Freud’s great discovery is not so much the unconscious as such, which was initially a philosophical notion, but an unconscious as a place of what is repressed. Very simply: what man wants to ignore about himself he keeps out of his consciousness.
The Freudian unconscious that we can call the repressed is not only a place (topical point of view: from the Greek topos (the place) it is also something that seeks to express itself and to be satisfied: thus if the repressed is kept out of consciousness by a force, it also seeks to express itself and to exert pressure to satisfy itself: There is therefore a game of force between two opposing currents: the unconscious as repressed c he is also a dynamic unconscious (dynamic point of view). When Freud speaks of repression, he sometimes designates defense mechanisms in general, sometimes a very specific defense mechanism. It is this second meaning that we are going to talk about.
Why are we pushing back?
Freud postulates that in man unavowable desires want to be satisfied. This something goes against the law, morals, good manners and survival. These desires, to be differentiated from desire in Lacan, are called drives: they originate in the erogenous zones and constantly seek to be satisfied. The impulses which are at the limit of the body and the psychic are represented psychically by a representation and an affect. The latter corresponds to the energy aspect of the drive. Now, what is repressed from the drive is its representation, not the affect, which has another destiny. We will see more detail on the drive (Trieb in German) in an article dedicated to it. Remember therefore that what is found maintained in the unconscious is its representation.
But what is representation?
Freud first defines representation as a trace, a memory of what is going to be repressed. But this question remains problematic and under debate because some think that it can be an image, ideas etc. or a word, while others think it’s just words. This debate is not insignificant because Freud is not very clear on it and a certain way of considering the question of representation will result, for example, from Lacan’s assertion: “the unconscious is structured like a language”.
Indeed, Freud distinguishes in representation: representation of words and representation of things: one corresponds to what Ferdinand de Saussure calls signifier (the acoustic imprint, the sound, the musicality of a word), the other to the signified (the idea, the concept to which the signifier refers). However, for Freud, what is associated in the unconscious are the representations of words (by techniques comparable to rebuses, witticisms, etc.). Moreover, in the unconscious words are treated as things. One word is enough to invoke the thing. Lacan will interpret this as a domination of the signifier over the signified in the unconscious since the word suffices to be considered as the thing. In other words, the thing disappears under the word: “the word is the murder of the thing.” »
For others, although in the unconscious word and thing coincide and the association is made by words and their interplay, it is only because they refer to things to be repressed that they are repressed. Moreover, as the acquisition of language is secondary and requires a certain level of elaboration (secondary process), the words cannot correspond to the primary process (those of the unconscious). Lacan considers that we are immediately bathed in the signifier and that what corresponds to the secondary acquisition of language is conscious language and not unconscious language: unconscious equals domination of the signifier over the signified. Conscious: the reverse.
How can the repressed representation reappear again?
This representation will associate with other representations from relatives to relatives and then to others until creating an associative network which will eventually reach consciousness through an associated representation. And the representations that will be associated are the representations of words. The associations of words being made according to processes which one finds in the joke, the rebus, the poetry. Freud in a letter to Fliess will explain that the unconscious (the repressed) takes advantage of the ambiguity of language. But that’s not all, the unconscious also finds ways of expression in dreams (“the royal road”), slips and missed acts as well as symptoms. These other formations of the unconscious allow us to introduce two other conditions: the formation of compromise and the diversion of attention (the attention of consciousness of course). The best metaphor for understanding this tension between the repressed and its prohibition is that of negotiation (political and economic, for example): The Ego must thus find a solution between the instinctual demand which seeks at all costs to satisfy itself and what prohibits this satisfaction: this compromise involves a deformation of the original content, thus diverting attention from the repressing authority (superego) while maintaining both satisfaction of the drive on a deformed representation and respect for the terms of the contract. Repression bearing on a different representation but which is the primitive of the representation that has come to consciousness.
Primary and secondary repression
Freud, in his article on repression[1] postulates the existence of a first repression. So of a first performance that will be repressed. Thus it is this original repression (what Lacan will call S1) which will make possible secondary repression or repression properly speaking. This first repressed representation will allow other representations to associate with it, thus creating a whole associative network that can move from relatives to relatives towards consciousness via the preconscious. A good image to represent the thing is to visualize a chain whose links would be each representation. Lacan will thus speak of a signifying chain whose first end is a master signifier (S1) followed by other secondary signifiers (S2). For Freud, without primary repression, there is no possible repression. We can compare this first time to a first surface of inscription where what is going to be repressed can be written. Suddenly, if the primary repression is prevented and therefore impossible to repress thereafter, other defense mechanisms will come to take its place, such as the famous verwerfung, translated then deepened by Lacan under the term Forclusion. Although Lacan makes a very personal reading of it, he takes up the idea that a content is ejected outside the psychic. This mechanism is found, for example, in the psychotic process.
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[1]. Metapsychology (1915) (including: “Impulses and destinies of impulses” (1915), “Repression” (1915), “The unconscious” (1915), “Metapsychological complement to the doctrine of dreams” (1915/1917), “Mourning and melancholy” (1915/1917), and “Overview of transference neuroses” (1915/1985), in Complete Works, XIII, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1988.