Testing the Relationship Between Empirical Paradigms of Repression and Suppression

Forgetting is not always passive but can occur due to active memory control. The psychoanalytic construct of repression was one of the first conceptualizations of motivated forgetting. However, the concept of repression implies various working definitions challenging a standardized empirical approach. A corresponding paradigm, consistent with repression as an unconscious process induced by conflicts and maintained by resistance, is the free association (FA) paradigm. Additionally, the think/no-think paradigm (TNT) has been introduced as a new approach to measure a cognitive aspect of repression, that is, the notion of suppression. It is unknown how memory control in the TNT and the FA paradigms relates to each other. Here, we investigated interindividual correlations between memory control in the TNT and the FA paradigms. We partially replicated previous behavioral results for both paradigms but did not find any association of memory control across the two paradigms, suggesting that they measure different processes. Our results call for a more detailed theoretical elaboration of the nature of the complex phenomenon of repression. It appears that repression is critically driven by emotional and conflict-associated factors that go beyond the pure cognitive process of memory inhibition captured in voluntary suppression. 遗忘并不总是被动的,而是可以由主动记忆控制而发生。潜抑的精神分析建构是动机性遗忘的最初概念化之一。然而,潜抑的概念意味着各种工作定义,挑战着一种标准化实证方法。与潜抑这一由冲突引起并由阻抗维持的无意识过程相一致的相应范式,是自由联想(FA)范式。此外,思考/不思考范式(TNT)已被引入,作为一个测量潜抑的认知方面的新方法,即压抑的概念。目前尚不清楚TNT和FA范式中的记忆控制是如何相互关联的。在这里,我们研究了TNT和FA范式中的记忆控制之间的个体间相互关系。我们部分复制了两种范式此前的行为结果,但没有发现记忆控制在两种范式之间有任何关联,这表明它们测量的是不同的过程。我们的结果需要更详细的对复杂潜抑现象性质的理论阐述。似乎潜抑很大程度上是由情感和冲突相关因素驱动的,其超越了主动压抑所引起的记忆抑制的纯粹认知过程。