A man can repress the knowledge of what emotion he is experiencing. Or he can repress the knowledge of its extent
and intensity. Or he can repress the knowledge of its object, i.e., of who or what aroused it. Or he can repress the
reasons of his emotional response. Or he can repress conceptual awareness that he is experiencing any particular
emotion at all; he can tell himself that he feels nothing.
For example, hearing of the success of a friend who is also a business rival, a man may repress the awareness that
the emotion he feels is envious resentment, and assure himself that what he feels is pleasure. Or, failing to be
admitted to the college of his choice, a student may tell himself that he feels "a little disappointed," and repress he
fact that he feels devastatingly crushed. Or, feeling sexually rebuffed by his sweetheart and repressing his pain out
of a sense of humiliation, a youth may account to himself for his depression by the thought that no one understands
him. Or, repressing her guilt over an infidelity, a wife can explain her tension and irritability by the thought that her
husband takes no interest in her or their home. Or, burning with unadmitted frustration and hostility because he was
not invited to join a certain club, a man may tell himself that the subject leaves him completely indifferent.
Repression differs from evasion in that evasion is instigated consciously and volitionally; repression is
subconscious and involuntary. In repression, certain thoughts are blocked and inhibited from reaching conscious
awareness; they are not ejected from focal awareness, they are prevented from entering it.
In order to understand the mechanism of repression, there are three facts pertaining to man's mind that one must
consider.
- All awareness is necessarily selective. In any particular moment, there is far more in the world around him than a
man could possibly focus on—and he must choose to aim his attention in a given direction to the exclusion of
others. This applies to introspection no less than to extrospection.
Focal awareness entails a process of discriminating certain facts or elements from the wider field in which they
appear, and considering them separately. This is equally true of the perceptual and the conceptual levels of
consciousness.