These are my speculative thoughts on autism and its relationship to repression, ideas that began forming after I read The Autistic Subject by Leon S. Brenner. My immediate reaction to the book was one of dismissal: What is he talking about? Of course I have repressions, like everyone else! Yet something about his argument lodged itself somewhere in my unconscious. Ironically, that’s how repression works: something that escapes our conscious understanding nonetheless installs itself, like a computer program written in zeros and ones. It seems nonsensical, at least in that moment, but we intuit its significance. If we didn’t, we’d simply forget it.
Because the term repression is often used loosely, especially outside of psychoanalysis, I want to clarify what I mean by it. In fact, I think the term is misleading; it evokes an image of something being pressed down to keep it from exploding. The metaphor emphasizes the push but neglects the pull of attraction. In reality, repression is more like an implantation, or perhaps an infection. We are both repelled by and drawn to it, a paradox Freud recognized in his 1915 paper on repression. Let me offer some examples to illustrate how repression works.
Imagine yourself as a preschooler. One day, your dad comes home looking depressed and mumbles the word “laid off” to your mom. Her face drops, too. Since you don’t yet know how a capitalist society works, you can’t comprehend what happened, but you still metabolize its significance. It doesn’t have to be about them having sex.
Curiously, this metabolization of significance follows a kind of grammatical structure—hence Lacan’s famous pronouncement: the unconscious is structured like a language. If you’re a native English speaker, you may not be able to explain how English grammar works, even if you studied it in school. Yet you have a mastery that someone like me, for whom English is a second language, can only dream of. So it shouldn’t be surprising that you’ve accumulated many nonsensical, inexplicable significations over the course of your life that remain in your unconscious. We’re all full of them.
The key point here is that something does not need to be put into words in order to be remembered, or rather, metabolized somewhere in your brain. You might say, “Of course, I remember how I felt about something.” But that isn’t repression, at least not what I mean by it. What’s repressed isn’t the affect; it’s the structure of a particular signification, or the particular constellation of signifiers. Although repression is generally perceived negatively, it could just as well be seen as something positive. When something lacks sense, we can’t even evaluate it; it remains inaccessible until it becomes intelligible within our consciousness. Still, we tend to treat anything radically new, anything that disturbs the status quo, as a potential threat. To that extent, repression is perceived negatively, even if its underlying function is more neutral.
Recently, a friend gave me a foreign banknote with something handwritten on it in a language I couldn’t read. I had no idea what it said, but certain things were immediately clear. First, I could tell it was a language; this wasn’t just someone testing a pen. Someone wrote something for someone else. There was intent. There was an attempt to signify. And even though I couldn’t access the meaning, I could still sense that those words belonged to a system with a history shared by countless speakers of that language. Others may not have noticed it but it stuck in my mind for some reason, and I didn’t need to understand the language for that to happen. The signifierness of the marking was sufficient. In fact, if I had understood the language, I probably wouldn’t have even taken note of it.
You’ve probably seen a film you didn’t particularly like at first, yet it lingered in your mind. That’s because your unconscious metabolizes art differently from your conscious mind. The opposite can also happen: you might enjoy a film in the moment, only to forget it completely later. Films that resonate at the unconscious level are the ones you can return to again and again. The others, those processed fully at the level of language and conscious understanding, often feel complete after a single viewing. Once is enough; your mind has already extracted what it needed.
The Japanese film Maboroshi, directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda, beautifully illustrates how repression works at the level of signification. One evening, the protagonist, Yumiko, learns that her husband was killed by a train. According to the operator, he walked directly into its path, despite the screeching brakes. Before this, there had been no signs of unhappiness, no warning, no explanation. Yumiko is unable even to cry. Much of the film follows her as she moves through the motions of daily life. Her silence around the apparent suicide renders the mundane surreal. The film itself represses the very question we, as viewers, are desperate to ask. Near the end, a conversation with a mutual friend reactivates the repression, and she finally finds the courage to put words to the question she’s been too afraid to ask. In typical Japanese fashion, the film offers no clear answer, no closure.
Yumiko understands what “suicide” means in her language, but she cannot make sense of this suicide. To answer why he did it, she would have to consider the entire history of their relationship. And because only she possesses that history, the structure of this particular signification is entirely unique to her. For others who knew him, his act might signify something else. But for Yumiko, it remains opaque. It is precisely this failure to make sense of it that consigns it to her unconscious. If she could put it into words, it would belong to her conscious memory. Furthermore, the film demonstrates why it is not affect that gets stored in the unconscious. Because the event made no sense to her, she didn’t even know how to feel about it, which is why she couldn’t cry.
Although what gets repressed, and why, varies from person to person, after reading Brenner’s book, I began to notice a difference in how autistic and neurotypical people relate to repression. I still believe the mechanism of repression operates in the autistic subject, but the relationship to it appears different.
What exactly distinguishes autistic brains is still widely debated, but it’s safe to say that something substantial sets them apart, something that makes understanding neurotypical minds particularly challenging for autistic individuals. When speaking with another autistic person, my intuition works just fine; I don’t need to constantly analyze what they’re thinking or feeling. Unfortunately, that’s not the case with neurotypical people. Because I can’t intuitively read them, I’ve had to compensate by developing analytical skills.
