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Repression Quotes

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Repression Quotes

“things were still horrific. The catcalls were constant, the glares and heckles never ceasing every time I so much as wore lipstick. Getting dressed and leaving my house, facing the scorn of strangers and the constant threat of physical violence, became an act of superhuman courage. Some days, the anxiety would win and I wouldn’t leave my apartment. One time two men on the subway loudly discussed whether they should set me on fire for being a faggot. I pretended not to hear them through my headphones.”

FearRepressionLiving In FearHecklingTrans Experience
Author:Jacob Tobia
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“I want to remember my past To see before my eyes The image of my parents The house in which I grew up The village in which my family lived for generations I don't want to remember my past I fear for what my memory Might bring before my eyes I wonder whether I can continue my life If I'll rescue from oblivion What I want to recall.”

HolocaustRepressionTraumatic ExperiencesTraumatizedDissociative AmnesiaHolocaust SurvivorForgetting The PastTrauma MemoriesTraumatic AmnesiaHorrors Of WarDon T Want To Remember
Author:Itta Benhaiem-Keller
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“One of the most compelling sources on the validity of repressed memories of trauma has been the field of combat trauma. - Advances in Dissociation Research and practice in Israel”

RepressionAbuse SurvivorsAmnesiaRepressed MemoriesDissociative AmnesiaPosttraumatic Stress DisorderForgetting The PastRecovered MemoriesTrauma MemoryMemory Wars
Book:Trauma and Dissociation in a Cross-Cultural Perspective: Not Just a North American Phenomenon
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“I, for example, recently finished writing an article about the latest wave of “home-grown” Islamic suicide-murderers. It was impossible not to notice one thing that their profiles and Web sites had in common. All of them complained about the impossibility of finding a woman, or sometimes a woman of sufficient piety. Meanwhile their public propaganda was hot with disgust and indignation at the phenomenon of female inchastity. The connection between repression and orgasmically violent action appeared woefully evident.”

FanaticismRepressionPietyVirginityFreudTerrorists2010Sigmund FreudSexual Frustration
Book:Civilization and Its Discontents
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“Rule of law is the grey area between the two extremes, viz. the moral norm of individual liberty and state coercion. When it is at the former end, it is anarchy; when at the latter, it is totalitarian repressive state. In the real world, every state operates somewhere between these two extremes. Democracies have to place restrictions on individual liberty to prevent a descent into anarchy; dictators have to provide a modicum of individual freedom to prevent desperate rebellion.”

IndividualLibertyAnarchyDictatorshipRepressionCoercionRule Of LawTotalitarianMoral Norm
Author:R. N. Prasher
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“At no time have governments been moralists. They never imprisoned people and executed them for having done something. They imprisoned and executed them to keep them from doing something. They imprisoned all those POW's, of course, not for treason to the motherland, because it was absolutely clear even to a fool that only the Vlasov men could be accused of treason. They imprisoned all of them to keep them from telling their fellow villagers about Europe. What the eye doesn't see, the heart doesn't grieve for.”

Soviet UnionTotalitarianismRepressionTreasonImprisonmentStalinismPolitical PrisonersPrisoner Of War19451973
Book:The Gulag Archipelago
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“THE RETURN OF THE REPRESSED: RELIVING DISSOCIATED EXPERIENCES The reexperiencing of previously dissociated traumatic events presents in a variety of complex ways. The central principle is that dissociated experiences often do not remain dormant. Freud's concept of the “repetition compulsion” is enormously helpful in understanding how dissociated events are later reexperienced. In his paper, "Beyond the Pleasure Principle," Freud (1920/ 1955) described how repressed (and dissociated) trauma and instinctual conflicts can become superimposed on current reality. He wrote: The patient cannot remember the whole of what is repressed in him, and what he cannot remember may be precisely the essential part of it. .. . He is obliged to repeat the repressed material as a contemporary experience instead of remembering it as something in the past. (p. 18) If one understands repression as the process in which overwhelming experiences are forgotten, distanced, and dissociated, Freud posited that these experiences are likely to recur in the mind and to be reexperienced. He theorized that this "compulsion to repeat" served a need to rework and achieve mastery over the experience and that it perhaps had an underlying biologic basis as well. The most perceptive tenet of Freud’s theory is that previously dissociated events are actually reexperienced as current reality rather than remembered as occurring in the past. Although Freud was discussing the trauma produced by intense intrapsychic conflict, clinical experience has shown that actual traumatic events that have been dissociated are often repeated and reexperienced.”

