““To understand the phenomenon of avoidance in TMS one must constantly bear in mind how radically the unconscious mind differs from its conscious counterpart. The unconscious is terrified by the rage and reacts to avoid it by keeping it repressed and employing physical symptoms to aid in that repression. One of Freud’s biographers, Peter Gay, likened the unconscious to a maximum-security prison where all the desperate criminals, the undesirables and unacceptables, are incarcerated under heavy lock and key. In other words, they are repressed. If these feelings are already repressed, you may ask, what is the need for a distraction? The prison analogy is particularly apt; the repressed feelings, like desperadoes, will try to escape. Despite the force of repression, powerful emotions like rage will strive to rise to consciousness. I call it the “drive to consciousness.” Yale””
