Repetition compulsion

Repetition compulsion is a defined term from Sigmund Freud to justify the otherwise difficult to explain the human pulse, unpleasant or even painful thoughts, actions, dreams, games, scenes or situations to be repeated.

A well described by Freud property of the shoots, namely their " preservative character ", is responsible for him for the appearance of repetition phenomena.

Development of the concept in the work of Sigmund Freud

Although the first traces of the concept can also be seen in the very early writings of Freud, he sat down with it apart until 1914 thoroughly. Freud noticed that the repetition compulsion is a regularity in the course of many analyzes and that this manifests itself onto the analyst, particularly in the transmission of the first non- remembered passages of life of the analysand.

Later, in the description of the death instinct, the concept of repetition compulsion in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920 ) is defined in detail and described the relationship with both the death drive, as well as the concept of resistance and its implications for psychoanalytic treatment.

Freud continues in this work also with the question apart, where the persistence of a neurotic symptom come when this obviously represents a condition for the analysand:

" To this, repetition compulsion ' to find which manifests itself during the psychoanalytic treatment of neurotics understandable, one must free themselves mainly from the error, you have it in the fight against resistance with the resistance of, unconscious ' to do. "

In this work, Freud leaves explicitly what he called " descriptive language" and describes the need for a dynamic approach, which " no longer the conscious and the unconscious, but also bring to each other the coherent ego and the repressed in contrast ". That I have conscious and unconscious parts, and only some of this necessary differentiation was covered with the concept of the preconscious. After this important note the following two principles are only possible for Freud:

• The resistance of the analysand goes out of her self;
• The repetition compulsion is attributed to the repressed unconscious.