AP PSYCHOLOGY

Detailed explanation-1: -Repression is an unconscious defense mechanism employed by the ego to keep disturbing or threatening thoughts from becoming conscious. Repression, which Anna Freud also called “motivated forgetting, ” is just that: not being able to recall a threatening situation, person, or event.

Detailed explanation-2: -Sigmund Freud originally developed the concept of repression as part of his psychoanalytic theory. Repression occurs when a thought, memory, or feeling is too painful for an individual, so the person unconsciously pushes the information out of consciousness and becomes unaware of its existence.

Detailed explanation-3: -Example: Jacob cannot remember certain painful memories as a child. To protect himself, he unconsciously represses these memories from his consciousness. Instead, he displays anxious behaviors toward other items that he associates with these original painful memories.

Detailed explanation-4: -Repression is one possible response to something unpleasant. For example, if a person is confronted with a fact about himself that he finds unbearably shameful (a discreditable wish, a degrading fantasy, an embarrassing physical feature), one option is to banish it from awareness, to pretend that it doesn’t exist.