draws, alienated by a passionless remoteness which she perceives as weak and unmasculine.
Or: The man who represses his desire for an appreciation and admiration he has earned, because, mistakenly, he
views his desire as a failure of independence—and does not understand the feelings of loneliness and a strange,
unwanted bitterness that hit him at times.
Or: The woman who represses her sexual passion, because she is afraid of shocking her timid, conventional
husband—and does not understand the apathy that invades more and more areas of her life.
Or: The woman who represses her femininity, because she has accepted the popular notion that femininity and
intellectuality are incompatible—and who does not understand her subsequent tension and hostility in the realm of
sex. (Or: The woman who represses her intellectuality, because she has accepted the same dichotomy, and is left
with the same bitterness.)
Or: The man of authentic self-esteem who represses the strength of his impulse to self-assertiveness, out of
consideration for the neurotic sensibilities of people who are less secure psychologically—and does not understand
his periodic explosions of rebellious, seemingly unprovoked anger.
When a person represses, his intention is to gain an increased sense of control over his life; invariably and
inevitably, he achieves the opposite. Observe that in every one of the above cases, repression leads to increased
frustration and suffering, not to their amelioration. Whether a person's motive is noble or ignoble, facts cannot be
wiped out by self-made blindness; the person who attempts it merely succeeds in sabotaging his own
consciousness.
Repression devastates more than a man's emotions; it has disastrous effects on the clarity and efficiency of his
thinking. When a man tries to consider any problem in an area touched by his repression, he finds that his mind
tends to be unwieldy and his thinking distorted. His mind is straightjacketed; it is not free to consider all possibly
relevant facts; it is denied access to crucial information. As a consequence, he feels helpless to arrive at
conclusions, or the conclusion she reaches are unreliable.
This does not mean that, once a man has repressed certain thoughts or feelings, he is permanently incapacitated:
with sustained effort, it is possible for him, to de-repress. Since the