RepetitionCompulsionRepressionTraumatizedFreudInner ConflictRepressed MemoriesDissociative AmnesiaComplex PtsdChild Sexual Abuse SurvivorRecovered MemoriesTraumatic MemoriesRepeating The PastReliving The PastDissociated MemoriesReenactmentRepeating Past Mistakes
Book:Rebuilding Shattered Lives: Treating Complex PTSD and Dissociative Disorders
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“DID is often dragged into the debates about recovered and false memory. For example, it might be alleged that a person recovered memories from a state of dissociation. Such a claim reflects a misunderstanding of dissociation and a confusion with repression (Mollon 1998). If a piece of mental content (e.g. a feeling, a memory, a fantasy, a perception) is in a state of repression, it is not directly available to consciousness. Its existence may be inferred from its displaced and disguised expression. For example, a patient who is angry with the therapist may speak of anger with someone else - a kind of unconscious hinting. Gradually the patient may become more consciously aware of the previously repressed material. By contrast, the feelings, memories and other mental contents ofdissociated parts of the mind may be quite accessible to consciousness in that state of mind. Those contents may not be available, however, when the patient is in a different state of mind, or when another personality is in executive control. It is not that the objectionable mental content is kept in 'the unconscious (a horizontal splitting, implying a hierarchical gradation of consciousness), but rather that consciousness is distributed among the dissociated parts of the mind. Thus, in state of mind A, the patient may speak of a narrative of events of which he or she appears completely unaware when in state of mind B. When asked what she thought about the accounts of abuse that she had presented, in a childlike state of mind, during a previous session, a patient replied that she had no idea whether the memories were true or not because they were not her memories. In this way, what is claimed in one state of mind may be disowned in another stale of mind. There may be a repudiation not only of the content of what has been said, but also of the fact of ever having said it.”

PtsdRepressionDissociationRepressed MemoriesDissociative AmnesiaRecovered MemoriesTrauma Memory
Book:Attachment, Trauma and Multiplicity: Working with Dissociative Identity Disorder
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“Often, her mate is the child of a narcissist, already indoctrinated to regard exploitation and disregard as love. Others lured by the narcissistic aura are those in whom healthy childhood exhibitionism has been repressed. . . . If the parent puts the child to shame for showing off, the need for attention gets repressed into the unconscious. Repression means that the need is not satisfied and continues to press for expression in the adult without her being aware of it. The repressed adult may select an exhibitionistic mate to achieve vicarious satisfaction.”

ShameNarcissismExploitationRepressionNarcissisticDysfunctional FamiliesExhibitionismNarcissistic MothersNarcissistic PersonalityRepressed EmotionsNarcissistic AbusersRevictimization
Book:Trapped in the Mirror: Adult Children of Narcissists in Their Struggle for Self
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“When distinction of any kind, even intellectual distinction, is somehow resented as a betrayal of the American spirit of equal opportunity for all, the result must be just this terror of individualistic impulses setting us apart, either above or below our neighbours; just this determination to obey without questioning and to subscribe with passion to the conventions and traditions. The dilemma becomes a very real one: How can this sense of democratic equality be made compatible with respect for exceptional personalities or great minds? How can democracy, as we understand it today, with its iron repression of the free spirit, its monotonous standardisation of everything, learn to cherish an intellectual aristocracy without which any nation runs the risk of becoming a civilisation of the commonplace and the second-rate?”

