Consider, as a classic illustration of this problem, a case such as the following. A priest has taken vows of celibacy
and feels deeply committed to his vows. But a woman in his congregation begins to attract him sexually. Walking
up to his pulpit one Sunday, he sees her—and suddenly feels violent sexual desire. For a brief moment, he feels
himself driven to a course of action that conflicts intolerably with the course of action to which he has committed
his life. In the next instant, he faints. When he regains consciousness, he has no memory of his desire for the
woman (he has repressed it); but he feels acute, seemingly causeless anxiety.
In cases of value-conflict, the short-circuit occurs in the transition from consciousness to reality, i.e., via the
emotional mechanism that translates evaluations (events of consciousness) into actions (events of reality).
Whether a man's emotional mechanism brings him happiness or suffering depends on its programming. It depends
on the validity and consistency of his values. His emotional apparatus is a machine. Man is its driver. According to
the values he selects, he makes the motivational power of his emotions work in the service of his life—or against it.
Emotions and Repression:
The Repression of Negatives
Repression is a subconscious mental process that forbids certain ideas, memories, identifications, and evaluations to
enter conscious awareness.
Repression is an automatized avoidance reaction, whereby a man's focal awareness is involuntarily pulled away
from any "forbidden" material emerging from less conscious levels of his mind or from his subconscious.
Among the various factors that may cause a man to feel alienated from his own emotions, repression is the most
formidable and devastating.
But it is not emotions as such that are repressed. An emotion as such cannot be repressed; if it is not felt, it is not an
emotion. Repression is always directed at thoughts. What is blocked or repressed, in the case of emotions, is either
evaluations that would lead to emotions or identifications of the nature of one's emotions.