balance, with too much of one trait and not enough of another. A thera-
pist’s art is in helping people create a new balance that leaves them
stronger and more resilient than ever before.
Much of what we know about this aspect of therapy comes from
early psychoanalysts, who were always popping open hoods and poking
around, sometimes trying simultaneously to make repairs and discover
how engines work.
Freud discovered that people actively hide parts of their personali-
ties from themselves. Repression, he called it. We already know that peo-
ple try to avoid what they’re afraid of; Freud found out that this happens
on the inside as well as the outside. What frightens people most are parts
of themselves that don’t fit with their beliefs about who and how they
ought to be.
Jane is a nice person. She has always prided herself on putting
other people’s needs ahead of her own. Her life is dedicated to
making other people happy.Admirable though Jane’s goals may be, they don’t allow enough room
in her awareness for an entire personality. What’s missing is aggression.
Like everything else in psychology, aggression is on a continuum. At one
end is hitting people over the head; at the other is knowing what you want
and asking for it. Jane has trouble with the whole continuum because
aggression means putting your needs ahead of someone else’s. Once you
start doing something likethat, who knows where it will end? People will
be upset, and perhaps they won’t like you.
Repression doesn’t make unacceptable thoughts go away. There isno
away. You can’t get rid of parts of yourself. Whether you recognize them
or not, they’re still there, lurking just outside awareness, often determining
your life choices. All repression actually does is set up internal alarms to
scare you when you step out of bounds. We’ve heard about alarms already,
having characterized fear disorders as alarms that go off for no reason.
Sometimes there is a reason.
Please don’t make the mistake of expecting one-to-one correspon-
dence. Jane’s panic attacks are not merely suppressed urges to hit someone
over the head. Her internal conflicts about putting her own needs first do,
however, add energy to an already overloaded system.
122 ❧Explosions into Fear