THE CONCEPT OF REPRESSION 481 movements forward in many different facets of the science. On the point of repression itself, it could hardly be expected that any clear concept could have been formulated prior to the beginning of this century, when Freud worked out the methods of psychoanalytic investigation. Repression could, however, have been appreciated to some extent prior to Freud, and, in fact, he himself credits both Nietzsche and Schopenhauer with intuitive and philosophical insight into its nature. 18 Our present question is, how close did St. Thomas come to such an insight? At the very least, we can determine how open St. Thomas' psychology is to this new development. In the histories of psychologies, we find some are open to enlargement, while others exclude further developments a priori in virtue of some specific affirmation or negation central to the whole system. In effect, some have been realistic enough to leave unfinished the areas in which contemporaneous research and speculation could not yet supply the final answers; others have misunderstood these points of incompletion and prematurely closed off the subject to further growth. The question then is twofold: how closely did St. Thomas approach to a concept of repression, and how is his psychology to further development on the basis of current psychoanalytic descriptions of this phenomenon. The profit to be expected from such an investigation accrues from the doctrine of St. Thomas itself. It is not only that his formulations in psychology in general show great depth of insight into human nature, along with great balance and subtlety. It is of equal importance that they also integrate with a broader natural philosophy, metaphysics and· ethics, making one total philosophical system of singular breadth and. profundity. But even the best of philosophies cannot survive as an influential current of thought unless it is kept alive, continually proving its value by continually assimilating and 18 S. Freud, On the History of the Psycho-aruilytic Movement, CoU. Papers, Vol. 1, p. 297. 482 .MICHAEL STOCK illuminating new materials and solving newly perceived problems. Unless an old philosophy has something specific ;,md to offer in resolving contemporary questions, it cannot hope to be more than an honorable relic. My position is that St. Thomas' philosophy can vindicate more than this for itself; hence the question of a Thomistic approach to the concept of repression. B. A Psychology of Repression According to St. Thomas. We will proceed by offering a series of propositions based on St. Thomas' writings, which indicate his thought on mental abnormalities, and reflect something of his insight into the causes and effects of repressive mental activities. Some of the points will be familiar, some perhaps less familiar, all however are consistent with each other and with the total corpus of his psychological teachings. 1. Violent psychological and physical experiences can disrupt mental balance, i. e., the normal functioning of reason, free will, imagination, memory, emotions and sensation. In describing various effects of the passions in De V eritate, St. Thomas summarizes many of the features of his doctrine of psychosomatic unity. He notes how intense emotional reactions can make the body feel hot or cold, and induce sickness, and sometimes even death, " for it can happen that someone should die from joy or sorrow or love." Consequently, of course, physical diseases arid injuries can lead to mental and emotional disturbances, and even to insanity. Somewhat less extreme within the appetitive order itself are the interactions of will and passion. Normally the sense appetites should respond to the governance of deliberately willed acts. But a vehement reaction in the will to some intellectually perceived object also redounds indeliberately into the passions, producing a parallel reaction at the sensual level. A good example of this is stage fright. Another example frequently described in current literature is existential anxiety. A THOMISTIC ANALYSIS OF THE CONCEPT OF REPRESSION 488 Working in the other direction, a strong animal passion can overcome and coerce the act of the will. An intense desire, for instance, or anger, can overwhelm the balanced judgment of reason and to a greater or lesser degree cancel out the free exercise of the will. In some cases this can lead to a state of insanity. Neither the redounding effect of the will nor the coercion of the will by passion are freely elected events. They are both natural and inevitable consequences of intense psychological reactions. 19 Similarly, the several levels of cognitive operations which normally intermesh smoothly and conjointly can be disassociated by physical and psychological violence. Normally a man exercises a scope of knowledges which develop simultaneously in three spheres. He is conscious, at the surface, of external sensations, and these are continually informed with perceptions drawn from imagination and memory, 'while in the innermost sphere, his mind is interpreting the meanings of his experiences. Normally too there is a shifting of emphasis from one sphere to another, as an absorbing event in the environment draws attention away from internal awareness of judgments and perceptions, or concentration on a purely mental problem effects some withdrawal of attention from external events. Physical injury or disease affecting the organs at any level of these operations can disrupt the normal interplay, hut a purely cognitive act, if it is intense enough at any one level, can also impede operations at other levels even if a physical injury is not sustained. In extreme cases, when the mind or the imagination or memory is intensely moved by some perception; a complete alienation from the senses can occur. 