A Most Dangerous Method: The Story of Jung, Freud, and Sabina Spielrein (Vintage)

Freud calls ‘repression’ is a way of getting into something by getting out of it (the neurotic keeps arriving at the place he is trying to escape from; he can get to his destination only by trying to avoid it). Repression is what we do with the experiences that we cannot let ourselves have. We set them aside so as not to be troubled by them again.

Freud's novel framework suggests that the neuroses are not illnesses in the accepted sense, but a consequence of incomplete development, reawakened infantile desires and unmastered childhood conflicts.

In the first place, it is of great consequence whether there was an energetic reaction to the affectful experience or not.

Hence, we can say, that the reason why the pathogenically formed ideas retain their freshness and affective force is because they are not subject to the normal fading through abreaction and through reproduction in states of uninhibited association.