Suppression
Mature defence; high adaptive level on the DSM-IV scale. The person consciously decides to set a feeling or problem aside for now, knowing it is there and intending to come back to it.
What drives it
Keeps the person functional in the moment without losing the feeling: discipline without denial.
How it shows
Work
“I'm furious about the leak, and I'm putting it aside until after the investor call.” Then they actually come back to it. Steady under pressure, with a visible sense of what they're holding. Others trust them because the issue reappears on the agenda.
Relationships
Waiting until the kids are asleep to raise the hurt, then raising it. Not saying the cruel thing in the heat of an argument, and returning to the real point later.
Self
You know exactly what you're not feeling right now, and when you'll feel it. If you never return to it, it has become avoidance.
What tells it apart
Repression: Suppression is conscious and the person can say what they're holding; repression leaves nothing to report.
Expressive suppression: Expressive suppression (Gross) hides the outward signs of a feeling while it runs on inside, at a cost; Vaillant's suppression postpones the problem itself and does return to it.
Denial: Denial doesn't accept the fact; suppression accepts it and schedules it.
A test
Check whether the set-aside issue is taken up at the time the person indicated; if it is, that was suppression, and if it vanishes, it was avoidance or denial.
Questions to carry
- When the time they named comes round, what happens to the issue that was set aside?
- Which feeling did I put aside for later, and what happened when later came?
How strong the research is
clinical. One of the strongest predictors of good outcomes in Vaillant's Grant Study data; distinct from expressive suppression in emotion research, which has costs.
Where it comes from
Sigmund Freud, 1900; George Vaillant, 1977
On the family tree: Sigmund Freud
Sources
- George E. Vaillant, Adaptation to Life (1977)