What is suppression in psychoanalysis?
A summary of what suppression is according to the theory of psychoanalysis formulated by Freud.
There are several defensive mechanisms proposed by psychoanalysis, highlighting, above all, projection, repression and denial.
These three mechanisms are considered psychological processes that, far from being beneficial to our mental health, can lead to emotional discomfort and psychopathology, which emerge in the form of dysfunctional thoughts and behaviors.
However, there is a mechanism that is not considered so detrimental to our mental health and that, in fact, brings us some well-being: suppression. Let's see what suppression is in psychoanalysisand what benefits it implies.
What is suppression in psychoanalysis?
Within psychoanalysis, suppression is understood as the defense mechanism that the individual uses when trying to keep away from consciousness a memory, emotion or thought that causes anxiety. that causes anxiety. The person, seeing that he/she is not able to passively forget the information that is causing him/her discomfort, consciously and voluntarily tries to keep the memory hidden in the depths of his/her mind.
The act of suppressing involves keeping unwanted thoughts out of our field of consciousness, and is a process closely related to repression, dissociation and denial, as well as to the mundane act of forgetting. In fact, when Sigmund Freud when Sigmund Freud proposed this concept of suppression in 1892, he did so by looking at his idea of repression, only it is done consciously. We try to push away that which may involve some conflict in our psyche if we constantly remember it.
An example of suppression in daily life is when we have broken up with our partner. The event is not pleasant and remembering what feelings we had at the time of the breakup, what was said, how each one took the act of breaking up among other related aspects, is something that can burn us if we are over and over again thinking about it. We try to leave it aside, while we do other things that give us well-being..
Another case is the death of a loved one. It is obvious that we will go through a period of mourning, something totally normal after the loss of a loved one, either by death or by simple rupture of the relationship. However, remembering how the person died, especially if it was due to illness, is something that is not good for our mind. That is why we try to keep our mind busy doing other things, or thinking about the good things we still have, such as great friends and family.
These two examples above are cases where suppression has a clear adaptive functionality. It is a healthy process and allows the person to manifest a lower degree of anxiety, or even to stop having this anxiety. or, even, to stop having this emotion. In fact, and briefly leaving aside the psychoanalytic approach and moving on to the cognitive-behavioral approach, in this therapy, to combat dysfunctional thought patterns, which lead to negative emotions, one of the strategies used is suppression: making the person think of something pleasant and avoid thinking about a past event that causes discomfort.
However, and returning to psychoanalysis, it must be said that this process is not always beneficial for the person. this process is not always beneficial for mental health.. This is true if you are trying to push away from your consciousness something that you should be dealing with.
For example, let's imagine that we have a tyrannical boss who treats us quite badly. We know that this is not the way he should treat us, but we also know that we cannot confront him because, if we do, we may lose our jobs. That's why we try to forget our feelings and thoughts about him, and get some peace for a while. The problem comes that, when we are close to him, these strong thoughts try to come out, change our behavior, we get nervous and do our job badly.
Be that as it may, psychoanalysis, with the exception of this last example given here, considers that the mechanism of suppression, together with others such as sublimation, are among the most mature we possess. We have more or less conscious control over that which causes us discomfort. and we try to remove it from our consciousness, in order to improve our well-being without completely forgetting the unpleasant event.
Differences between suppression, denial and repression.
Suppression is closely related to two other defense mechanisms proposed by psychoanalysis.repression and denial. These three mechanisms share as their main function the protection of the person's psyche although they have significant differences in the way they relate to the person's health, as well as the degree of control exercised over the three mechanisms.
As we have already mentioned, suppression is a mechanism that implies that an unwanted thought, emotion or memory is consciously suppressed. That is, the subject tries not to think about them, but does so completely voluntarily. It is not an obscure mental process that makes us forget about something because its emotional charge is so severe that our conscious would not be able to bear it. It is about avoiding thinking about itIt is as simple as that.
This mechanism differs from repression and denial in the fact that the unwanted thoughts, despite the fact that we do not want to think about them, can be recovered voluntarily. The person, without cognitive difficulty but emotionally, is able to remember what he has tried to forget.
In repression and denial, the person is not aware of his feelings, is not able to keep in mind what he has tried to forget.In repression and denial, the person is not aware of his feelings, is not able to have in consciousness what he is repressing or what he is refusing to see reality as it is.
Repression implies that unwanted thoughts are repressed, that is to say, hidden, but in a totally unconscious way. They are removed from the world of consciousness without our being aware of it, but they are not eliminated. The memories remain in our unconscious.
This mechanism is understandable with cases of childhood sexual abuse, where the person, in order to protect himself without being aware of it, has hidden the unpleasant memory deep in the mind. Although this will affect their behavior, for example, causing them to have a bad predisposition to have relationships with other people.
How do these mechanisms differ from forgetting?
After discussing the main differences between suppression, repression and denial, it is worth relating these concepts, and in particular that of suppression, to the act of forgetting. It may seem that repression and suppression are simple modalities of forgetting, but the truth is that there are certain nuances that must be taken into account.
To forget something is, in essence, to cause any information to be removed, unconsciously and undesirably, although not always, from the field of consciousness. Basically, it is that we cease to be aware of a memory. It remains stored in the world of unconsciousness, without our having wished it to be so..
Forgetting is something that is part of our daily life, basically because we are not supercomputers. We cannot be conscious and remember at every moment all the data we have stored in our brain. We need to free our consciousness and reserve it for those data that bring us some kind of benefit or short-term adaptability.
Since it is an everyday thing, it is normal to forget mundane things, such as an ingredient when going to the market, not remembering that you had a doctor's appointment, having a word on the tip of your tongue... But these mundane things can also be remembered when, suddenly, something related to them appears, such as the shopping list, the doctor's telephone number card or someone saying that word that was so hard to remember.
The main difference with suppression is that this defense mechanism is conscious, whereas forgetfulness is not.. In addition, the event or feeling that we try to hide in the depths of our mind is something with a great emotional charge, while everyday forgetfulness is usually about banal things.
With respect to repression, it is true that both processes share the fact that they occur unconsciously. Both in everyday forgetfulness and in repression, a memory or data is hidden in a non-premeditated way. However, in repression, one ceases to be conscious of a terribly unpleasant event, a traumatic and harmful memory. On the other hand, in mundane forgetting, although the nature of the forgotten datum may involve different emotionality, it is usually something that is not serious.
Bibliographical references:
- Freud, Sigmund. (1915e). The unconscious. SE, 14: 159-204. (1923b). The ego and the id. SE, 19: 1-66.
- Werman, D.S. (1983). Suppression as a defense. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 31(S), 405-415.
(Updated at Apr 12 / 2024)