Mike Wheeler’s Repression from a Psychoanalytic Perspective: Discussing the events in “Sorcerer”
An analysis of how repression operates in Mike’s emotional responses and interactions with Will, examining unconscious conflict, defense mechanisms and neurotic symptoms. [Partly written before Volume 2 was released and is not centered on Mike’s relationship with Eleven.]
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In psychoanalytic theory, Sigmund Freud proposed different models to explain how the psychic apparatus is organized and how psychic processes operate. Two of the most important are the topographical model (known as the First Topography) and the structural model (known as the Second Topography). Together, they provide a fundamental basis for understanding the functioning of psychic life, its levels of consciousness and the internal dynamics of personality.
The topographical model describes psychic functioning in terms of levels of consciousness. It is divided into the systems of the Conscious, the Preconscious and the Unconscious. A common way to represent this model is through the iceberg metaphor: the visible tip above the water corresponds to what is accessible to consciousness, while the immense submerged mass symbolizes psychic activity that remains outside conscious perception.
The conscious encompasses everything of which the subject is aware in the present moment, including thoughts, perceptions, processes of judgment and decision-making, representing only a limited portion of psychic life. Closely linked to it is the preconscious, which functions as a bridge to the unconscious, containing psychic contents that have not been repressed and can be voluntarily accessed.
The unconscious constitutes the deepest level of the psychic apparatus and is intimately linked to the drives. It is composed primarily of repressed contents, such as memories of traumatic experiences. Although inaccessible to direct introspection, the unconscious exerts a decisive influence on psychic life and generally emerges indirectly through various pathways within the organism (from physical to psychological).
While the topographical model (First Topography) emphasizes levels of consciousness, the structural model (Second Topography) focuses on the internal organization of personality, which is composed of three instances that interact dynamically: the Id, the Ego and the Superego — illustrated by the angel-and-devil-on-the-shoulder metaphor in popular culture. The Id represents the most primitive pole of personality and is present from birth. It contains instinctual demands and the life and death drives, operating according to the pleasure principle. The Ego develops early through the subject’s interaction with external reality. Its main function is to mediate the demands of the Id, the constraints imposed by reality and, later, the moral demands of the Superego.
Operating according to the reality principle, the Ego seeks to regulate instinctual impulses in an adaptive and socially viable manner. In addition to its mediating function, it is responsible for maintaining psychic balance and for mobilizing defense mechanisms — unconscious and automatic processes aimed at protecting the subject from anxiety and internal conflicts. Every psychologically healthy individual employs defense mechanisms. However, when used excessively or rigidly, these mechanisms may contribute to the formation of neurotic symptoms and, in more severe cases, to psychotic manifestations.
Among the central mechanisms of psychoanalysis, repression and repression proper play a central role. Repression refers to the mechanism by which a content is removed from consciousness and displaced into the unconscious. Repression proper, in turn, is the mechanism that keeps these contents retained in the unconscious through a barrier of censorship, preventing their return to consciousness.
Despite being repressed, those contents do not disappear completely. Over time, they may find breaches and return to consciousness in disguised forms, through memory lapses, dreams, parapraxes (Freudian slips), wit and neurotic symptoms — a phenomenon known as the return of the repressed. The operation of repression and repression proper can be illustrated by the pressure cooker metaphor: instead of exploding, the content escapes indirectly, leaking through the whistle, the steam or the valve. From a clinical standpoint, psychoanalytic work seeks to facilitate access to these repressed contents, allowing them to be recognized, elaborated and gradually integrated into consciousness. This process is central to the reduction of psychic suffering and to the promotion of greater intrapsychic cohesion and self-understanding.
In summary, Mike’s feelings for Will, because they are incompatible with the way he consciously understands himself and with the moral demands of his Superego, were subjected to repression and maintained in the unconscious through repression proper. This is the mechanism his Ego employs to protect itself from suffering, and it does not necessarily cause these feelings to disappear. They remain active within his psychic apparatus, influencing the way Mike behaves, reacts emotionally and relates to others — in an indirect manner and without his awareness. This represents a classic case in which the unconscious finds expression despite censorship. It is for this reason that we constantly have the impression that Mike is in love with Will.
