Repression, denial, denegation: Subjective modulations of the will, of belief and knowledge

Abstract

Repression, denial, denegation: subjective modulations of the will, of belief and knowledge. This paper returns to three Freudian concepts - Verdrängung, Verwerfung and Verleugnung-, and it discusses the difficulties of their understanding because of the translations available in Portuguese based on a semantic analysis of the original in the German version. Then, through some devices of semiotic analysis (the semiotic square and its modalizations), the modulations of/KNOW//BELIEVE//WANT/are compared and confronted in the semantic-modal movements of these three psychic mechanisms formulated by Freud. Our goal is to propose theoretica l explanations (possibly applying them to the clinic) able to distinguish, based on the extracted structures of those modalities, the different subjective positions of the patient.