However, Freud also wished to establish the science of psychoanalysis as one of the exact sciences of his day and to this end he combined psychological with more materialistic biological theories. Thus, in his first formulations around 1896, he claimed that the repression of a traumatic experience was linked to the repression of instinct – specifically the sexual instinct. From this hypothesis he developed the idea that human psychology – and, eventually, all civilised life – was underpinned by the repression of our instinctual life, and exclusively of our sexual and aggressive instincts.
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