270 ESSAYS OF A BIOLOGIST 



may occur in adult life, e.g. in so called ' shell-shock ' ; 

 or the sex-instinct may come into conflict with other 

 parts of the personality. 



These conflicts are resolved through one tendency 

 or part of experience being passed into the subconscious, 

 where it no longer can meet its opponent on the path 

 to action. And this passage into the subconscious 

 can be apparently automatic, unwitting, when it is 

 called suppression^ or performed only by voluntary 

 effort, when it is called repression. In the former 

 case, it would appear that the conflict may wholly 

 or almost wholly cease ; whereas in the second, the 

 repressed portion of mind is perpetually striving to 

 come to the surface again, and must thus perpetually 

 be held down by force. 



If we hold by our metaphor of the building, then 

 in suppression, bricks which would not go well with 

 the rest are stacked quietly in the cellars ; while 

 in repression, part of the workmen want to build a 

 different sort of building, and have to be forcibly 

 held down by some of the rest to prevent their doing so. 



But in whatever way the subconscious may be 

 organized, it is always with us, and there will always 

 be a remainder of our soul, or of its possibilities, 

 which is not incorporated in our personal life at all, 

 as well as much which is not closely organized with 

 the main everyday personality, but is connected with 

 it only by vague and loose bonds, approachable only 

 by narrow pathways instead of by broad roads. 



