repression (Verdrängung) In psychoanalysis, the process whereby the conscious defends itself against unwelcome thoughts, impulses, and ideations rising up from the unconscious. These thoughts are unwelcome because they are representatives of one or other of the instinct, and as such they strike the conscious’s governing body, namely the superego, as being both uncivilized and vulgar. Repression is not, however, a single-shot act like closing the door; it is rather, a constant process akin perhaps to force exerted by a dam wall to hold back the flow of water behind it. Freud, Sigmund conceived of the idea of repression in trying to explain parapraxis (better known as ‘Freudian slips’), which he reasoned are evidence of two things: first, that these slips of the tongue and so on indicate that there is a part of the mind not accessible to conscious thought or inspection, which he called the unconscious; and second, that these unconscious processes are constantly bombarding and being repelled by the conscious mind. Freud also came to think that both hysteria and projection symptoms are a product of repressed thoughts which have been subjected to either condensation or displacement and thereby rendered acceptable to the conscious (they are also known as ‘compromise-formations’ for obvious reasons). In their newly disguised state these thoughts are no longer recognizable to the conscious, and although it had previously repressed them, it now allows them to pass through without further censorship. Now, however, repression takes on a new form because it must repress those thoughts and associations which would betray the true identity of the disguised thoughts and trigger what Freud called a return of the repressed. Freud referred to these two moments or types of repression as primal repression and repression proper.