The subconscious is regulated, not only by the orders it receives in any immediate moment, but by the ''standing
orders" it has received—i.e., by a man's long-term interests, values, and concerns. These affect how material is
retained and classified, under what conditions it is reactivated and what kind of subconscious connections—in
response to new stimuli or data—are formed.
This is very evident in the case of creative thinking. Creative thinking rests on the establishment of a standing order
to perceive and integrate everything possibly relevant to a given subject of interest. The problem with which he is
concerned may not occupy a thinker's mind day and night; at times he will focus on other issues; but his
subconscious holds the standing order to maintain a state of constant readiness, and to signal for the attention of the
conscious mind should any significant data appear. The phenomenon of the sudden "inspiration" or "flash of
insight" is made possible by a final, split-second integration which rests on innumerable earlier observations and
connections retained in the subconscious and held in waiting for the final connection that will sum them up and
give them meaning.
Now let us turn to the psychology of repression.
Repression, mechanically, is simply one of the many instances of the principle of automatization. Repression
entails an automatized standing order exactly opposite to the one involved in creative thinking: it entails an order
forbidding integration.
The simplest type of repression is the blocking from conscious awareness of painful or frightening memories. In
this case, some event that was painful or frightening when it occurred and would be painful or frightening if
recalled, is inhibited from entering conscious awareness.
The phenomenon of forgetting as such, is not, of course, pathological; memory, like awareness, is necessarily
selective; one normally remembers that to which one attaches importance. But in cases of repression, memories do
not simply "fade away"; they are actively blocked.
Consider the following example. A twelve-year-old boy succumbs to the temptation to steal money from a friend's
locker in school. Afterward, the boy is tremblingly fearful that he will be found out; he feels humiliated and guilty.
Time passes and his act