This paper presents some Lacanian ideas on the repetition compulsion, which Lacan referred to both as the “repetition automatism” (using the older French psychiatric phrase), and as “the insistence of the signifying chain.” At the moment of entering language as Symbolic, the human being is “subject” to the chains of signifiers in the flow; it is indeed the effect of these signifiers. The history of this subject begins at the moment of its insertion into this chain and its fate is in effect sealed. Psychoanalysis can bring about a shift in the subject's position toward the Other such that the subject of speech can claim that fate as its own, can assume the Other's desire as its own, and thereby “choose” to be what it is by fate.