Now, in each of these cases a large amount of force is locked up and rendered unavailable for the general purposes of the life, for a head-on collision between instincts is involved, and each employs the whole of its energy to neutralise the force of the other, and the whole life comes to a standstill while the battle is fought out. It is notorious that an individual in such a dilemma can come to no decision, take no decisive action, in any department of his life. Some solution has to be arrived at, and any solution is better than a continuation of the conflict, the pain of which is intolerable. First, the man may think the whole matter out, and, acting according to his nature, give the victory to one or other of the combatants, leaving the vanquished instinct to seek adjustment as best it may. It requires great strength, however, to take such a stand, and many are not able to do it. Some seek a solution of the problem by keeping the instincts in separate compartments of the mind, and never comparing their special pleadings, as did a science teacher known to the writer, who on weekdays taught the doctrines of evolution, and on Sundays the doctrine of special creation, and when questioned on the matter, burst into a towering passion and refused to discuss it. A third solution, however, is very often found by the perplexed mind, and that is known as dissociation. Now, REPRESSION and DISSOCIATION are two terms current in modern psychological parlance, and the writer has often heard them used as if they were interchangeable terms, but this is not the case. Repression means that certain ideas are put into the subconscious mind and not permitted to return to consciousness, but dissociation means that some of these ideas, instead of lying quiet in the subconscious, split off from the integration of the personality and function independently. These two factors of mentation will be studied in detail in the following chapters. CHAPTER XVI REPRESSION Repression is a refusal to permit an idea to enter consciousness. The instant it looms up upon the fringe of consciousness the attention is resolutely turned away from it. This device is resorted to when an idea enters the mind which is repugnant to our character, when we find ourselves thinking thoughts which are out of harmony with the general tone of our nature. Unwilling to admit to ourselves that we have such a side to our dispositions, we turn away from the repulsive images; but as it is impossible to erase from the mind any idea which has once entered it, we endeavour to store these ideas, since they must be stored somewhere, in that part which is furthest away from consciousness, and so, to use the technicalities of the psychologist, we repress them into our subconscious.