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S. Freud deals with repetition in psychoanalysis by identifying its importance and studying it in relation to various problems.
He uses repetition to explain the systematic reappearance of certain types of behaviour which he defines as transferential in the analytic situation.
In addition to this, he bases the therapeutic aim of analysis on overcoming repetition and points to the process of working through as the tool to use in order to elaborate the reappearance of themes which resist change. Freud clearly emphasizes (1914) the opposition existing between repetition and knowledge, and assigns to interpretation the predominant role in the attempt to resolve the irreconcilability of these two mental modes. The death instinct and obsessive syndromes may be better understood by placing them in relationship to the various forms of repetition whose field of operation lies between what is psychical and what is biological (Freud 1920).
The observation of the phenomenon of repetition is taken up again by M. Klein (1952a), who stresses the correlation existing between the repetitive games of children and the effort they make to exercise control over situations