Under these conditions, this is not something Mike can simply “know” or consciously recognize. The very functioning of repression prevents his feelings for Will from being symbolized, elaborated and articulated. What emerges in his consciousness are not the feelings themselves, but their displaced and disguised manifestations — such as projection, affective confusion, defensive reactions, ambiguous behavior, intense emotions, unexplained jealousy, and difficulty verbalizing and perceiving affect, often accompanied by irritation or hostility without a clear cause. These elements can be interpreted as symptoms of psychic conflict, a possible division of libidinal investment, and the allocation of distinct emotional functions to different love objects (in this case, Will and Eleven), creating a dynamic in which the two attachments interfere with one another.
Human emotions are complex and do not always follow a linear logic. Feelings can coexist, even when they seem contradictory, because they arise from different internal processes that are often not conscious. Emotional experience is not rigid and, regardless of what Mike feels for Eleven, what he feels for Will remains repressed in the unconscious. Since these feelings are not consciously recognized, they manifest indirectly at bodily, behavioral and relational levels. The ignorance he displays regarding Will’s feelings is not merely the result of “inattention” or “naivety”, but rather a symptomatic consequence of repression. When he takes the initiative to flirt with Will, Mike acts almost automatically, sending signals of interest without being fully aware of doing so. These actions are not consciously rationalized. After receiving advice from Robin, Will begins to perceive these signals. His feelings were not repressed and, even if painfully so, he is already conscious of his own desire for Mike. This makes him more emotionally attentive: Will can read Mike’s signals because he is open to the possibility that they exist.
As if trying to test what Robin had told him, Will attempts to return these signals. Mike, on the other hand, does not register them — and this is repression in action. It creates a relational asymmetry: one sends signals without realizing it, the other perceives and responds to them, but the first cannot recognize their meaning. This does not occur due to a lack of affective reciprocity, but because Mike unconsciously does not allow himself to see them. He is unable to perceive in the other what he does not recognize in himself, since repression distorts perception. The signals arrive, but they are not decoded as flirting. Mike’s consciousness certainly reinterprets them in other ways, without attributing any romantic connotation to these cues. This is not an absence of intellect, but a psychic defense — a non-voluntary process. It happens independently of the subject’s will and is impossible to control.
This is precisely why the notion of “emotional reveal” applies to Mike’s case. Revelation does not mean creating something new, but making visible what already existed and remained hidden. It implies a suspension of the repressive barrier, allowing previously unconscious contents to follow a more direct path of expression and enter consciousness. When the Duffer Brothers speak of an “emotional reveal”, this aligns perfectly with the psychoanalytic logic of the return of the repressed. Once accumulated, these contents can overflow, producing a cathartic moment of affective discharge (catharsis), in which emotions emerge suddenly and intensely. Nevertheless, this momentary release differs from the process of gradual psychic elaboration involved in the return of the repressed, in which unconscious contents are slowly integrated into consciousness. The intensity and pace of this realization will depend on how the discovery is approached.
When everyone is heading to the tunnels, we see Will and Mike talking while walking side by side. Gradually, the topic evolves — until both begin communicating through sarcastic and provocative remarks, evidently initiated by Mike. However, there is a perceptual asymmetry in this interaction. On Will’s side, there is conscious intention. On Mike’s side, there is no conscious intention. The processing is not the same: each one perceives and experiences the exchange differently. One rationalizes his actions, while the other does not, and keeps acting on autopilot. If one pays close attention, the entire scene is deliberately framed to convey a romantic atmosphere, with cinematography employing warm color tones. The music, accompanied by bird sounds, begins during the conversation about superpowers, and both Will’s and Mike’s eyes light up in this second sequence. Their expressions show a clear shift compared to the earlier moment when they discuss Will’s ability to see through the Demogorgons. The timbre of their voices also changes, becoming softer and huskier. There is a tension between them.
