Return of the Repressed

Freud’s repression is a normal part of human development; the analysis of dreams, literature, jokes, illustrates the ways that our secret desires continue to find outlet in perfectly well-adjusted individuals. However, when we are faced with obstacles to satisfaction of our libido's (sex drive) cathexis (change of energy in the sex drive), when we experience traumatic events, or when we remain fixated on earlier phases of our development, the conflict between the libido and the ego can lead to alternative sexual discharges.

Freud always emphasised the "indestructible" nature of unconscious material, as 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, decathected, or anticathected.
 
“Every family has secrets. And what we are witnessing in the ‘family’ of psychoanalysis is nothing less than the return of the repressed.”