ABSTRACT
From clinical work with patients suffering from hysterical and obsessional neuroses, the theoretical concept of repression was derived. The clinical phenomena of the transference neuroses provided Sigmund Freud with the means of describing how repression operated. These “characteristics” of repression, as he called them, are best illustrated by recourse to clinical observations. Repression leads to the removal of the ideas and acts against the affect by converting it into anxiety. Freud was led to the concept of primary repression by acknowledging that to understand the genesis and specific features of certain symptoms, phantasies, and behaviour, the phenomena must be the expression of early childhood experiences, the memory traces of which never achieved consciousness. Freud’s theory of repression offers an explanation of the two kinds of amnesia—one penetrable, the other only penetrable by way of reconstruction.
