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Mark Solms on Repression: A Neuropsychoanalytic Hypothesis
March 1, 2008, Arnold Pheffer Center for Neuropsychoanalysis, 243 E. 82nd St.
[Notes added by Janet Bachant, Empire State College]

Repression is central, fundamental to psychoanalysis. Repression involves the withholding from consciousness of that which would be distressing if allowed in.

Freud eventually saw that repression is a function of the ego, the aspect of the mind that mediates between the drives and the outside world. Its task is a complex one. It has to leave out processes that have to be excluded. It does this by a quick cost/benefit analysis that relies heavily on memory. Memory is the currency of the Ego.

Freud said that hysterics suffer mainly from reminiscences – what they push out of mind. There is a price to pay for this: a weakened grip on reality by excluding some of the reality.

The repressed continues to press for expression and tries to gain control of the motor apparatus. This is what leads to
Symptom development (the return of the repressed)
Transferences
Compromise formations
Ways for the repressed to get a hearing

In “Remembering, Repeating and Working Through,” Freud spoke of remembering as the opposite of repression. Repeating is what happens when the repressed returns. Transference is the return of the repressed in the form of repetitions.

The aim of psychoanalysis is to analyze transference – to point out what patients are not remembering by pointing out what they are repeating. We make the repressed material available for integration.

Freud in letter to Fleiss (January 6, 1897—not available in The Origins of Psychoanalysis): Memory traces are subjected to rearrangement in accordance with fresh circumstances – transcribed. Memory is registered not once, but several times over – stratified in maturational epochs (developmental sense).

An anachronism remains – relics of the past still survive – a failure of translation of what we know clinically as repression. Repression is a failure to translate one level of memory transscription to the next.

Multiple memory systems are now generally accepted in cognitive science:

Emotional condiditoning
Procedural memory
Semantic memory
Episodic memory
Working memory

Solms spoke of the periaqueductal gray, PAG; [also called the "central gray" the periacqueductal grey is the midbrain grey matter located around the cerebral acqueduct within the midbrain. It plays a role in the descending modulation of pain and pleasure and in defensive behaviour.] Stimulation of the PAG results in compulsive, automatic, rudimentary, primitive, strong level f mental functioning immediately tied to an action program. It is mindless and motoric.

Our basic emotion command systems are initially hard wired: the seeking system (Jaak Panksepp) equated with libidinal desire that drives the organism. Emotional conditioning does occur (Freud spoke of it as experiences of satisfaction). What we are seeking is individualized in memory traces. Neuroscientists have described 7 basic systems:

Seeking
Fear/Anxiety
[Panic]
Separation /distress
Anger/Rage
Care/Nurturance
Play

These command systems are hard wired in. They do not have to be learned. They are phylogenetic memories which are stratified, built into our memory organization. They are automatic ways of responding that are applied to objects [of fear or attachment]. They are compulsory, actively charged – an action to do something.

These systems are fixed from earliest life. LeDoux, Paakskepp describe them as indelible –they can never be undone; they are timeless, always there. Can be organized by one exposure learning. But studies with rats have demonstrated that rats that have been shocked in a particular environment, can gradually learn to cope – to override early experience. Essentially we have to inhibit the automatic response.

The procedural memory system is a kind of “bodily” memory. It involves habitual, automated motor sequences organized in/at the level of the basal ganglia and the cerebellum. It functions implicitly and automatically, therefore unconsciously. It allows us to learn skills and know how to do things such as how to walk, play the piano, write, etc. Constant repetition the learning phase makes procedural memory have far deeper evolutionary roots than semantic memory. Lesions in this structure result in perseverations. Learned behavior becomes automatic, something we can do without conscious awareness. It has been said that procedural memories (like riding a bike, driving a car) are hard to learn and hard to forget; compulsive and compulsory, rote.

Semantic memory is processed in the inferior parietal lobe of the brain. Semantic memory are the rules of everyday living: oil floats on water, Washington DC is the capital of the US, etc. This system is very resilient and resistant to loss. It is a very stable core base [and represents our knowledge of the rules of the games as distinct from how to play the game].

Rules that characterize the SuperEgo system are in semantic memory.

Episodic Memory – located in the hippocampus [ densely interconnected with the limbic system]. These are memories that involve you personally: this happened to me. [Episodic memory involves conscious activation, i.e. arousal by the core brainstem structures and are intrinsically emotional.] This type of memory only comes “online” between the second and third year of life. This is an explanation for infantile amnesia: it is not possible to remember our earliest years of life (although our experiences can still profoundly affect us). The hippocampus is also sensitive to stress hormones [glucocorticosteroids], so that during periods of stress, these memories are not laid down. During stress, memories may not be encoded in episodic memory in the first place.

None of the above are repression, which is a dynamic phenomenon. These are encoding systems, not voluntary retrieval systems that one can control.

It is retrieval mechanisms that are associated with Ego functioning. Neural correlates of retrieval mechanisms involve the anterior cingulate gyrus, basal forebrain, hypothalamus, thalamus and of course the prefrontal lobes, the executive of the mind, the place where you are in charge. The executive functions of the brain make lower center experience available for use. The frontal lobe executive centers are capable of inhibition of lower center activity. The executive center has access to working memory. The prefrontal lobes are the last to develop.

The locus of repression is in the prefrontal lobes, [particularly in the ventromesial and orbital frontal areas]. Repression is a failure to retrieve or a decision not to retrieve. Repression is a failure to retrieve at the level of the anterior limbic system – a failure to make available to frontal processes resulting in a return to more primitive transcriptions of earlier material. The prefrontal cortex is where inhibition and executive control are possible – where relative free will enters the equation.

We are dealing with procedural memory [Referent is unclear here]. Lesions on the memory retrieval system provide independent confirmation of the Freudian theory/model: a dynamic unconscious, timelessness, tolerance of mutual contradiction, replacement of material reality by wish –psychical process. Also supported is the idea that the pursuit of pleasure is lifelong by nature although the nature of pleasure changes over time and with maturation.

Primary repression is pushing something out of mind.
Repression proper is keeping things out of mind
Organic repression is automatically applied in certain experiences (have to have adequate development of the frontal cortex, for example).

Our aim is to improve, to finesse our concepts to impart more precise differentiation to transference phenomena in light of neuropsychoanalytic understanding.

Thought is a virtual type of action, made possible by the prefrontal lobes, that is by ego control. The ego makes possible selective retrieval as well as inhibition of lower center processing. Dissociation is a failure to connect but repression is more than a failure to connect – other dynamic forces are involved. Neuropsychoanalysts have something important to add to cognitive psychologists, because ego functioning and the development of consciousness are embodied functions. These mechanisms do not work like computers work. Cognitive science by itself does not do justice to the full state of mental functioning. The problem with purely cognitive theory is that it is not embodied, there is no reference to the driving forces in the person.

The role of the ego is to monitor; it is a regulatory mechanism. Freud and Damasio have spoken about the evaluative function: the ego has to decide “Is this good or bad?” That is the purpose of consciousness. [The ego uses memory to make these decisions – “the currency of the ego is memory”]. In repression there is a decision by a selective retrieval mechanism, a need to leave some things out because they conflict – cannot be reconciled with the rest of the psyche.

Hypnosis: loss of dorsolateral frontal control, deactivation of dorsolateral frontal control.
Lucid dreaming: more dorsolateral control.

Age related forgetting is a hippocampal problem, not dynamic repression.