How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Section.Paragraph)
Quote #4
This effortless and regular avoidance by the psychical process of the memory of anything that had once been distressing affords us the prototype and first example of psychical repression. It is a familiar fact that much of this avoidance of what is distressing—this ostrich policy—is still to be seen in the normal mental life of adults. (7.6.32)
Although Freud uses a number of spatial metaphors throughout The Interpretation of Dreams that suggest that unconscious or repressed thoughts are "buried" or "below the surface" of our conscious minds, the term "avoidance" gets closer to the heart of his theory. In Freud's view, repressed thoughts are not literally being "pushed down" into some bottomless pit in our unconscious; they're simply being ignored.
Quote #5
Let us bear this firmly in mind, for it is the key to the whole theory of repression: the second system can only cathect an idea if it is in a position to inhibit any development of unpleasure that may proceed from it. (7.6.33)
"Cathexis" is one of those totally Freudian terms (well, Freudian in translation) that needs a bit of extra explanation. The simplest way to think of it is as a kind of psychical "attachment," or as the investment of psychical energy into an idea.
Quote #6
But this much is a fact: the primary processes are present in the mental apparatus from the first, while it is only during the course of life that the secondary processes unfold, and come to inhibit and overlay the primary ones; it may even be that their complete domination is not attained until the prime of life. (7.6.37)
As editor James Strachey notes, Freud associated the "primary processes" with the unconscious, and with "free" or "mobile" psychical energies, while the "secondary processes" are associated with the preconscious, and with "bound" or "quiescent" psychical energies (7.6.34). In Freud's view, repression is the result of a fundamental conflict between primary and secondary thinking.