Or consider the case of a neurotically dependent woman who is married to a cruel, tyrannical man. She dares not let
any criticism of him enter her awareness—because she has surrendered her life to him, and the thought that her
owner and master is irrational and malevolent would be terrifying to her. She observes his behavior, her mind
carefully kept empty, her judgment suspended. She has automatized a standing order forbidding evaluation.
Somewhere within her is the knowledge of how she would judge her husband's behavior if it were exhibited by any
other man—but this knowledge is not allowed to be integrated with the behavior she is observing in her husband.
Her repression is reinforced and maintained by considerable evasion; but her blindness is not caused only by
evasion; to an important extent, she has programmed herself to be blind.
Not uncommonly, one can see a similar pattern of repression among children whose parents are frighteningly
irrational. Children often repress negative evaluations of their parents, finding it more bearable to reproach
themselves in the case of a clash, than to consider the possibility that their parents are monsters. One can observe
this same phenomenon among the citizens of a dictatorship, in their attitude toward the rulers.
Perhaps the most complex instances of repression are those involving the attempt to negate emotions and desires.
An emotion can be attacked through the repressive mechanism in two ways: the repression can occur before the
emotion is experienced, by inhibiting the evaluation that would produce it—or it can occur during and/or after the
emotional experience, in which case the repression is directed at a man's knowledge of his own emotional state.
(As was noted earlier, emotions as such cannot be repressed; whenever I refer to "emotional repression," I mean it
in the sense of the above paragraph.)
A man seeks to repress an emotion because in some form he regards it as threatening. The threat involved may be
simply pain, or a sense of loss of control, or a blow to his self-esteem.
Consider the case of a mild, amiable woman, who tends to be imposed upon and exploited by her friends. One day,
she experiences a violent fit of rage against them—and she is shocked and made anxious by her own feeling. She is
frightened for three rea-