IN considering the practical bearing of the new psychology of the unconscious on the everyday life of normal persons, the idea which calls for first consideration is that of the harmfulness of repression.

Now we must bear in mind the fact that we have as yet no proof that repression is usually harmful. We have seen indeed that the non-deliberate repression of early childhood is held, at least by some neo-Freudians, to be of more value than harm. Dr. McDougall suggests that, whether conscious or unconscious, repression is harmful only in so far as it produces the forgetting of a painful experience.*

Dr. Rivers holds that conscious repression, when it is mere repression, taking the place of free, opened-eyed choice, is always harmful. In such matters it may be difficult to give evidence for these views, even so far as they agree, which will convince the sceptic; but due weight must be attached to the conclusions of critically-minded medical men who are also expert psychologists, and who have many instances upon which to base their views, even if they cannot exactly point to all the relevant facts observed, the accumulation of which has brought conviction.

The Harmfulness of Repression.

* Article "Summary" in Functional Nerve Diseases, p. 186.

Yet, in spite of such opinions, we must remember that there is no decisive evidence for the harm-fulness of repression except in selected individuals, who, it might be argued, were specially predisposed to nervous disease of some kind or other.

Only abnormal cases come into the hands of the doctor or psychologist, with the exception of those few people who become interested in the matter from the medical or psychological point of view. No doubt there are many cases in which apparently "normal" men have, after shell-shock, shown the evil influence of past repressions. But many soldiers exposed to equal strain have not so suffered, and it is open to any one to suggest that those who did were in some way hardly normal, having a previous tendency to mental disturbance.

And at most it could be inferred that there are repressions in many who do not apparently suffer from them, until a severe shock disturbs the whole system, when these repressions may cause serious trouble, the exact form, the trouble takes being more dependent upon the repression than upon the shock itself, which fails to hurt many others.

In view, however, of all the evidence as to repressions, it becomes more likely that, even when not harmful to physical health or mental sanity, they may be of greater influence on the everyday life of normal people than has been supposed by most psychologists; or perhaps we may say that there are fewer people than we previously supposed whose minds can be described by that vague word "normal."

As we have seen Jung and some of the Freudians lay great stress upon the essentially healthy alternative to repression - the frank facing of the conflict and deliberate choice with the full consciousness of sacrifice, an act of the unified rational self, not the mere dominance of one impulse over another; or if the concern is with an unpleasant memory, we have commended the attempt to focus it in a way more favourable to the brighter portion and less favourable to the deep shadows.

There is a further mode of facing conflict suggested, namely, that of "sublimation" of the less worthy instinct or impulse. Sublimation, according to some of the Freudians, is the provision of an outlet for an impulse, not the original or primitive outlet, but a "higher" one; and this is put forward as a way of making use of the same energy in a new way, and so of avoiding wasteful, if not harmful, repression.

The elderly lady without children, who finds some satisfaction for the maternal instinct in caring for her pet dogs, would afford an example of sublimation, but for the fact that the impulse is used at a lower rather than a higher level; hence we should speak here only of the "displacement" of the impulse and feeling.

It has been suggested that the surgeon's interest in operating, or the butcher's slaughtering, provides an outlet for repressed "sadism," the crude impulse towards the causing of pain. Some think that sadism may enter unwittingly into the punishments of a schoolmaster who has a marked penchant for the cane.

It is important at the outset to distinguish various possible interpretations of the word "sublimation." It may mean, in the first instance, in popular usage, the occupying of time in developing interest in A, a higher pleasure or pursuit, instead of in B, a less worthy pursuit, when both cannot be followed simply because of the limits of time or circumstance. This, of course, takes place, but it is substitution, not sublimation.

The Sublimation of Lower Impulses.

Secondly, sublimation may mean the using of part of a general fund of nervous energy in a higher instead of in a lower type of activity. But such a diversion of a general fund of energy available for any kind of activity, is not sublimation in the strict Freudian sense.

Sublimation in the strict sense of the term is the diversion of a specific mental impulse from its natural channel, from which it has to be repressed, to a new associated channel, which is not prohibited by social convention or moral law. In insanity it is said, and in dreams, such diverted impulses find their issue and expression in symbolic forms. In normal mental life it may take place through some closeness of relation of B to A. Energy is thus not repressed but used in another channel. The question before us is: does this kind of diversion of specific impulse and energy really happen?

I will take the various points raised by Dr. Ernest Jones in his discussion of the subject of sublimation. He discusses chiefly the sublimation of the sex-impulse. In the first place, Dr. Jones's point, that those struggling with the temptations of sex have found release by applying their interests and energies to sport and work, is undoubtedly true, But this is no proof of sublimation in the strict sense. The activities of sport and work may simply take the place of sex in the first or second sense above without actually being manifestations of the special sex instinct in another form. Again, in dealing with the sex instinct, Dr. Jones claims that "practically all writers" on the subject hold "that at all events some of the driving force behind the impulses and interests of art, religion and many other mental activities is derived from the sexual instinct." *