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“to search for truth in mythology is vain … (but) to search for truth through mythology is wise and profitable.”
Since about 1920 when Freud's8 conception of repetition compulsion became an important pillar to psychoanalytic theory, repetitions patterns of behavior, particularly those that are seemingly “powerful enough to overrule the Pleasure Principle“7 have received much attention by theoreticians and clinicians alike and provoked numerous comments in the literature.18,23,25,26 As it is well known, Freud ascribed to the phenomenon of repetition compulsion, first described in the play behavior of children and in the dreams of “traumatic” neurotics,9 the function of an unconscious mechanism. Freud hypothesized that repetition compulsion could possibly be “the fixating factor in repression”11 and that it likely originated in the death instinct.
The significance of this conception was not immediately recognized. For instance, Kubie10 disputed its importance and even its existence, although in a subsequent communication20 he changed his views and came to regard the patterns of irresistible repetitiveness as central to the psychoneurotic process and a “distortion of the pleasure principle.” Further psychoanalytic work disclosed, however, that there were several different patterns of repetitious behavior to be distinguished not only for their characteristics, but for their function in the economy of the mental apparatus. Thus, Fenichel5 pointed out