The return of the suppressed: Exploring how emotional suppression reappears as violence and pain among male and female prisoners
| Published date | 01 December 2019 |
| Date | 01 December 2019 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1462474518805071 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
The return of the
suppressed: Exploring
how emotional
suppression reappears
as violence and pain
among male and
female prisoners
Ben Laws
University of Cambridge, UK
Abstract
Prisons research is familiar with the idea that prisoners ‘mask’ their feelings. But this
behaviour is often characterised as a social defence mechanism, or a product of prison
masculinity, rather than a deeply embedded psychosocial strategy forged over time. The
term ‘emotional suppression’ is introduced as a way of better exploring the ‘biograph-
ical depth’ of this behaviour. This article aims to outline why both male (n¼25) and
female prisoners (n¼25) engage in suppression, by uniting their traumatic life histories
with their current lives in prison. One of the most salient findings is the connection
between ‘bottling-up’ emotions and an explosive ‘boomerang’ effect—suppressed emo-
tions return through violence towards others and the self. This implies that emotion
suppression cannot easily be separated from subsequent discharge. This article suggests
the need for ‘integration work’ and a crucial re-orientation of our current understand-
ing of suppression, violence and aggression in prison environments which are often
treated as separate entities. Importantly, withholding emotions has been associated
with a range of negative health outcomes, and may be especially damaging in the
long-term. Prison regimes could do more to encourage therapeutic talk and psycho-
logical attunement to reverse the process of emotional numbing.
Corresponding author:
Ben Laws, Prisons Research Centre, Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge, UK.
Email: bwrl2@cam.ac.uk
Punishment & Society
2019, Vol. 21(5) 560–577
!The Author(s) 2018
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/1462474518805071
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Keywords
coping, emotions, masking, prisons, suppression
Introduction
In tiny surreptitious doses, anaesthesia is dripping into my heart—a formerly com-
placent heart that is slowly beginning to resemble my dreadful surroundings...Like an
ancient tree—gnarled and wizened by time and nature’s elements—my heart has
grown rugged and callused...this setting helps drive people to anger, frustration,
and despair. (Hairgrove, 2000: 147)
Hairgrove’s poetic testimony above highlights how imprisonment drives the
suppression of some emotions (like anaesthesia for the heart) and increases the
likelihood of others (anger, frustration and despair). Yet, while prisons research
acknowledges the existence of ‘masking’ in prison, the deeper processes that under-
pin this mechanism of emotional control, and the idea that it may be connected
with behaviours at a later time, are not well-evidenced.
1
This article shifts the
emphasis from ‘masking’ as a surface-level social survival strategy to ‘emotional
suppression’, arguing that the later term is better placed to explain the traumatic
roots of this behaviour and the connections with subsequent destruc-
tive behaviours.
According to Sim (1994), masking feelings is necessary in men’s prisons to
survive socially as a man. Masculinity, it is argued, is achieved in prison through
rampant displays of physicality and dominance (Cowburn, 2007; Scraton, Sim and
Skidmore, 1999), and a complete repugnance for ‘soft’ emotions such as kindness,
fear, love and care—which all signal ‘weakness’ (Karp, 2010; Sabo, 2001; Toch,
1992). A crystallized form of this process, and an extreme caricature of masculin-
ity, has been termed ‘hypermasculinity’ (see Toch, 1998), where the only acceptable
displays of emotion are those expressed through anger or ‘retaliatory rage’ (173).
Even then, the expression of anger should involve ‘cool calculation’ (Sykes, 1958:
100) and the kind of ‘silent stoicism which finds its apotheosis in the legendary
figure of the cowboy or the gangster’ (101). This literature concludes that masking
emotion is related closely to maleness. But it is not clear what the implications are
here for female prisoners. Given that women and girls are routinely ‘sanctioned in
their families...and discursively policed by a language which focuses on their sex-
uality’ (Howe, 1994: 183), female prisoners may already be adept at controlling
their emotions too, though perhaps for a different set of reasons than men. In sum,
the emphasis on masking and maleness may be correlative rather than causative
and not reflexive of the deeper roots of emotional suppression.
In a different manner, accounts of impression management in prison are
described in ways that highlight the importance of social acceptability and
Laws 561
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