numbness and a diffuse, objectless guilt; he tells himself that his grief is too profound for tears; and he drags
himself around, strangely exhausted, not knowing that all of his energy is engaged in never letting himself identify
the repressed wish which some enemy bullet has fulfilled.
Or: A woman sacrifices her desire for a career to her husband's desire for children and for a wife who has no
interests apart from the family. Then, after a while, she feels an occasional spurt of hatred for her children, which
horrifies her. She repressed such feelings and is not aware of them again—except that sometimes she is
inexplicably and uncharacteristically careless of her children's physical safety. Then she is horrified to discover
feelings of contempt for her husband. She represses them, she throws herself with renewed fervor into the role of
devoted wife—except that sexual relations with her husband become empty and boring. She takes great pains to
present to their friends the picture of a cheerful, " well-adjusted" wife and mother—except that she begins to drink
when she is alone.
Or: Since childhood, a man has regarded the emotion of fear as a reflection on his strength, and has struggled never
to let himself know when he is afraid. He has instituted a block against recognizing the emotion when it appears.
His manner is superficially calm, but he tends to be somewhat stiff and monosyllabic; he backs away from any sort
of personal involvement. No values seem to arouse any response in him. An enormous amount of his energy goes
into simply maintaining the illusion of inner equilibrium—into keeping his face pleasantly inscrutable and his mind
cautiously empty. He feels safest when social conversation involves "small talk"—or some neutral subject where no
moral judgments are expected of him or are expressed by anyone else. At home, he practices body-building stolidly
and earnestly, and admires the emptiness of his face in the mirror, and feels manly—except that he tends to avoid
women because he is close to being impotent.
There are two particularly disastrous errors that can drive a person to repression.
- Many people believe that the fact of experiencing certain emotions is a moral reflection on them.
But a man's moral worth is not to be judged by the content of his emotions; it is to be judged by the degree of his
rationality: only