2 ° For St. Thomas, this alienation from the sense is not only a distortion of external perceptions, but also . a disruption of the normal exercise of reason and imagination. He exemplifies the experience with madness and insanity. This Cf. De Vm-itate, q. 26, a. 10; Summa Theol., I-II, q. 28, a. 5; q. 77, aa. 1, 2 & 7. °Cf. Summa Theol., II-II, q. 173, a. 3, ad 2; De Vmt., q. 12, a:'9; q. 13, a. 3, ad 5 & ad 10. 19 0 484 MICHAEL STOCK is also not a freely willed experience. In his own terminology, it is being ' rapt out of oneself,' a kind of mental violence.21 Such violent mental experiences are usually the effect of the arousal of an intense passion. The passion aroused operates sometimes to fix the mind directly on the mental event itself, constraining it from considering anything else. This forces the mind to accede to the impulse of the passion, and sometimes disables the body's vital functions. At other times such a passion operates in a contrary way, preventing the mind from focusing on the experience, especially if it has an anguishing quality. In either state, a man can say or do things over which he has no control and of which he is not conscious. If such a state persists, it is insanity. 22 The reasons St. Thomas alleges for the mutual interdependence of various faculties or levels of psychological operations, and hence for the possibility of one impeding the operations of another, are usually twofold. On the one hand, he held that man had only a limited capacity of attention, on the other, a limited supply of mental energy. Normally, the fields of cognitive activity open to inspection are broader than his capacity for simultaneous attention; if he concentrates at one level, his attention necessarily goes out of focus at another. If he becomes totally immersed or overwhelmed at one point, he becomes totally abstracted from the others, leaving them a blank as far as awareness goes. Similarly, his energies are normally distributed through the different levels of psychological operation, but if at one level the intensity of reaction rises to an excessive degree, the energies available for the other levels seem to be necessarily absorbed. 23 Fundamentally it is all a matter of psychosomatic unity. 24 2. Fear, despair and sorrmv are the most injurious passions. Any passion carried to excess can disrupt the smooth coordi21 Summui Tkeol., I-II, q. 28, a. 8; De V erit., q. 12, a. 4. •• SWT111TTta Tkeol., I-II, q. 77, a. 2 & ad 5; aa. 6, 7 & 8. •• Ibid., II-II, 178, a. 8, ad 2; Suppl., q. 82, a. 8, ad 4; I Cont. Gent., c. 55. •• Cf. De Verit., q. 12, a. 9; q. 26, a. 10; Q. D. de Anima, a. 4, ad 1. A THOMISTIC ANALYSIS OF THE CONCEPT OF REPRESSION 485 nation of mind and body, producing psychic disturbances and physical sickness. Even the passions like love, joy and desire, which naturally stimulate the body's vitality and animate the mind and imagination, can eventuate in the last resort in mental and physical injury if they become too intense. But the passions whose direct effect is to depress· the vitality of mind and body are even more harmful, and among these St. Thomas lists fear, despair and especially sorrow. These passions operate with a cumulative effect, so that fear, in the first instance, produces a certain depression and disturbance of mind and body, but not a complete one, as long as some hope still. stirs. But if the threat which is inducing the fear becomes stronger or more imminent or more persistent, so that the hope of evading it is eliminated, both mind and body suffer a deeper depression, becoming, as it were, stifled under the influence of fear and despair. If this proceeds far enough, even the interest and energy for every day activities-eating, speaking, daily work, etc.-are suppressed and a man becomes " as if stupefied within himself." The cumulative effect of ali the passions, besides their deenergizing aspect, is to make the sufferer recoil from whatever is inspiring them; by fear he :first withdraws from the threatening evil, by despair he relinquishes other hopes and desires whose pursuit exposes him to the danger feared, and by sorrow, when hope has been removed, he subsides into an anguished state approaching torpor, becoming more or less indifferent to any stimulation. 25 3. Fear and sorrow inhibit and suppress the imagination, mind and appetitive movements like love and hope. The faculties of memory, imagination and cogitation, and therefore also the intellect which depends on them, are the ones most powerfully affected by the movements of passion and will. There is a natural, functional interdependence among these faculties which makes any one of them immediately •• Sumtma Theol., I-ll, q. 87, aa. fl & 4; q. 68, a. 7, ad 1; q. 69, a. 8, ad 8. 