W.H.R.Rivers

“ In the case from my own life we have the suppression of all the events which took place in part of my infantile environment where much must have happened, equalling, if not surpassing, in interest the many events in other parts of the environment of that early age which I have remembered. The suppression of war-neurosis involves the disappearance from consciousness of both intellectual and emotional experience of the most impressive and varied kind. ”

“ We can be confident that when an experience is suppressed on account of its unpleasant nature, it may take with it into the unconscious a vast mass of neutral experience which would have remained accessible to consciousness if it had not been associated with experience needing suppression. ”

“ Reflex action is generally acknowledged to be clearly related to instinct. Reflex acts are products of evolution even more highly organised than the instincts. It is therefore quite in accordance with the function of suppression in relation to instinct that this process should come into action in connection with the reflexes. ”

“ Suppression is especially apt to occur as a means of getting rid of painful experience, the memory of which would interfere with comfort and happiness, or as its immediate effect would prejudice health. ”

“ Thus, fear is especially connected with the instinctive reaction to danger by flight; anger with the reaction to danger or injury by aggression; love with the parental and sexual instincts, etc., while the primary states of pleasure and pain are the psychical accompaniments of the fundamental reactions of attraction towards the useful and repulsion from the harmful. ”