The Repetition Compulsion and Object Relations: An Evolutionary Hypothesis

The author reviews literature related to the repetition compulsion and evolutionary psychology. Sigmund Freud was unable to fully account for the repetition of negative, destructive experiences through the pleasure principle alone, and sought a more fundamental instinct in the biology of his day. Subsequent analytic theorists have generally eschewed his quest for biologically rooted explanations of the repetition compulsion, but have advanced theoretical understandings of repetitive behavior, especially through object relations theory. The author argues that analytic theory related to the repetition compulsion and object relations can now be grounded in biological theory. The universal human tendency to develop patterns of relationships in childhood, which are repeated in adulthood, represents an evolutionary adaptation to the ancestral environment. Children take childhood social conditions as an indicator of circumstances and challenges they are. likely to face as adults. Children who develop in abusive or neglectful environments learn relationship styles and “strategies” suited to negative environments, and continue to utilize, these, as adults. In the environment of evolutionary adaptation, social conditions were stable, and such repetition was likely to prove self-protective. But under contemporary

social circumstances, where adult conditions often differ markedly from childhood circumstances, the repetition of negative relationship patterns is likely to unnecessarily perpetuate suffering and dysfunction, and be maladaptive. The existence of the repetition compulsion does not represent a biological instinct toward a dissolution or destruction, but a mismatch between ancestral and modern social environments.