AmericaCivilizationEqualityDistinctionConventionsIndividualismRepressionIntellectualismTraditionsSecond RateLost GenerationStandardisation
Book:America and the young intellectual
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“In 2006, there is no army of recovered memory therapists, and Dr McNally’s assumptions about patients with PTSD and those working in this field are troubling. Owing to past debates, those working in the PTSD field are perhaps more knowledgeable than others about malingered, factitious, and iatrogenic variants. Why, then, does Dr McNally attack PTSD as a valid diagnosis, demean those working in the field, and suggest that sufferers are mostly malingered or iatrogenic, while giving little or no consideration is given to such variants of other psychiatric conditions? Perhaps the trauma field has been “so often embroiled in serious controversy” (4, p 816) for the same reason Dr McNally and others have trouble imagining the traumatization of a Vietnam War cook or clerk. One theory suggests that there is a conscious decision on the part of some individuals to deny trauma and its impact. Another suggests that some individuals may use dissociation or repression to block from consciousness what is quite obvious to those who listen to real-life patients." Cameron, C., & Heber, A. (2006). Re: Troubles in Traumatology, and Debunking Myths about Trauma and Memory/Reply: Troubles in Traumatology and Debunking Myths about Trauma and Memory. Canadian journal of psychiatry, 51(6), 402.”

DenialPtsdRepressionDissociationSociety DenialMental Health StigmaTraumatizedTrauma SurvivorsTrauma MemoryMental Illness DiscriminationIatrogenicMalingeringRecovered Memory Therapists
Author:Colin Cameron
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“In the absence of strong political movements for human rights, the active process of bearing witness inevitably gives way to the active process of forgetting. Repression, dissociation, and denial are phenomena of social as well as individual consciousness.”

Human RightsRepressionDissociationSociety DenialSelective Amnesia
Book:Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
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“The anger response, like the fear response, is a frequent target for repression. Imagine a 6-year-old girl who is angry at her 10-year-old brother for teasing her. In response, she might make an angry face, yell at her brother, and strike out at him with her fists. It’s an instinctual, energizing reaction designed to protect her from danger. Someone is violating her sense of well-being, and she’s afraid that if she doesn’t stop the intruder, she’ll get hurt. “A wise parent would validate the girl’s anger — it’s infuriating to be teased — and help her find a verbal rather than a physical way to express it. ‘You are very mad at your brother for teasing you,’ says this model parent, ‘I would be, too. Tell him in words how angry you feel. He needs to know.’ This way, the girl can protect herself from her brother and purge herself of her anger without having to resort to physical violence. Her self-protective anger remains intact. It has simply been given a ore ‘civilized’ form of expression.”

AngerRepressionSelf DefenseSelf ProtectionAnger Repression
Book:The Emotional Incest Syndrome: What to do When a Parent's Love Rules Your Life
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“Loftus was asked to be an expert witness because the idea of memories as formed through a manipulable process of rehearsal is important to new views of memory and her own research. In the course of her testimony, the prosecutor skeptically asked: "You really don't know anything about five-year old children who have been sexually abused do you?" At that moment a "memory flew out at me, out of the blackness of the past, hitting me full force." She answers the prosecutor, "I do know something about this subject because I was abused when I was six years old" (149). With the force of a blow, a forgotten and apparently unrehearsed memory of being abused by a baby-sitter suddenly emerges after many years, its truth uneasily opposed to the falsehood of children's "rehearsed" memories or "contaminated" memories that she produces in her laboratory to show memories are but "mist" (4). Nonetheless, in her second popular book, The Myth of Repressed Memory, she argues against the existence of "repressed" memories...”

RepressionIncestRepressed MemoriesFalse MemoriesChild Abuse SurvivorTrauma MemoryRepressed MemoryFalse Memory MythElizabeth Loftus
Book:Telling Incest: Narratives of Dangerous Remembering from Stein to Sapphire
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“When we get hurt, our bodies immediately start trying to heal that hurt. This works for emotions as well. If we were scarred socially, by an incident of rejection or bullying, we immediately start trying to heal. Like pus comes out of wounds, emotions flow from psychological wounds. And what do we really need at that moment? When we are out of that dangerous situation that scarred us, and we become triggered by some little thing - what do we need? Do we need someone to look at us and say, "Wow, you're really sensitive, aren't you?" or "Hey, man, I didn't mean it like that."? Do we need someone to justify their actions or tell us to take it easy, because the situation didn't really require such a reaction? And, from ourselves, do we really need four pounds of judgment with liberal helpings of shame? Do we need to run away, to suppress, to hate our "over-sensitivity" to situations that seem innocuous to others? No. We do not need all of these versions of rejection of a natural healing process. You would not feel shame over a wound doing what it must do to heal, nor would you shame another. So why do we do this to our heart wounds? Why do we do it to ourselves? To others? Next time some harmless situation triggers you or someone around you into an intense emotion - realize it's an attempt at emotional healing. Realize the danger is no longer there, but don't suppress the healing of old dangers and old pains. Allow the pain. Don't react, but don't repress. Embrace the pain. Embrace the pain of others. Like this, we have some chance at healing the endless cycles of generational repression and suppression that are rolling around in our society. Fall open. Break open. Sit with others' openness. Let love be your medicine.”

