Return of the Repressed

The return of the repressed is the process whereby repressed elements, preserved in the unconscious, tend to reappear, in consciousness or in behavior, in the shape of secondary and more or less unrecognizable "derivatives of the unconscious.

Beginning with The Interpretation of Dreams (1900a), Freud always emphasized the "indestructible" nature of unconscious material, as likewise the irreducible character of memory traces. If we have no memories of events during the first years of life, this is because of the repression that affects them. In a sense, all memories may be said to be retained, their recollection depending solely on the way in which they are cathected (Charged with mental or emotional energy
), decathected or anticathected.

' http://www.answers.com/topic/return-of-the-repressed '

Return of the Repressed is used quite often in horror films. I think the most common use is repressed memories of a traumatic event from the past of someone at a young age. Years later it can come back to haunt them as certain/similar events to the ones from the repressed memories from the past crop up again, and they make sense of the little fragments of the familiaraties.






Roman Polanski - The Tenant - 1976