Repetition and Repetition Compulsion1

It has been shown that ants trained to secure food at a certain place at a certain time of the day will come to that place at the exact hour. It could be demonstrated that their sense of time depended on metabolic processes. They were said to have a 'metabolism watch' (Stoff-wechseluhr). When fed a retarding drug (quinine) they came late. When fed an accelerating drug (thyroxin) they came early (1).

The higher animal and especially man shows similar phenomena. Man gets a little anxious when 'it is time' to eat or drink again, to smoke another cigarette, to stretch his legs, to have a chat for a change, or to make love. The difference is, however, that the higher animal and especially man has many more, and more complex, desires than the ant, and that getting a little anxious does not mean that something must be done about it. Man can appraise and calculate opportunity in a complex fashion.

Where does this sense of time come from? A simple assumption will help: Every desire increases steadily and continuously in intensity from zero, i.e. from the moment it has just been satisfied, to maximum intensity, i.e. to the moment when any further delay of satisfaction would bring about panic. Under ordinary conditions man manages to satisfy most of these desires long before they are as intense as that, and to keep them in mind and plan for them long before he actually cares to satisfy them. He manages to satisfy them when they are not too weak and not too strong, i.e. at the 'right' time. His sense for intensities of desires is his sense of time.

This implies that several desires are likely to be simultaneously active at any given time of a person's life, or waking life. Not only that. We may assume that, at a comparable point of development, more different desires are likely to be simultaneously active in man than in any other animal. We may finally assume that more different desires are likely to be simultaneously active at a given point of development, as compa