Words: Suppression/Repression
July 22nd, 2008[This is the third post for July 2008 by our guest blogger, Bryan N. Maier (Assoc. Prof of Counseling & Psychology at Biblical Seminary). He continues to give examples of how a Christian Psychologist interacts with the classic theories of psychotherapy.]
No class on theories would ever be complete without some attention to the groundbreaking theories of Sigmund Freud. Because of the volume and creativity of his work, he has provided ample targets for Christians and non-Christians alike. Therefore if someone is looking to find issue with Freud, they do not have to look hard. On the other hand, much of what Freud taught has become so much a part of the mainstream of counseling practice that very few realize how Freudian they really are. One Freudian concept that I am becoming more sympathetic to is the idea of repression. In fact I would go so far as to say that Freud’s concept of repression probably explains pretty well what is going on in Romans 1. Let me explain.
After his personal introduction (1:1-15) Paul begins his treatise on the gospel. In verse 18 he justifies the wrath of God in response to the evil and unrighteousness of fallen humanity. It is the last phrase of the verse that sounds psychoanalytic. Not only do human beings warrant the wrath of God, but they go on to “suppress” this knowledge. The passage goes on to explain what this means. It is not a lack of knowledge; God has provided all they need. Rather it is a willful choice to live in a way as if what is known is really not known. As a result, they begin to think differently (“their foolish heart was darkened”) and then actually start believing what they once knew to be lie. As a result, God gives them over to their twisted thinking which results in even more twisted thinking and “dishonorable” behavior. This vicious decline starts back in verse 18 with the “suppression” of the truth. The word in the original language means to “hold down” which sounds an awful lot like the idea of anxiety or unpleasant thoughts being banished to the unconscious where energy needs to be expended to keep them there. If human beings can deny something as fundamental as God’s existence and authority, their capacity (as well as our own) to deny many other things should not surprise us.
As we sit across from our clients, what might they be suppressing? Could it be God’s anger or maybe his goodness? Is it more difficult for Christians to suppress what they know about God than it is for an unbeliever? And what amount of energy is being expended to keep these thoughts apart from their conscious awareness? Put another way, how hard is it to “quench the spirit”? What do you think?
July 22nd, 2008 at 11:16 am
Bryan,
Thank you for your post and your willingness to engage psychoanalytic thought and biblical application. I believe you’ve touched on a key distinction between the terms “repression” and “suppression.” What you have in Romans is an intentional distortion and/or denial of the truth. This intentionality (more in line with suppression) may or may not be a thought out, “conscious” process on the part of the person doing it, although she or he is held accountable regardless. With repression, classically considered a subconscious process, intentionality is not present, although there is purposefulness from a survival standpoint. Perhaps suppression warrants more of a lovingly confrontive stance, while repression needs a more merciful response. Suppression reflects our rebellion, repression our inadequacy, and both may be expressions of our depravity (helplessness to be different).
In many respects, believers who engage in suppression will have a tougher go of things because they are actively resisting the Holy Spirit’s influence of guiding into truth. I’m not sure there would be a difference in the process of repression, although the objects and situations that evoke it may be different once someone becomes a believer. Perhaps a believer’s repression would become evident more efficiently due to the truth-current of the Spirit’s influence.
“What amount of energy is being expended…?” I believe the resurrection power of the gospel may be one way to guage this. If the remedy is the gospel that brings life, that implies we are expending amounts of energy in ways that lead to death. What freedom we have in Christ because of the truth of the gospel!
July 22nd, 2008 at 7:09 pm
It is my understanding (in psychoanalytic thought) that suppression is a “healthy” or more mature defense mechanism, where someone consciously decides to push out certain thoughts. An example would be suppressing lustful desires, because we think they are sinful.
Repression on the other hand is a more primitive defense mechanism, where we unconsciously do this… An example would be, a person being abused as a young child, later goes on to develop trust issues with the opposite sex. Not necessarily a healthy thing, but a protective defense.
For nonbelievers, I can see how faith becomes a matter of suppression versus repression depending on the context. For example, a person being raised by a strict, abusive father, doesn’t believe in God as a Father. This serves as suppression (a protective defense mechanism).
Repression is harder to make a case for. I would venture to guess that our unconscious is a realm subject to spiritual influence (both of God and Satan). If so, perhaps suppression is more volitional and repression more subject to demonic control.
Deep stuff. Thanks for an interesting post.
July 23rd, 2008 at 6:57 pm
David,
Thanks for the good reminder that there can be purposefullness without intentionality. I am reminded of Jer. 17:9 where it is claimed that the human heart is so deceitful that only God knows the depths to which it has been twisted (implication even we are not aware or conscious of it at that level). I also agree that we are capable of forming defense mechanisms in response to a threat but again if we so capable of self-deception, we may not even be that reliable in assessing a true threat.
July 23rd, 2008 at 7:02 pm
Jadunham
As I responded to David, I think we do develop defense mechanisms in response to threats, but this process might not be as innocent as we think. Can we really be trusted to accurately perceive what is a true threat and what is not? For example, if we are engaged in a shameful behavior, anyone who challenges us or threatens to expose us could be viewed as a threat. How would you view a defense mechanism developed under such conditions?
