When a person represses certain of his thoughts, feelings, or memories, he does so because he regards them as
threatening to him in some way. When, specifically, a person represses certain of his emotions or desires, he does
so because he regards them as wrong, as unworthy of him, or inappropriate, or immoral, or unrealistic, or indicative
of some irrationality on his part—and as dangerous, because of the actions to which they might impel him.
Repression, as we have discussed, is not a rational solution to the problem of disturbing or undesirable mental
contents. But it is particularly unfortunate when the repressed ideas or feelings are, in fact, good, right, normal, and
healthy.
A person may judge himself by a mistaken standard, he may condemn emotions and desires which are entirely
valid—and if he does so, it is not vices he will attempt to drive underground, but virtues and legitimate needs.
As an example of this error, consider the psychology of a man who represses his desire to find rationality and
consistency in people, and who represses his pain and frustration at their absence—under the influence of the
fallacious belief that a placid, uncondemning expectation and acceptance of irrationality in people is a requirement
of maturity and "realism."
The encounter with human irrationality, in childhood, is one of the earliest psychological traumas in the lives of
many people, and one of the earliest occasions of repression. At a time when a young mind is struggling to acquire
a firm grasp of reality, it is often confronted—through the actions of parents and other adults—with what appears to
be an incomprehensible universe. It is not inanimate objects that appear incomprehensible, but people. It is not
nature that appears threatening, but human beings. And, more often than not, the problem is submerged by him,
repressed, ignored, never dealt with, never understood, never conquered.
In the case of the man we are considering, the irrationality to which he was exposed as a child was not the
expression of intentional cruelty or ill-will. It was simply the "normal" manner of functioning, on the part of his
parents, which most adults take for granted.
It consisted of such things as: making promises capriciously, and breaking them capriciously—oversolicitude when
the parent was in one mood, and callous remoteness when the parent was in