LovePainHurtHealingAcceptanceEmotionsSensitiveVulnerabilityRejectionSensitivityRepressionReactionOver SensitiveOver Sensitivity
Author:Vironika Tugaleva
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“It’s unlikely to change – there’s nothing in King Salman’s past as governor of Riyadh for about forty years that suggests that he was particularly a reformer, not on the role of women, not on democratic development. There’s been a rumor in the last couple of days that he said to someone in an e-mail that he’s in favor of a constitutional monarchy, but I would be surprised if the level of repression started to go down … I think the kind of thing that we would view as significant reforms is unlikely.”

IfsThinkingYearsKindSaidWould BeLastsPastLevelsViewsRolesDevelopmentCoupleKingsDemocraticFavorsSignificantReformFortyMailGovernorsUnlikelyRumorMonarchyRepressionReformersConstitutional MonarchyRiyadh
Author:Elliott Abrams
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“Ecology movements, futurism, feminism, urbanism, protest and disarmament, personal individuation cannot alone save the world from the catastrophe inherent in our very idea of the world. They require a cosmological vision that saves the phenomenon 'world' itself, a move in soul that goes beyond measures of expediency to the archetypal source of our world's continuing peril: the fateful neglect, the repression, of the anima mundi.”

WorldIdeasSoulMovingVisionFeminismDangerMovementSourceNuclearProtestNeglectPhenomenonOur WorldInherentContinuingEcologyCatastrophePerilNot AloneRepressionSave The WorldDisarmamentExpediencyIndividuationFuturism
Book:City and Soul: Uniform Edition
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“Ebola haunted Zaire because of corruption and political repression. The virus had no secret powers, nor was it unusually contagious. For centuries Ebola had lurked in the jungles of central Africa. Its emergence into human populations required the special assistance of humanity's greatest vices : greed, corruption, arrogance, tyranny, and callousness.”

HumansPoliticalHumanitySecretSpecialCenturyGreedPopulationVicesCorruptionTyrannyArroganceAssistanceJungleRepressionVirusesContagiousEmergenceEbolaHuman PopulationCallousness
Book:Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health
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“We are effectively destroying ourselves by violence masquerading as love. I am a specialist, God help me, in events in inner space and time, in experiences called thoughts, images, reveries, dreams, visions, hallucinations, dreams of memories, memories of dreams, memories of visions, dreams of hallucinations, refractions of refractions of refractions of that original Alpha and Omega of experience and reality, that Reality on whose repression, denial, splitting, projection, falsification, and general desecration and profanation our civilisation as much as anything is based.”

HelpingDreamRealityMemoriesSpaceVisionViolenceEventsOriginalsDenialHelp MeDestroyingTime And SpaceProjectionRepressionCivilisationSpecialistsHallucinationsGod HelpReverieAlphasSplittingGod Help MeAlpha And OmegaFalsificationDestroying Ourselves
Book:The Politics of Experience
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“Everything we did in the 1960s was designed to fission, to weaken faith in and conformity to the 1950s social order. Our precise surgical target was the Judeo-Christian power monolith, which has imposed a guilty, inhibited, grim, anti-body, anti-life repression on Western civilization.”

BodyChristianOrderSocialCivilizationWesternGuiltyTargetConformityPrecise1960sRepressionGrimWestern CivilizationSocial OrderFission
Book:Your Brain Is God
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“I think art is the only political power, the only revolutionary power, the only evolutionary power, the only power to free humankind form all repression. I say not that art has already realized this, on the contrary, and because it has not, it has to be developed as a weapon, at first there are radical levels, then you can speak about special details.”

ThinkingFirstsArtFormPoliticalSpeakLevelsSpecialWeaponsArt IsDetailsContraryRadicalRevolutionaryHumankindRepressionPolitical Power
Author:Joseph Beuys
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