La répression émotionnelle et son rôle en psychopathologie

In the context of studies on mechanisms of emotional treatment and regulation in affective blunting, this paper focalizes on those whose objective is to disminish awareness of subjective emotional experience. The cognitive mechanism of repression is first presented, defined as a coping strategy which, used in a habitual way, is conceptualised as a personality dimension. Its role on the whole panel of emotional components and the researches on its underlying cognitive mechanisms, in particular those which may explain the observed memory deficits for negative emotional events, are developed. The paper also presents models of maturation of emotional awareness, differentiating several hypothetic ways of emotional treatment which determine specific emotional subjective experiences. In regard of studies which have explored these modes of emotional treatment in alexithymia, hypotheses on their role in the blunting of affect process and on the quality of subjective experience are proposed.