486 MICHAEL STOCK responsive to a reaction of another. Under a mild movement of fear or sorrow, attention is drawn to and fixed on the objects arousing the passion, but if the movement becomes vehement, the cognitive operations become shaken and disturbed, and then disordered, while the vitality of all the cognitive powers is lowered and even completely inhibited. The sum effect of strong passions of fear and sorrow is to block off attention from the objects arousing them. 26 4. Fear is inspired not only by external dangers but also by internal or p81Jchologicalthreats, in partioular, by the passions of fear itself, of sorrow and of concupiscence. Fear is the passion responding to a threatening evil which for some reason shows itself as difficult to overcome, either because the force of the evil threatened is really great or because the resources which can be mustered against it seem inadequate. Under this broad definition, St. Thomas subsumes both external dangers and internal difficulties, especially the threat to mental peace and balance posed by a strong passion. Fear itself can be feared, as well as sorrow and concupiscence. The specific fear aroused by the passion of concupiscence he calls shame. 27 5. The sudden, the uncontrollable, and that which will overcome reason are particular objects of fear, and these qualities all belong in a special way to sexual concupiscence or libido. For St. Thomas, concupiscence is a general term for sensual desires; sometimes he uses it also to signify the principal or strongest sensual desire, namely, the sexual, to which he sometimes also refers as libido. In its roots, all concupiscence is unruly, chaotic, resistant to the governance of reason and uncontrollable by the will or the impress of virtue. While the sense appetites in tlieir full expression are subject to the will's dominion and the formation of virtuous habits, in their deepest parts they never become completely susceptible to control by •• De Malo, q. 16, a. 11, ad 4; Summa Tkeol., 1-11, q. 45; q. 77, aa. 1 & 8; q. 80, · a. 2; De Verit., q. 12, a. 4, ad 8. ""Summa Tkeol., 1-11, q. 41, a. 8; q. 42, a. 4; 11-11, q. 141, a. 1, ad 8. A THOMISTIC ANALYSIS OF THE CONCEPT OF REPRESSION 487 higher faculties. This is especially trlie of the sexual element or libido, which is so independent that St. Thomas speaks of the generative organs as similar to separate animals in man. Libido is also the mainspring of the fomes peccati, and the most frequently experienced of the actus primo primi of the moral theologians. Because the libido is aroused· suddenly, and because there is always an element of the uncontrollable, and because it threatens man's highest perfection, namely, his free and rational mastery of himself, concupiscence can be a special object of fear. 28 6. Since the passions can become habitual, the repressive fear of libido can become a permanent disposition of the mind and feelings. Because libido has a special sense of shame attached to it, and because it can threaten man's most characteristic excellence, his free and rational self-mastery, libido can evoke a profound fear. 29 Since the libido's power is internal and to that degree inescapable, and to a degree continuous, the fear of it can easily become habitual. Once the fear is established as an habitual disposition, its repressive and inhibitory influence imposes a more or less permanent distortion on mental activity. If despair and sorrow add their influences, serious dislocations of normal balance are almost inevitable. 80 7. The effects of fear, sorrow and despair can be exercised automatically and indeliberately throughout the various levels of thought, fantasy and appetite. This is, of course, a critical consideration in any discussion of repression. The deliberate and freely elected suppression of •• Ibid., I-ll. q. 4!!, aa. !!, 4 & 6; II Sent., d. M, q. !!, a. I, ad 8; I-11, q. 17, a. 9, ad 8. •• Anna Freud, in " The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense," p. 68, quotes from her father's "The Ego and the Id ": "What it is that the ego fears either from an external or from a libidinal danger cannot be specified; we know that it is in the nature of an overthrow or of extinction, but it is not determined by analysis." Then she adds the opinion that this danger is the destruction or submersion of the ego's whole organization, i.e., in St. Thomas' terms, man's rationality. 80 Summa Tkeol., I-ll, q. 85, a. 8. 488 MICHAEL STOCK thoughts, feelings and urges (which Freud called condemnation) is a common psychological phenomenon, and one which does not lead to the psychic disturbances characteristic of repression. It is only when the of mental contents is indeliberate and irreversible, rendering them unavailable for reasonable assimilation into a total personality structure, that rejection can have deleterious effects. The quality of the repressive act is one of its key properties. St. Thomas' psychology allows for this automatic quality from several sources. First of all, and perhaps most important, is the redounding of strong acts of the will into the sense appetites. An intense intellectual love engenders all the sensual and bodily reactions of love at the sense level; a violent intellectual fear overflows into the sense order to produce the characteristic effects of physical fear. The force with which these sensual effects are felt and the repercussions they have on the body are not necessarily of reasonable proportions since they are not the per se objects of reasoned judgments. They are unwilled repercussions whose intensity is determined more by the natural force of the voluntary act and the receptivity or responsiveness of the sense powers than by the fact that the voluntary act may be in the beginning free and deliberate. Even