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
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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