Even though it is not explicitly addressed as a separate topic, the concept of time is at the core of psychoanalytic theory. The seemingly linear, but actually spiral and telescopic nature of time forms the backbone of the analytic story.

This article is a psychoanalytic reflection on different functions and meanings of repetition, which is arguably one of the basic components of this backbone. One of Freud's brilliant proposals in “Remembering, Repeating and Working Through”, repetition imprisons (in Green's terms murders) time, and leads to a vicious cycle that replaces remembering. However, repetition has a potential that can be thought of as a way of remembering again, reorganizing, reconstructing links, giving meaning and representation to the unrepresented, and thus revitalizing the psyche by placing one's history back into the flow of a temporality.