Here is an analogy. A typical computer has a general-purpose CPU (central processing unit) and a GPU (graphics processing unit) for handling graphics-intensive tasks. GPUs are optimized for common graphical operations; they’re hardwired for speed. Our brains have something similar for processing emotional data; call it an EPU, or “emotional processing unit.” Unfortunately, mine doesn’t work well for neurotypical behavior, so my CPU has to pick up the slack. It’s exhausting.
If you’ve learned another language as an adult, you can probably relate. Suppose you’re a native Japanese speaker who learned English later in life. Because English isn’t hardwired into your brain, your CPU has to emulate it. You may know more about English grammar than a native speaker, but that knowledge is conceptual rather than intuitive. You say, “There are a lot of chairs,” because you’ve learned that plural nouns take an “s.” The word chairs doesn’t roll off your tongue automatically; following the rules, your CPU steps in to append the “s,” noticing that there are multiple chairs. This is CPU at work, not the LPU, or language processing unit.
In the same way, I’m constantly analyzing people’s psychological states in order to respond appropriately—appropriately, that is, by neurotypical standards. Just as ESL speakers tend to be better at explaining English grammar than native speakers, I’ve become skilled at articulating what others are feeling, often in psychoanalytic terms. It’s a coping mechanism I had to develop in order to function in a world where this kind of processing comes intuitively to others.
But this coping mechanism has also proved useful for analyzing my own mind. I don’t know if this holds true for all, or even many, autistic people, but among those I’ve known, psychoanalytic language is common. We welcome it, because it helps us navigate the neurotypical world. With my neurotypical friends, however, the opposite is true. They hate it. Well, hate may be too soft a word; abhor is probably more accurate. It’s no wonder psychoanalysis has fallen out of fashion. I’ve lost friendships over it—times when I blurted out an analysis that happened to occur to me in the moment. Blurting out “inappropriate” truths is a common stereotype of autism.
But I don’t believe we lack the ability to discern appropriateness. We’re simply following the so-called golden rule: treat others the way you want to be treated. I speak to others the way I’d want someone to speak to me, candidly and insightfully, even if it stings.
Even as a child growing up in Japan, I made a deliberate effort not to repress anything. Repression, to me, felt like sweeping a mess into a closet. I felt compelled to keep it organized, to prevent it from piling up and becoming unmanageable. When I’m riddled with anxiety, I don’t simply repress what might be causing it; I use every psychoanalytic tool I have to process it as best I can.
Over time, I’ve noticed that I have verbal tics when I’m trying to repress something. I make silly, meaningless noises, as if they could drown out the unwanted thoughts. Sometimes I blurt out something random, like “I love you!” to my dog. Some autistic people have physical tics, and I wonder if this is because they struggle to repress undesirable thoughts. These reflexes don’t succeed in repressing anything, but they serve as clues. They let me know that something is trying to be repressed. When I catch myself doing this, I stop and listen closely to the anxiety, to see whether I can symbolize it.
Unlike fear, anxiety has no object. So putting it into language can help ease the suffering, but it can also become a rationalization that obscures the truth rather than revealing it, depending on how one perceives repression. Perhaps this is the core difference between the autistic subject and the neurotypical subject: the former is optimistic, the latter pessimistic.
Let me explain.
As the popularity of “safe spaces” on college campuses suggests, many neurotypical people feel like walking landmines. Without intending to, you might say the wrong word and trigger them. Their self-righteousness, their demand for safe spaces, often implies that having landmines buried throughout their psyche is both inevitable and unsolvable. They become angry because they assume there’s nothing they can do about it. It’s like suggesting a dietary change to someone with a terminal illness: the suggestion feels insulting because it implies change is still possible.
In contrast, conversations with other autistic people feel more like walking through a garden, where turning over stones reveals something forgotten or lost. I don’t worry about offending them. I’m not saying all autistic people are like this, but because many of us are known for blurting out inappropriate or uncomfortable truths, we tend to accept that it’s only fair to be on the receiving end of them too.
This dynamic also sheds light on the popularity of psychotherapy, particularly cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). Given the pervasive pessimism in neurotypical culture, the resistance a therapist would encounter when attempting psychoanalysis makes it largely impractical. CBT, by contrast, focuses on symptom management and offers tools for coping, not uncovering.
But for those more optimistic about the possibility of defusing landmines, psychoanalysis, or at least psychoanalytic thinking, can be helpful. And I suspect that many autistic people would benefit from it, not only as a way to understand themselves but also as a coping mechanism for navigating the neurotypical world.
Beyond its use as a tool for moderating suffering, psychoanalysis can help autistic individuals harness their stronger-than-average drives to make life more enjoyable. As I noted at the beginning, repression doesn’t just repel; it also attracts. Freud called this attraction the “death drive,” because left unchecked, it can be dangerous. (Lacan, realizing there was no separate “life drive,” dropped the “death” part altogether.) Perhaps due to their more optimistic orientation, autistic people often embrace their drives rather than fear them. Many develop intense, often esoteric, obsessions. In children, this is sometimes referred to as “little professor syndrome”; they end up knowing more about a subject than their teachers. Unlike obsessive-compulsive disorder, autistic obsession is fueled by passion, not fear. Still, the danger is real: drives can easily veer into self-destructive or addictive behaviors. Awareness is crucial. You’re essentially playing with fire; you want it to be fireworks, not a house of fire.
Psychoanalysis doesn’t have to stay confined to the consulting room of a licensed analyst. I use it both as a coping mechanism and as a way to supervise my seemingly uncontrollable drive. In this way, psychoanalysis can be a powerful tool for autistic individuals—not just for survival, but for transformation.
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