"Einmal ist keinmal" represents a specific kind of denial of the loss of narcissistic omnipotence, most particularly a denial of the universal primal fantasy of castration. (A denial of murder as an irrevocable event is especially important for those people in whom aggressive impulses predominate.) The wide use of this form of denial is attested to by the existence of the German folk-saying. Those patients for whom this principle of denial has come under the sway of the repetition compulsion were found to have had traumatic experiences in childhood that were simultaneously being denied and repeated.