Weston (1998), states that one of the postulates fundamental to contemporary psychodynamic theory is that a large amount of mental existence, involving thoughts, emotions, and motivation, are unconscious. As a result, people are capable of acting in fashions or acquiring symptoms that are incomprehensible to them (Weston, 1998; Erdelyi, 2001). Weston asserts that research not only corroborates the theory that emotional and motivational processes are unconscious and that they are in fact unconscious’ attempts to manage uncertain emotional events; but also gives credence to Freud’s theory of a dynamically unconscious process, which more explicitly, suggests that there is a purpose for keeping some issues unconscious. Similar to defence mechanism (Erdelyi, 2001), through the avoidance of a painful stimulus because of negative reinforcement, people may learn to evade concentrating on specific cognitive or affective processes since it is linked to disgrace, culpability, or unhappiness (Weston, 1998).
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