Repetition compulsion (psychoanalysis)

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Repetition compulsion is a term defined by Sigmund Freud to justify the otherwise difficult to explain human impulse to repeat unpleasant or even painful thoughts, actions, dreams, games, scenes or situations.

A property of the instincts , also described by Freud , namely their “conservative character”, is responsible for the appearance of the repetition phenomena.

Development of the term in the work of Sigmund Freud

Freud adopted the repetition principle from Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801–1887). Although the first traces of the term repetition compulsion can also be seen in Freud's very early writings, it was not until 1914 that he dealt with it more thoroughly. Freud noticed that the compulsion to repeat represents a regularity in the course of many analyzes and that this is particularly evident in the transfer of passages from the analysand's life that were initially not remembered to the analyst.

Later, in the context of the description of the death instinct , the concept of the compulsion to repeat is defined in detail in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) and the connection with both the death instinct and the concept of resistance and its consequences for the psychoanalytic treatment is described.

In this work Freud also deals with the question of where the persistence of a neurotic symptom comes from when it obviously represents a suffering for the analysand:

“In order to find more comprehensible this 'compulsion to repeat', which manifests itself during the psychoanalytic treatment of neurotics, one must above all free oneself from the error that one has to do with the resistance of the 'unconscious' when combating resistance. "

In this work Freud explicitly abandons what he calls the “descriptive mode of expression” and describes the necessity of a dynamic consideration that “no longer contrasts the conscious and the unconscious, but rather the coherent ego and the repressed ”. The ego has conscious and unconscious parts and only some of this necessary differentiation is covered by the concept of the preconscious . After this important remark, the following two principles become possible for Freud:

  • The analysand's resistance emanates from their ego.
  • The compulsion to repeat is ascribed to what is unconsciously repressed .

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Uwe Henrik Peters : Dictionary of Psychiatry and Medical Psychology . Urban & Schwarzenberg, Munich 3 1984; P. 193 on Wb.-Lemma: "Fechner, Gustav Theodor".
  2. ↑ See Sigmund Freud and Josef Breuer: About the psychic mechanism of hysterical phenomena. Preliminary communication (1893) Freud's collected works, Fischer, Frankfurt 1999, ISBN 3-596-50300-0 (cassette), Vol. I, pp. 81-98.
  3. ↑ Sigmund Freud: Remembering, repeating and working through (further advice on the technique of psychoanalysis II). (1914) Study edition, supplementary volume, Fischer Verlag, special edition, Frankfurt, 2000, pp. 205–215, ISBN 3-596-50360-4 ; see also Freud's collected works, Fischer, Frankfurt 1999, ISBN 3-596-50300-0 (cassette), vol. X, pp. 126-136.
  4. ↑ Sigmund Freud: Beyond the pleasure principle . (1920) Study edition, Vol. III, Fischer Verlag, special edition, Frankfurt, 2000, p. 229, ISBN 3-596-50360-4 ; see also Freud's collected works, Fischer, Frankfurt 1999, ISBN 3-596-50300-0 (cassette), vol. XIII, pp. 3-69.
  5. ^ Sigmund Freud: (1920) Ibid.

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