Much of Freud’s work can be enriched with a review informed by information management theory. We have learned much about the management of data bases in recent decades. Now, with the benefit of that understanding, we can look again at mental processing. We can see that; although the brain has an extraordinary capacity to hold information (memory), the capacity of our system to access the stored information is necessarily limited. Problems with ’memory’ can best be understood as problems of ‘data retrieval’. Words, street names, images, new experience in new contexts are replete with potential associations for a given individual.

Associative links seem to represent an extant and continuously active ‘architecture’ governing release of information. I say the word, ‘high school’ and you may resond, ‘Truckee High’. Note; some folks might respond, ‘Mother Mary washed my car’ but that is a matter for other posts. By far, most folks minds will spontaneously present relevant information on cue.

We do not say, ‘unselected’ information is ‘repressed’. We say, it is unselected. I believe modern psychology will benefit from abandonment of the concept of ‘repression’ as it was used by Freud. I believe Freud’s work will be better understood if we grant that he indeed anticipated much that has come to be known with the benefit of contemporary information management theory. We, and folks we might help, will benefit from a good  understanding of the architecture of the data management system that drives tendencies to entertain particular types of thinking.

There is a low level of stigma associated with ‘being repressed’. This reframing of unselected information as just that, unselected information, eliminates the stigma associated with ‘being repressed’. It also reduces the likelihood that therapists might assume there is ‘repressed’ information that must be ‘uncovered’ in therapy. Rather it sets the stage for exploration of what ‘emerges’ during the course of a therapeutic hour. Scientifically, that is all we are ever dealing with; material that arises within the context of a therapeutic hour.