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The author approaches human aggression from the viewpoint of extreme psychic trauma in which the ego is left defenseless and at the mercy of crude drive phenomena. This emergency signifies the collapse of the capacity for psychic representation and for dealing with drive impulses at a metaphorical level. After this collapse, the pleasure principle is replaced by another mode of psychic regulation, of which Freud provided a theoretical description in Beyond the Pleasure Principle .
This article can be seen as a commentary on Freud's dualistic drive theory in the light of a clinical case in which destructive drive phenomena led to fatal consequences. The notion of the death drive becomes related to early psychic trauma, which tends to be repeated throughout life.
Salonen suggests that repetition compulsion represents basically an instinctual tendency toward restitution of normal psychic functioning based on primary identification. The primary task of psychoanalytic treatment in such cases is to create the preconditions