ABSTRACT
This chapter develops Sigmund Freud's general model and provides a coherent basis for situating repression and clarifying the targets of repression. Freud's theory of instinctual drives defined by their bodily source allows to clarify the desire component and specify distinct systems from which desires, wishes, and behaviours arise. Freud's theory of instinctual drives is arguably one of the most important contributions to a thorough-going theory of human behaviour, grounding the movement of all thoughts, behaviour, and affects in what are termed "instincts". Sexuality, in Freud's thinking, is not a unified drive, but rather comprises several component instincts and two factors conspire to make sexuality prone to repression more than any other. The nature of sexuality allows a greater degree of both repression and substitution. Repression and instinctual frustration Consequently, a problem with repression is that it acts as a form of instinctual frustration, preventing drives from satiation.