So it is not incorrect to say that they are flirting with each other, even though Mike is not aware of it. Flirting is not reducible to an isolated gesture — in this case, the push Will gives Mike — but is instead constituted by a continuous and articulated set of behaviors. Rather, the dynamic of flirtation between the two unfolds throughout the entire interaction and does not originate with the push. Mike does not recognize Will’s true intentions, and it is not possible to reject something of which one is not aware — that is, something that remains outside one’s field of conscious perception. As the original script makes clear, although this is sometimes overlooked: “Will shakes his head and gives Mike a gentle, playful, shut-up nudge, which Mike doesn’t return. It’s a small moment, but it makes Will red with embarrassment. He feels stupid. Mike doesn’t clock it. Robin does”.
Considering this scene, the burning question is: Why did they make Mike (unintentionally) flirt with Will if he wasn’t meant to feel anything beyond friendship for his best friend? There is a suggestion that they might end up getting involved. At some point, Will starts to believe that Mike may reciprocate his feelings. This implication was constructed by the series itself and did not come out of nowhere: it emerged from ambiguous behaviors that Mike himself displayed. Once these signals became apparent to Will — to the extent that he began to develop expectations and rekindle hopes he had already tried to suppress, which influenced how he interpreted their relationship — it stopped being simply “fanon” and became part of the official narrative. The barrier between the two realities was broken. It was not by chance that many members of the cast — and even a large portion of the general audience — rooted for Mike and Will to be together in the end.
If Mike’s behavior were not really so controversial, it would not have generated half the discussions it did. Something in the way he acts led the viewers to question his “heterosexuality” — which was never directly labeled within the original work, or in other materials associated with it. Regardless of what some fans claim, the implication existed. Denying it means ignoring the unnecessary suffering the writers imposed on Will, as it was a particularly perverse choice that contributed to the symbolic violence the character was subjected to throughout the series. Misleading the audience is one thing. Misleading the character is another. Beyond this, Will does not interpret Mike’s lack of reaction as a rejection. In fact, he feels stupid because he has low self-esteem and believes that the gesture he made was ridiculous. In the next episode (“Shock Jock”), it is evident that his hopes of dating Mike had not faded, during a rooftop scene at WSQK where he talks with Robin and asks whether she started dating Vickie shortly after getting over Tammy. He seems to believe that he only needs to take the first step for things to finally fall into place.
It is important to remember that Will is a very sensitive and socially self-aware character, especially when he is around Mike. Because of this, even seemingly small moments can carry significant emotional weight for him. Mike’s lack of reaction to the playful nudge — something many people might not even notice — quickly becomes embarrassing to Will. He experiences shame, a sense of exposure and the fear that he may have crossed an unspoken boundary. As a result, a gesture that should have felt natural and intimate is reinterpreted by him as something inappropriate. For Will, the discomfort lies not only in the moment itself, but in what he believes that moment reveals about him — that is, about his sexual identity and the romantic attraction tied to it. That is why Robin’s discourse primarily centers on full self-acceptance. Once Will accepts his sexuality, he will also be able to accept his feelings for Mike. Eventually, he comes to terms with this love and finds the strength to fight.
This reaction is connected to Will’s tendency to internalize moments of embarrassment. Instead of considering the possibility that Mike might simply not notice the gesture as flirting, Will immediately interprets the situation through a self-critical lens. He assumes that he was being strange, that he did something stupid, or that the moment itself was awkward. In this sense, the issue is not only the gesture, but the meaning Will begins to attach to it — particularly what he believes it indicates about him and how he imagines Mike may now perceive him. Robin notices Will’s embarrassment, which suggests not only that his discomfort is visible, but also that she possesses a particular sensitivity to this kind of situation. Her perception likely stems from her own experiences of insecurity and a sense of strangeness tied to her identity, which are deeply interconnected.
Ultimately, Will’s embarrassment does not arise merely from a minor social misstep, but from something deeper. Mike’s reactions carry particular importance to him, and any signal that might be interpreted as distance — even if unintended — can take on greater significance in his perception. This is because Will’s bond with Mike is marked by a deep emotional attachment, along with insecurity and a fear of losing their closeness. As a result, what appears to be a trivial moment becomes, for Will, an experience of intense internal discomfort.
