Outline Of Psychoanalysis, By Sigmund Freud

Both the success and failure of psychology as an art and science has fundamental ground

in the anatomical functioning as well as in its theoretical and philosophical functioning of the

brain. It is therefore appropriate to classify Freud’s theory of repression as one of the most

representative concepts of the psychology field. In his published self-titled essay, “Repression,”

Freud defines repression to be “the essence of…rejecting and keeping something out of

consciousness” and goes on to identify the main components which create repression to be the id,

ego, and superego in his “Outline of Psychoanalysis”(Freud 1963, 1949). Given that there is not

much scientific evidence to support this defense mechanism, there have been various

He further expands this idea when he talks about “its (the ego)

activity [being] inhibited by strict prohibitions from the superego, its energy is consumed in vain

attempts at fending of the demands of the id,” (60). There is apparently a necessity for an active

ego in the defense mechanism that Freud describes because in order to identify that a certain

instinctual drive is wrong, forbidden, or socially-unacceptable, the ego must be aware of the

societal customs to begin with.

Freyd’s theory on betrayal trauma begs to defer these points of primary objects and

energy requirement. First of all, the primary object of repression has very little to do with the id,

ego, and superego trinity; instead she interchangeably uses the terms, “knowledge isolation” and

“traumatic amnesia” to add further depth and distinction in meaning to her repression theory. To

specify, she acknowledges that “all of these concepts can be subsumed under the general term

‘knowledge isolation,’ though there are distinct types of [it]. For example, a distinction can be

made between a lack of awareness of the past (which may be called memory repression or

traumatic amnesia) and a lack of awareness of the current situation (which may be