July 24th, 2008 at 9:52 am
Toward mutual theory in a Christian psychology.
I acknowledge repression as being the ontological enactment constituting the human mind in common grace. The first human disregarded communion grace relational concerned love with God. The consequence, he “would surely die”. Reactive spiritual sensory-intuitive cognition of impending death despair evoked a critical projective identification enactment with God; God bestowed mercy. The use of unconscious repression, granted in the re-projective identification, situated the death instinct submerged within. This founded and grounded the common natural grace state of non-communion grace relatedness with God, in need of regeneration.
Psychoanalytic clinical empirical knowledge reveals unconscious realities related to loss arousal. The loss of God arousal demands diffusion and consequent enabling replacement control. Therein resides noetic effects of sin, in conjunction with the spectrum of overt symptoms in lost communion grace arousal, evoking the substitute fault/conflict fulfillment configuring psychoanalytic elaboration of relational emotional pathology. The faulted unconscious/conscious conceives infantile need of maternal nurture disproportionately. Acutely sensitive and responsive in non-communion relation with God, loss arousal intensifies in loss arousal control need, developing neurotic thru psychotic responses in relational loss, intensive fear, acute need, increased desire, and aggressive defense.
Faulted conflicted symptoms, utilized to repress and control arousal of the evolving personal, original, ancestral, cultural, linguistic sin unconscious non-communion grace relatedness settle within. The salvation experience of regeneration restructures, relationally configures, and instills clarifying ontological healing. Born again, being a new creation in Christ re-constitutes the personal original unconscious submissive to the redeemed unconscious/conscious, transcendent, spiritual, interpersonal, eternal, symmetry with GodJesusHolySpirit.
Christian analytic psychological sanctification interpenetrates and heals beyond common natural grace psychoanalytic knowledge. Humanist philosophy and analytic psychology will profoundly uncover and inform in their subjective search for healing within faulted, conflicted non-communion grace relatedness with God.
August 24th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
This notion of suppressing the truth in unrighteousness (Rom 1) as a form of repression alla Freud was developed in Sproul, Gernster & Lindsey’s (sp?) text Classical Apologetics in the 1980′s. It prompted me to do a bit of a word study for undergrad Greek class. The idea of ‘holding the truth down’ in unrighteous acts did not seem to be an intrapsychic act as much as an interpersonal one. I happenned to be reading Bob Robert’s Spirituality & Human Emotions as well as some work on the embodied unconscious in Merleau Ponty at the time. It struck me that what Paul had in mind was that if a community lives as if there is no God it becomes belief conducive to the denial of the truth of God. The converse of Romans 1 is then that if we live as if there is a God (John 17- being one so that the world may believe the father sent the son) then the human experience will be belief in God engendering. I don’t think Paul was thinking of holding the truth down as a Freudian act of represssion or even suppression.
August 27th, 2008 at 7:36 am
Bill,
I appreciate your challenge but my question for you regards which dynamic comes first. You say “if a community lives as if there is no God it becomes belief conducive to the denial of the truth of God” and my respone would be why in the world if their beliefs have not changed yet, would they behave in a way that is inconsistent with their beliefs? Just following the order of the text, it is the internal that turns against God first and then this leads to external behavior (which lays the groundwork for even more foolish thinking and behavior, etc..) that is against God. Paul summarizes this again in verse 28 when he says “they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God…” I agree that Paul is not spouting pure psychoanalysis, but he seems to be saying that something we were once aware of can become banished from our conscious awareness (which will in turn shape behavior) and this does sound at least a little Freudian to me.
September 13th, 2008 at 4:28 am
Thank you for your thoughtful follow-up. I am still not quite prepared to grant that the things start ‘internally’ if by that you mean intrapsychically. The question that I still do no not find compellingly answered from the Freudian take is “where is the location of the ‘holding down’ of the truth or even of the failure to retain the knowledge of God?” It has been nearly two decades since I did a careful study of this in the Greek and, I am sad to say, my Greek proficiency (never very sophisticated) has become rusty, so I will defer to those more competent to clarify whether my vague impression is true. I believe however, Paul’s characterization is not directed against singular subjects but plural ones. The question then becomes how among those plural referents are the processes Paul is describing operating? I see an analogy here to the troubling interpretation of Jesus’s statement in John about the kingdom of God being “within you” offered by Gnostics. Gnostics assume that is intrapsychic gnosis, but my NT professors emphasised that the better translation of the text (given our lack of distinction between 2nd person singular and plural in English is) the “kingdom of God is among you-all”. I think you are assuming that not retaining knowledge is something done intrapsychically. I submit that this is not necessarily the case and returning to the point that the suppression is done in unrighteous acts (adikea, I believe) by the that collective (2nd person plural) group that Paul is referencing, that is not how I came to read this passage (despite my initial Freudian jaundiced temptation to do so, having been trained in psychology). Your comment has prompted me to look more closely at this passage and I will return to it to do a fresh exegetical study with the assistance of my divinity colleagues that are more competent in Greek as soon as I have the opportunity. Thank you for prompting these profound and important questions.