a freely elected action can have natural and indeliberate side effects.81 From the other side of the spirit-animal tension, conflict can also arise, for example,.from the thrust of strong passions which 81 In her discussion of the origin of neuroses, Dr. A. A. A. Terruwe allows for psychological repressions which originate within the order of the sense appetites, i. e., between the concupiscible and irascible appetites, but holds that no such conflict can arise between the sense appetites and the will. (See: " The N euroais in. the Light of Rational Psychology, (New York, P. J. Kennedy & Sons, 1960) pp. S5 & 87.) This, I believe, overlooks the phenomenon of the natural redounding of the will, which was an explicit part of St. Thomas' psychology. According to Dr. Terruwe, repression can only occur when the concupiscible and irascible appetites come into conflict. This opinion seems to miss what the scholastics thought of as the essence of insanity, i.e., the conflict between the rational and sensual spheres. In actual application of her thesis, Dr. Terruwe remarks instances of repression and neurosis which are in fact caused by exaggerated acts of intellect and will. (pp. 88, 106) These instances seem to be more in accord with effects of redounding of the will, which have been described above. A THOMISTIC ANALYSIS OF THE CONCEPT OF REPRESSION 489 can cloud and hinder the power of reason and coerce the action of the will, even to the point, as St. Thomas says several times, of causing insanity. The more closely these appetites are related to the fundamental natural needs, such as self-preservation and procreation, the stronger they are. The more they are repressed by fear or sorrow, if they should be repressed, the more fundamental the conflict which ensues and the more serious the psychological repercussions. The passions, moreover, work on each other within their own level. The repressive appetites like fear and sorrow can interfere with the workings of desire and the attainment of satisfactions, as is evident from everyday experience. In more extreme cases, the repressive appetites can operate to eliminate the natural and spontaneous movements of the more vital appetites almost completely, suppressing at the same time the thoughts and imagery they normally evoke. These repressive effects can become habitual through repetition, so that loves and desires end up by being completely or almost completely suppressed or distorted. If this suppression itself becomes unconscious through habituation, many natural and normal psychological developments are also impeded, and the structure of personality becomes unconsciously warped. 32 8. Mental activity-thought, fantasy, appetite-can be carried on unconsciously. This is, of course, another crucial point in the psychology of repression. If repressed mental contents are rendered inactive by being eliminated from consciousness, they would not produce psychic disturbances. If mental life is equated with conscious mental life, repressed contents wo.uld necessarily be . inactive; they would have a status like that of ordinary habits which are not effective until they are brought into active use more or less deliberately. This point was one of the major bones of contention between psychoanalysis and modern psychology in the early years of the movement. The question before us •• Summa Theol., I-ll, q. 77, aa. 1, ft, 8 & 6; De Verit., q. ft6, aa. 6 & 10. 490 MICHAEL STOCK now is: did St. Thomas so construct 'his psychology that he would have to insist on a state of consciousness as a condition for imagining, desiring, willing etc. St. Thomas did not know any more than the rest of his contemporaries about the luxuriant growth of repressed mental contents. He did, however, remark that the mad and the insane say and do things of which they are not conscious, and he also remarked that men unconsciously perform many gestures in everyday life of which they are not conscious. These latter, the acts ' of man ' as opposed to human acts, he attributed to an imaginatively represented end of which the man is not conscious at the time. He also saw that men can become habituated to highly complex.activities in a way that enables them to be performed unconsciously, i. e. without conscious awareness of the complex pattern of imagery, thought and will that they necessarily presuppose. More pertinent perhaps are his remarks on dream activity. He defined dreams as mental activities taking place when consciousness of external reality is suspended in whole or in part. He did not think of dreams, however, as entirely meaningless meanderings of the imagination. He noted that they . often express symbolically the physical conditions of the body because we can sometimes perceive these conditions interiorly more acutely when we are asleep than when we are awake, and imaginatively represent them to ourselves, and " that is why doctors are interested in them/' Again, dreams might represent psychological tendencies and dispositions of the dreamer even in regard to matters of which he is not conscious when awake. Moreover, in the dreams we dream, the intellect might begin to work, judging and syllogizing, and sometimes better than in our waking hours! Dreams are not only aroused by the appetites, but in tum will stir them up. The will itself responds with a natural response to the objects in the dream world, although, of course, its freedom is not exercised in