The Return of the Repressed

The return of the repressed is the process whereby repressed elements, preserved in the unconscious, tend to reappear, in consciousness or in behavior, in the shape of secondary and more or less unrecognizable "derivatives of the unconscious." Parapraxes, bungled or symptomatic actions, are examples of such derivatives.

In a section of Moses and Monotheism dealing with the return of the repressed, Freud evokes the re-emergence of the "impressions" of early childhood and the instinctual demands that can erupt into the life of the subject, orientating his actions and subjecting him to constraining impulses.

The return of the repressed was considered by Freud to be a "specific" mechanism (Freud to Ferenczi, December 6, 1910), a view he reiterated in his paper on "Repression," where it is portrayed as a third distinct phase in the overall process of repression, following "primal repression" and "repression proper" or "after-pressure"