Freud's Repression

Sigmund Freud (1856 - 1939) is perhaps the most easily recognizable name in psychology.

His work founded the school of psychoanalysis. He was noted for his views on such topics as the unconscious mind, the Oedipus complex, sex as a primary motivational force, and ... repression.

What is repression?

Repression is perhaps best described as an inner desire or longing which is pushed into the back of one's mind.

In the act of repression, a person presumably has something powerful and wonderful on their mind. They wish for it, but for whatever reason they feel they cannot have it.

Freud claimed the most common repressed desire was to have sex.

In his view people had a ceaseless longing to have sex, but their mind (i.e. superego) reminded them of things like their reputation, related diseases, getting thrown in jail, and so on.

If this is truly 'repression' one wonders what 'therapy' one can seek to be cured of it. The obvious solutions did not seem to be readily endorsed by Freud.

Perhaps Freud did endorse open sexuality but was too subtle to be remembered that way. Another theory is humans are 'polymorphously perverse' and derive gratification from other seemingly non-sexual pursuits -in which talking about it would be the best therapy. But Freud doesn't seem interested in therapy, only the diagnosis.

Or maybe Freud's efforts became extravagent as a means of concealing a powerful desire he had concealed within him.

Of interest to me was this little-known passage from his meta-narrative, Civilization and Its Discontents:

Once again, only religion can answer the question of the purpose of life. One can hardly be wrong in concluding that the idea of life having a purpose stands and falls with the religious system. We will therefore turn to the less ambitious question of what men themselves show by their behavior to be the purpose and intention of their lives. (p.25)

Freud sounds very certain that the religious life alone yields purpose in life.

One does not need to wonder where Freud finds his evidence because it is clearly in his decisiveness ... a factor easily overlooked by scholars because, well, it is only one man's opinion.

It becomes a significant factor, however, when the question is asked if that man lived by his own opinion or if he concealed it in an act of repression.

If all repression is to be distrusted, then the common behavior of men cannot be trusted as a suffecient guide to finding purpose because, as Freud claims, most people live in a state of repression ... yet, this is where he turns for his understanding of "the purpose and intention of their lives".

Can it be any surprise that his journey to find purpose arrives (after many other places) at "strong feelings of pleasure?" (p. 25)

Understanding the broad direction of people's behavior is not a difficult task -Freud himself openly admits it is less ambitious than finding purpose or living the religious life, both of which require everything from those who are in it.

Freud has asked for something less ambitious than religion, and he writes as though the burden of proof were on him to explain how settling for something else is permissable.

The question of the purpose of human life has been raised countless times; it has never yet received a satisfactory answer and perhaps does not admit one. Some of those who have asked it have added that if it should turn out that life has no purpose, it would lose all value for them. But this threat alters nothing. (p.24)

As an aside, I find it worth some trouble to consider what a satisfactory answer about the purpose of human life would be like. If it were to be like life itself, I would think the answer of its purpose would be very elusive.

Let us set this matter aside for now.

Freud is playing the external card here. He examines those who find value in their own lives and discounts it as a triviality. He laments the failure to find purpose in life, even if some find it to be of value to themselves personally.

I find this peculiar because the psychologist confesses that happiness is itself a very subjective and very inward state.

Happiness, however, is something essentially subjective. (p. 41)

Freud says the question of finding purpose in life has no basis in whether or not one finds value in it, and yet ... he also claims that happiness is subjective, which is to say it is up to the individual to find it or not.

In Freud's way of understanding, a person who has found overflowing happiness has no business telling us about the purpose of life.

My interpretation of this man is far too simplistic to be considered by those in academic circles. To them, my view is probably nothing more than stammering about someone I have failed to read enough.

My interpretation is that this man saw in the religious life -in the purely subjective state of unending happiness- something which he wanted but found far too 'ambitious'.

... Not too ambitious to design, or build, or lift a finger to create, but too ambitious even to believe.

Is it really so hard to believe that the expert of repression struggled with the repression of his greatest hope and dream?

Human beings are opaque, and it is a mark of worthiness for Freud to note that it is impossible to know what goes on inside a person ... whether he is a king, a peasant in the Thirty Years War, or a noted psychologist.

Yet, I find it telling for a person to overlook religion after he has spoken very highly of it. It is a strange but true aspect of humans that we tend to reject the very thing we long for.

Delight yourself in the LORD;
And He will give you the desires of your heart.
Psalm 37:4