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I would like to thank Michel Sanchez-Cardenas for his thoughtful comments on our section on the repetition compulsion. In addition to the hypothesis presented by Marilia Aisenstein, Rachel Blass, Howard Levine and myself, he discusses the possibility that the repetition compulsion might not have a “purpose” or meaning at all, except repetition itself.
Seeing repetition as a “primum movens in and by itself” is, of course, what we encounter clinically when we are faced with stuck or “endless” patients. As Michel Sanchez-Cardenas points out, the compulsion to repeat may originate from a relational pattern that was formed by the key figures of our childhood or the key figures that have been built up in our internal word, like, for instance, a punitive superego. However, I would like to add that these relational patterns are not simply repetitions of what we have experienced, but are based on complex identifications, and that those “key figures” have been built up by cycles of projection and introjection, which themselves can become repetitive and then constantly “play the same ‘film’”, as Sanchez-Cardenas says. We may see those “films” as replicative attachment patterns, or as an attempt to stabilize a fragile identity, as is the case in some borderline and psychotic individuals. Then it may appear better “to repeat what we know, even if it is painful” (Sanchez-Cardenas 2021, 1008).
I am not sure, however, whether it makes sense to extend the notion of repetition as far as comprising the invariant parts of the personality, in particular the most primitive ones. In any case, we should not obliterate the difference between repetition and the repetition compulsion.
Repetition is an ubiquitous phenomenon that is indispensable to learn from experience and therefore for psychic development. It plays an essential role in play, identification and creative imagination. Anthropologists like Buytendijk (1933) and Huizinga (1938) have highlighted the importance of playful repetition i