In any case, Will feeling rejected is not the same as Mike actually rejecting him. The two never directly talk about the matter, so there is no explicit rejection. Not even when they are in the Upside Down does that confirmation take place. Will is tortured by the visions Vecna shows him and eventually convinces himself that they are real, returning to the belief that Mike would never love him back — narratively, it is the same as going in circles, as if he had not left the starting point. At the same time, his greatest fear is that Mike will abandon him because of his homosexuality, which is why he is the first to ask whether they can still be friends. Mike does not, at any moment, realize that he was the “crush” Will mentioned in the scene where he comes out*, minimizing his feelings so as not to expose himself any further than he already was.** He stays unaware of this until the end — and his arc of behavioral ambiguity does not receive a clear resolution, remaining as a plotline without closure.
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* On 12/26/2025, People published an article about the scene in which Will comes out, a transcript of an interview with Matt and Ross. However, a Stranger Things news account (@StrangerNews11) misrepresented the information. The article — and the Duffer Brothers — do not state anything about Mike realizing that he is Will’s “crush”.
** When Will says he had a crush on someone, he acknowledges an affect that had previously been difficult for him to recognize, marking the transition from a diffuse emotional state to the conscious recognition and verbalization of desire. This difficulty is linked to the fact that the feeling conflicts with internalized social and moral values, which makes it harder for him to accept and articulate it openly. This moment marks the point at which he realizes that what he feels is not merely an impossible love for a specific person, but an indication of his own identity and of an emerging process of self-discovery. The focus shifts away from the loved object and toward a deeper understanding of himself. ─────────────────────────────────────────────
1. Vocabulary
Psychology
Introspection: The process of deliberately observing and reflecting on one’s own internal experiences — including thoughts, emotions, sensations and mental states — in order to increase self-awareness and self-understanding. It involves conscious self-monitoring of subjective processes.
Perception: The psychological process by which sensory information from the environment is organized, interpreted and consciously experienced. It involves not only the reception of external stimuli through the sensory organs, but also cognitive processes that give meaning to those stimuli, allowing the individual to recognize and interpret objects and events in the external world.
Psychoanalysis
Censorship: A regulatory function within Freud’s topographical model of the psyche that operates between the unconscious and the preconscious/conscious systems. It prevents repressed unconscious contents from becoming conscious in their original form, allowing only distorted or disguised derivatives to pass through.
Libido: It refers to the pulsional energy, of a sexual basis, that drives the subject to act and to relate to the world. Also referred to as psychic energy, it is not limited to genital sexual activity, and can manifest itself in various ways in human activities in general.
Projection: A defense mechanism through which the subject attributes to another person thoughts, wishes, impulses or feelings that actually belong to themselves but are difficult to accept consciously. In other words, something that exists within the subject is perceived as if it were in the other. (In Mike’s case, this occurs during two of his arguments with Will, particularly in the lines “It’s not my fault you don’t like girls” and “We’re friends, Will. Friends!”)
Drive (Trieb): Psychological force that originates in the body and exerts constant pressure on the psychic apparatus. It arises when there is an internal tension and seeks satisfaction through some object or action that can relieve this tension. The drive influences both behavior and the functioning of the unconscious, organizing the psychic life. In Freud’s later theory, it is classified into life drives (Eros) and death drives (Thanatos). Libido would be the form of energy associated with Eros.
Pleasure principle: Functioning according to which psychic processes tend toward the reduction of tension and the avoidance of unpleasure, seeking satisfaction. It characterizes the primary mode of functioning of the Id and is later modulated by the reality principle, mediated by the Ego, which takes external conditions into account. Like other Freudian concepts, it is not restricted to sexual and genital activity.
Neurotic symptoms: For Freud, symptoms are disguised expressions of repressed wishes, emerging as a compromise between forces that conceal them and those that push for their expression. Objectively, they are psychological or somatic manifestations that cause subjective distress and functional impairment while preserving contact with reality.
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2. Recommendations
➡ The episode “Apologies for the Frivolity” (Season 2) of Two and a Half Men exemplifies how our behavior can be influenced by the unconscious, as illustrated by the character Charlie, whose attitudes reveal intrapsychic conflicts that he only recognizes when others make him confront them.
➡ A comment from a Brazilian user on Reddit (@euli24) sums up the message the narrative wanted to convey through Tammy Thompson’s story, which is mainly about not feeling ashamed of who you are or what you feel, and about learning to love yourself.
Other sources and related writings: I, II, III, IV.
