The compulsion to repeat is a psychoanalytical concept . It is a question of describing the repetition which affects the subject of a Traumatisme.
First design
Freud conceives initially, in 1914, various figures of the repetition, in particular the transfer. The compulsion then describes the obsession to repeat which makes following a failure of the recollection.
Play of the reel
After the First World War, Freud discovers the traumatism. Nevertheless, it will work out the new design of the compulsion to repeat, in 1920 starting from the observation of a child.The play of Strong Da forms part of a handing-over in question of the principle of less excitation which only would govern the psychic apparatus. S. Freud, in Beyond the pleasure principle (1920), note that the repetition, observed in several behaviors, from which the play of its Ernst grandson, comes to contradict this principle and postulates finally that there exists another principle based on a compulsion to repeat, the principle of death. The play of the young person Ernst, boy old of one year and half, wise, having some rudiments of language, some phonemes or interjections, is simple seemingly. “This good little boy had the practice, which could be awkward, to throw far from him in a corner of the part, under the bed, etc…. all the small objects of which it could be seized, (...). At the same time, it emitted with an expression of interest and satisfaction a “o-o-o-o-”, extremely and prolonged, which, common opinion of his/her mother and observer, were not an interjection but meant “party”, in “strong” German (page 52, Payot editions). Another Freud day is pilot of one play using a reel which the child throws far from him by pronouncing the interjection “o-o-o-o-”, and which it brings back thanks to the wire by stating merry “a da”. The complete set thus consists of an outward journey return of the object, of which there is not a doubt that the return should be the happiest moment. However, Freud notices, the repetition of the first act of the play is more frequent than the complete set and thus seems to be enough with the child. In the third time, during long absences of his mother, the child “had found a means of being made disappear itself. He had discovered his image in the mirror which did not reach the ground completely and had been squatted so that its image in the mirror “had left””. With the return of his/her mother, Ernst pronounced “baby - o-o-o-o” to mean its return. Freud also brings back the reactions of the child in two difficult situations, that of the absence of the father left to the war, then death of his/her mother, but we will stop here with the play of the fort da. This situation of a simple childish play proves of an extreme richness, Freud will develop of them several points of analysis of the point of considering metapsychologic. The reel takes the statute of object symbolizing the mother in her presence and absence. The act to throw this object corresponds for the child to separate from the dyad mother child, to pass from a passive register to that of credit, tells us Freud, in order to answer an instinct to master. But this interpretation is not sufficient to explain the repetition of the first act of the play, that there even where the lack appears. The play in front of the mirror leads S. Freud to suppose with the child a desire of revenge towards this frustrating object. But one of the elements more particularly remarkable of this childish play remains the oralisation of the two phonemes, extremely to indicate the presence in the absence and da for the absence in the presence which signs a real act of creation. That allows, us says S. Freud, with the child to tolerate the renouncement of an instinctual demonstration of anger when his/her mother leaves it.
Métapsychologie
The first concept of compulsion to repeat is related to the concept of mnemic-trace and discharge. A memory cannot be reinvested, and satisfaction misses then. The memory, driven back, will be expressed through acts.Plus resistance will be large plus the acting out will replace the memory .
The second significance of the compulsion to repeat calls into question the Pleasure principle in which the subject seeks the discharge - the impulse being included/understood like an energy.
If Freud distinguished until there between Principle of reality and pleasure principle (able to defer satisfaction), it joined there in Beyond the pleasure principle the nirvana principle , tendency of psychism to remove any excitation.
See too
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