Repetition and the compulsion to repeat, a French perspective

ABSTRACT

The discovery of a compulsion to repeat and its involvement in the elaboration of the second drive theory of the libido and the death drive was fundamental in the evolution of Freud’s thought: psychic functioning was no longer governed by the pleasure principle alone, and this changed analytic technique. This led in 1923 to a change of topography in order to take into consideration the existence of destructiveness within the mind that Freud had hitherto underestimated.

KEYWORDS:

• Repetition
• compulsion to repeat
• death drive
• drive
• theory of the drives
• drive defusion
• negation
• Nirvana
• pleasure principle
• principle of constancy

Notes

1 On Totem and Taboo, see the very interesting book by Gérard Lucas (2015) “The Vicissitudes of Totemism, One Hundred Years After Totem and Taboo.”

2 See ‘Beyond the Pleasure Principle’, pp. 14-17. It concerns Freud’s grandson who, in his mother’s absence throws away and retrieves a wooden reel.

3 This is a matter of a depressive modality characterized by the absence of symptomatic manifestations. It was described by Pierre Marty in 1966 and is defined by a general lowering of life tonus, without economic compensation. In fact, one finds in the essential depressive experience neither sadness nor guilty feelings nor melancholic self-accusation. Essential depression is thus revealed by its symptomatic negativity. (See M Aisenstein 2008)