Erdelyi/The unified theory of repression: BBS Call for Commentators

Dear Dr. Qwerty, ================================================================== ** CALL RESPONSE INSTRUCTIONS ** ================================================================== Please DO NOT respond to this email. If you wish to submit a proposal for commentary and/or suggest potential commentators, please go to the new Online Commentary Proposal System at the following URL: http://www.bbsonline.org/perl/commentary/commproposal?authordir=Erdelyi-040… * If you only wish to suggest potential commentators, please ignore prompts to submit a proposal with expertise information. * If you experience technical difficulties, please email bbs(a)bbsonline.org. * Please respond to this Call no later than April 6, 2006 NOTE: Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS) is an international, interdisciplinary journal providing Open Peer Commentary on important and controversial current research in the biobehavioral and cognitive sciences. Commentators must be BBS Associates, or suggested by a BBS Associate. If you are not a BBS Associate, please follow the instructions linked below: http://www.bbsonline.org/Instructions/associnst.html ================================================================== CALL FOR COMMENTATORS ================================================================== "The unified theory of repression" by Matthew Hugh Erdelyi has been accepted for publication in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS). Calls for Commentators are sent to over 10,000 BBS Associates, so there is no expectation (indeed, it would be calamitous) that each recipient should comment on every occasion! To help you decide whether you would be an appropriate commentator for this article, an unedited, uncorrected target article is retrievable at the URL that follows the abstract and keywords below. Please DO NOT write a commentary unless you receive a formal invitation in the near future. If you are invited to submit a commentary, a copyedited, corrected version of this paper will be posted in the commentary invitation letter. The commentary invitation list is compiled by the Editors so as to balance proposals, areas of expertise, and frequency of prior commentaries in BBS. ================================================================== ** TARGET ARTICLE INFORMATION ** ================================================================== TITLE: The unified theory of repression AUTHOR: Matthew Hugh Erdelyi ABSTRACT: Repression has become an empirical fact that is at once obvious and problematic. Fragmented clinical and laboratory traditions and disputed terminology have resulted in a Babel of misunderstandings in which false distinctions are imposed (e.g., between repression and suppression) and necessary distinctions not drawn (e.g., between the mechanism and the use to which it is put, defense being just one). "Repression" was introduced by Herbart to designate the (nondefensive) inhibition of ideas by other ideas in their struggle for consciousness. Freud adapted repression to the defensive inhibition of "unbearable" mental contents. Substantial experimental literatures on attentional biases, thought avoidance, interference, and intentional forgetting exist, the oldest prototype being the work of Ebbinghaus, who showed that intentional avoidance of memories results in their progressive forgetting over time. It has now become clear, as clinicians had claimed, that the inaccessible materials are often available and emerge indirectly (e.g., procedurally, implicitly). It is also now established that the Ebbinghaus retention function can be partly reversed, with resulting increases of conscious memory over time (hypermnesia). Freud's clinical experience revealed early on that exclusion from consciousness was effected not just by simple repression (inhibition) but also by a variety of distorting techniques, some deployed to degrade latent contents (denial), all eventually subsumed under the rubric of defense mechanisms ("repression in the widest sense"). Freudian and Bartlettian distortions are essentially the same, even in name, but for motive (cognitive vs. emotional), and experimentally induced false memories and other "memory illusions" are laboratory analogs of self-induced distortions. KEYWORDS: Avoidance, Bartlett, Defense, Denial, Distortion, Ebbinghaus, False-Memories, Freud, Inhibition, Repression, Suppression. FULL TEXT: http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/Erdelyi-04022004/Referees/ ================================================================== * * CALL RESPONSE INSTRUCTIONS * * ================================================================== Please DO NOT respond to this email. If you wish to submit a proposal for commentary and/or suggest potential commentators, please go to the new Online Commentary Proposal System at the following URL: http://www.bbsonline.org/perl/commentary/commproposal?authordir=Erdelyi-040… * If you only wish to suggest potential commentators, please ignore prompts to submit a proposal with expertise information. * If you experience technical difficulties, please email bbs(a)bbsonline.org. * Please respond to this Call no later than April 6, 2006 NOTE: Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS) is an international, interdisciplinary journal providing Open Peer Commentary on important and controversial current research in the biobehavioral and cognitive sciences. Commentators must be BBS Associates, or suggested by a BBS Associate. If you are not a BBS Associate, please follow the instructions linked below: http://www.bbsonline.org/Instructions/associnst.html ================================================================== ================================================================== Barbara Finlay - Editor Paul Bloom - Editor Behavioral and Brain Sciences bbs(a)bbsonline.org http://www.bbsonline.org -------------------------------------------------------------------