ABSTRACT
The phenomenon of repetition is an idiosyncrasy of the core mental process that can metaphorically be understood as a type of "mental indigestion". If there is any fundamental need of the human mind it is the need for understanding of experience. This may sound strange to a dynasty of psychoanalysts accustomed to thinking in terms of the drive-defence model, but strange or not, it is an insight that is necessitated by the observable facts. Some psychoanalysts see the concept of drives as so central to psychoanalytic theory that they simply cannot imagine a metapsychology in which drives are understood as derivative entities. According to their point of view, human beings experience themselves as driven by forces that are beyond their control. It is a central tenet of the present system of metapsychology that experience is not simply given to the mind. Rather, from the very beginning, experience is an active product, an active creation, of dialectical structure of the self.
