This talks aims at an overview about different experimental approaches to repression. Instead of only comparing their relative conceptual strengths and weaknesses and their empirical outcomes, I propose that these different approaches address complementary aspects of repression that have already been distinguished by Freud. A first step of repression may be most adequately operationalized by voluntary memory suppression paradigms that seem to induce a permanent decay of suppressed material. In case this first step fails, subsequent steps may then engage more impulsive and automatic processes such as those occurring in free association paradigms. These may only temporally inhibit memory traces, reminiscent of what happens during extinction learning. Repression may not only be reflected by the strength of a memory but also by its quality. I will thus discuss how such repression-induced transformations of memory traces can be investigated at the level of their content, neural basis and phenomenological qualities.

Nikolai Axmacher, M.D., studied Philosophy and Medicine at Berlin and Paris, and is now Professor of Neuropsychology at the Ruhr University Bochum, Germany. His work explores the neural foundations of memory functions and dysfunctions using cognitive neuroscience methods, with a particular interest in the representation and transformation of specific contents by the brain. Professor Axmacher investigates a wide range of memory processes, from working and long-term memory, to memory consolidation during resting state and sleep, autobiographical memory, and repression. His research addresses questions such as: How are experiences represented in the brain and transformed into memory traces?; How do these experiences shape our Self?; and How is memory compromised by trauma, inner psychic conflicts and Alzheimer’s dementia?