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None of my discussion is meant to detract from (a) the importance of repetitiveness for the maturation and development of structures and hence for adaptation and learning; (b) the importance of repetitiveness in abnormal behavior, and especially in the transference phenomenon and acting out in the psychoanalytic situation.
The genetic, structural, and adaptive problems of repetitiveness and automatization have been discussed extensively by Hartmann (1939; see also Bibring, 1943). He, too, tried to delineate the adaptive aspects of these phenomena and their importance for learning, and distinguished them from the concept of repetition compulsion as used by Freud, as well as by Nunberg (1932, 1937) and Waelder (1932).
Hartmann (1939) applies the term “automatism” only “to the somatic and preconscious ego apparatuses” (p. 90), and states in a most meaningful sentence that “Automatization is a characteristic example of those relatively stable forms of adaptedness which are the lasting effects of adaptation processes” (p. 92). He rightly stresses the essential difference between normal, adaptive automatisms and “ego rigidity” or “pathological automatisms.” He also rightly stresses that automatisms persist in an adaptive way throughout life: “the normal ego must be able to control, but it must also be able