Erdelyi, in keeping with Sigmund Freud’s belief in the “continuum of all mental processes” regards repression as either conscious or unconscious (1). As a result, Erdelyi claims that Anna Freud became the first person to deem repression an unconscious act (1). Additionally, Karp makes the association between child trauma and repression very clear even in the definition of repression, while Erdelyi focuses more on the abstract processes of repressing a memory.Īnother major point of controversy involving the definition of repression depends on the definer’s position regarding the idea of “suppression.” Suppression is the deliberate destruction of a memory and was supposedly first introduced by Anna Freud, the daughter of Sigmund Freud, when she differentiated it from repression (1, 2). Although these two definitions both speak of damage to a memory, Karp specifically classifies repression as a defense mechanism, while Erdelyi does not. Karp describes repression as a type of “defense operation” that particularly targets procedurally traumatized children and feeds on inner conflict (2). In other words, those who disagree with Freud consequentially disagree with Erdelyi’s definition of repression.įor example, other definitions, such as that of Cheryl Karp, are explained in very different terms.
The fact that this theory aligns closely with that of Freud is enough to respark a debate in which Freud’s findings alone have served as fuel for decades. He claims that repression can be divided into two processes: 1) inhibitory (or subtractive) processes, which involve damaging a memory, and 2) additive processes, which involve distorting a memory (1). However, he eventually began to discuss repression in two distinct contexts: a narrow context, referring to this specific act of rejecting memories from consciousness, and a broad context, where repression functions as an umbrella term for all possible defense mechanisms.Įrdelyi’s current definition of repression is a direct extension of these two contexts introduced by Freud. When defining repression, Freud stated, “The essence of repression lies simply in the function of rejecting and keeping something out of consciousness” (1).
Herbart referred to it simply as keeping thoughts below the “threshold of consciousness” and did not consider it to be a defense mechanism – a process undergone to protect an individual from pain caused by the memory of something unpleasant (1).Įrdelyi claims that Freud established the theory that repression is a defense mechanism. In his paper “The unified theory of repression,” Matthew Erdelyi claims that Johann Herbart introduced the topic of repression well before Sigmund Freud brought it to popularity with his notions on psychoanalysis (1). Is repression conscious or subconscious? Is it a defense mechanism? The answers to these questions depend on who is asked. The heart of the debate stems from the definition of a repressed memory, or even just repression. Regardless, repressed memories remain a perplexing and interesting topic that deserve objective investigation. In addition, different authorities study repressed memories, making it difficult to form multidisciplinary theories that capture all of the evidence and adding to the debate’s complexity. This debate involves many aspects of repressed memories, such as their definition, reliability, and ability to be studied. This controversy has survived for decades in an often-dormant fashion but occasionally rises to the surface as the result of high-publicity court cases or experiments. Over the past century, psychologists, neuroscientists, and clinicians alike have questioned the validity of repressed memories. (Source: Flickr, courtesy of Michael Huang) An image of the brain produced by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the same method used by Kanaan et al.