Online research in philosophy

The forgetting and remembering phenomena that Erdelyi outlines here have little to do with the concept of repression. None of the research that he describes shows that it is possible for people to repress (and then recover) memories for entire, significant, and potentially emotion-laden events. In the absence of scientific evidence, we continue to challenge the validity of the concept of repression.

Erdelyi's two key tenets – that repression may be conscious (“suppression”) and that it is context-sensitive – resonate well with findings on unipolar depression. Drawing from this field, I argue that (1) “oppression,” namely, pressure from significant others to refrain from attending to certain mental contents, influences individuals' repression/suppression; and that, (2) individuals actively create the very contexts that facilitate their repression/suppression.

The recent interest in neuroscientific psychodynamic research ('neuropsychoanalysis') has meant that empirical findings are emerging which allow greater public scrutiny of psychodynamic concepts. However, Malcolm Macmillan has claimed that the psychoanalytic cornerstone, repression, is a circular explanatory concept and incapable of referring to a "real process." This paper discusses Macmillan's criticism and finds that repression is a coherent explanatory term and is not precluded from referring to real processes. Specifically, 'neural inhibition,' triggered by social factors, can account for Freudian repression, without succumbing to circular explanation. Recent developments in neuroscience suggest that a plausible mechanism of inhibition exists, providing testable avenues for the 'cornerstone' of psychoanalysis. Evidence of the role of the frontal lobes, a brain area that appears to mediate the influence of social factors upon impulse control, demonstrates that repression is plausible within a dynamic neural framework.

A major weakness in Erdelyi's account concerns the claim that repression can become conscious. A relational account of cognition demonstrates that if repression is successful, then the repressive act cannot become known. Additionally, “resistance” further distinguishes “repression” from “suppression.” Rather than blurring the distinction between these processes, it is possible to recognise a series of defences. Suggestions are provided for alternative research avenues.

Erdelyi identifies cognitive and emotional motives for repression, but largely neglects social motivations. Yet social pressure to not know, and implicit needs to isolate awareness in order to protect relationships, are common motives. Social motives may even trump emotional motives; the most painful events are sometimes the most difficult to repress. Cognitive repression may be impacted by social information sharing.

Erdelyi's unified theory of repression offers a significant advance in understanding the disparate findings related to repression. However, the theory de-emphasizes the role of motive in repression, and it is argued here that motive is critical to the understanding of repression as it occurs in the mental life of individuals.

By conflating Freudian repression with thought suppression and memory reconstruction, Erdelyi defines repression so broadly that the concept loses its meaning. Worse, perhaps, he fails to provide any evidence that repression actually happens, and ignores evidence that it does not.

Erdelyi distinguishes between cognitive and emotional forms of repression, but argues that they use the same general mechanism. His discussion of experimental memory findings, on the one hand, and clinical examples, on the other, does indeed indicate considerable overlap. As an in-between level of evidence, research findings on emotion in neuroscience, as well as experimental and social/personality psychology, further support his argument.

Despite the importance of research on repression to the study of social movements, few researchers have focused on developing a refined and powerful conceptualization of repression. To address the difficulties such theoretical inattention produces, three key dimensions of repression are outlined and crossed to produce a repression typology. The merit of this typology for researchers is shown by using the typology to: (1) reorganize major research findings on repression; (2) diagnose theoretical and empirical oversights and missteps in the study of repression; and (3) develop new hypotheses about explanatory factors related to repression and relationships between different forms of repression. Such a typology represents an important step toward creating richer theoretical explanations of repression.

Repression continues to be controversial. One insight crystallized by the commentaries is that there is a serious semantic problem, partly resulting from a long silence in psychology on repression. In this response, narrow views (e.g., that repression needs always be unconscious, must yield total amnesia) are challenged. Broader conceptions of repression, both biological and social, are considered, with a special stress on repression of meanings (denial). Several issues – generilizability, falsifiability, personality factors, the interaction of repression with cognitive channel (e.g., recall vs. dreams), and false-memory as repression – are discussed.