ABSTRACT
This chapter is about the power of creative transformation that is to be found in Freud’s observation of the Fort/Da, which is not simply about mastery. Rather than approach repetition as a difficulty to be transcended, I will argue that repetition is the vehicle of its own transcendence. For, if action is not to be separated from the psychic processes of the patient, which are themselves forms of action (Loewald) or from the psychoanalytic dyad, within which action is a constant variable (Reis) then this chapter explores the possibility of different outcomes for the resolution of repetition than symbolic thought. Here repetition is compared with other motives Freud referred to in ‘Beyond the Pleasure Principle’, ‘which push forward towards progress and the production of new forms’.
