sons: she believes that only a very immoral person could experience such rage; she is afraid of what the rage might
drive her to do; and she is apprehensive lest her friends learn of her feeling and abandon her. She tells herself
fiercely, in effect, "Do not judge their actions—above all, do not judge their behavior toward you—be agreeable to
everything." When this order is automatized on the subconscious level, it acts to paralyze her evaluative
mechanism; she no longer feels rage—at the price of no longer feeling much of anything. She does not know what
any events really mean to her. She then proceeds to compound her repression by instigating an additional block to
prevent her from recognizing her own emotional emptiness; she assures herself that she feels all the emotions she
believes it appropriate to feel.
Or: A man finds himself spending more and more time with a married couple who are his friends. He does not note
the fact that he is far more cheerful when the wife is present than when he and the husband are alone. He does not
know that he is in love with her. If he knew it, it would be a blow to his sense of personal worth—first, because he
would see it as disloyalty to the husband; second, because he would see it as a reflection on his realism and "hard-
headedness," since the love is hopeless. If brief flashes of love or desire enter his awareness, he does not pause on
them or appraise their meaning; their significance does not register; the normal process of integration has been
sabotaged. He no longer remembers when the first dim thoughts of love rose to disturb him, and his mind slammed
tightly closed before they reached full awareness, and a violent "No!" without object or explanation took their place
in his consciousness. Nor does he know why, when he leaves his friends' home, his life suddenly seems
unaccountably, desolately arid.
Or: A man who has never made much of himself is resentful and envious of his talented, ambitious younger
brother. But the man has always professed affection for him. When his brother is drafted into the army, there is one
brief moment when the man feels triumphant pleasure. Then, in the next moment, the knowledge of the nature of
his emotion is evaded—and then repressed—and he jokes with his brother about the army "making a man of him."
Later, when he receives the news that his brother has been killed in action, he does not know why all he can feel is
a heavy