ABSTRACT

This chapter investigates the interrelationship of repetition with different instinct categories and underlying structures. Freud's description of repetition in 1914g as a psychic phenomenon, as a condition of remembering and forgetting, and as a way of uncovering the significant hidden events in the patient's life by means of transference, was modified in 1920g by the addition of an instinctual basis. Working within the repetition system constitutes a real challenge for the psychoanalyst. Repetition hides a secret; psychoanalysis tries to unveil it. It is difficult work that touches on the 'bedrock' of the mind. Repetition has a defensive function: to keep a memory suppressed or to suppress an experience. It keeps the unnamable repressed in the depths of the psyche. Repetition fulfills a cathartic function. This discharge occupies centre stage. Repetition becomes a process that strives to achieve its own dissolution, a diabolical insistence driven by a vital energy.