(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.) Gabrielle Principe, College of Charleston (THE CONVERSATION) In 1990, George Franklin ...

An experiment found that people can push an unwanted memory out of their minds, lending credence to Sigmund Freud's theory of repression. In the study, college students who had memorized pairs of ...

Repression is a defense mechanism in which people push difficult or unacceptable thoughts out of conscious awareness. This idea launched an enduring controversy in the field of psychology. The notion ...

Repression can be thought of as "motivated forgetting:" the active but unconscious forgetting of unacceptable drives, emotions, ideas, or memories. Unsurprisingly, repression is often confused with ...

The concept of a “Freudian slip” is that when a person misspeaks, they inadvertently reveal repressed or secret desires. The theory is well known, but there is little — if any — scientific proof that ...