Mrs. Alvarez cannot consciously recall how frequently she criticizes her children because it would cause her too much anxiety. Sigmund Freud would have suggested that her poor memory illustrates a defense mechanism called .

Repression.

Explanation:

Repression is the psychological attempt to direct one's own desires and impulses toward pleasurable instincts by excluding them from one's consciousness and holding or subduing them in the unconscious

Repression.

Explanation:

Sigmund Freud was a neurologist and he was born on the 6th day of May, in the year 1856 in Czechia and died on the 23rd day of the September, in the year 1939. One of his work that will continue to be remembered for generations is his work on psychoanalysis.

In Sigmund Freud psychoanalytic school of thought the concept of repression was brought up. And according to Sigmund Freud, Repression is when you put away certain feelings into the unconscious part of you so that you won't even recall that such feelings exist at all.

This is this same thing with what Mrs. Alvarez was said to be doing in the question above.