Psychology should always be more than psychology – that is one of the lessons to be learnt from Freud. Technical matters, in Freud's hands, do not stay technical but become comments on the human condition. Repression, thus, is not merely a description of a particular mental process, on a par with the majority of today's psychological concepts, which remain restricted to the vocabulary of a few specialists. Freudian repression is an idea that has become public property, as Freud always intended it to be. The concept of repression is more than the cornerstone of a psychological theory. Freud's psychology spreads over history, society, politics and much more besides.

Any attempt to reformulate Freudian repression must acknowledge these wider implications. This does not mean that the person attempting the reformulation should try to follow Freud's example, by making reformulated pronouncements on each of the topics that Freud covered. That would inevitably look like a small child skipping on tiny legs along a trail of giant's footprints. Any resulting indentations could only look comically puny in comparison with the original depths. It is more advisable to offer a brief comparison between the social implications of the original theory and its reformulation.

Biological versus social repression

Probably the biggest difference between the present notion of dialogic repression and Freud's original concept concerns the relations between psychology and biology. Freud envisaged the relationship to be close, for he argued that repression had, above all, a biological function.