The Return Of The Repressed

According to Freud's theory, the very act of entering into civilized society entails the repression of various desires. Each person's psychosexual development includes the surpassing of previous "love-objects" that are tied to earlier sexual phases (the oral phase, the anal-sadistic phase, etc.) however, even well-adjusted individuals still betray the insistent force of those earlier desires through dreams, literature, or "Freudian slips"; hence the term, "return of the repressed." In less well-adjusted individuals, who remain fixated on objects or who are driven to abnormal reaction-formations or substitute-formations, two possibilities exist, the first one is perversion, in which case the individual completely accepts and pursues his or her desire for alternative sexual objects and situations (sado-masochists, etc.) and the second one is neurosis, in which case the same prohibited desires may still be functioning.

In horror films we see a lot of dreams and imaginations coming true. A repressed memory is the memory of a traumatic event unconsciously retained in the mind, where it is said to adversely affect conscious thought, desire, and action. A lot of people are stuck with these traumatic experiences unless they are rendered unconscious at the time of the experience. No one has identified a single case where a specific traumatic experience in childhood was repressed and the repressed memory of the event, rather than the event itself, caused a specific psychiatric or physical disorder in adulthood.