Repetition
| French: répétition |
In psychoanalysis, repetition (répétition) refers to the unconscious compulsion to relive earlier experiences, often in disguised, displaced, or destructive forms. Far from being a simple recurrence of the past, repetition represents a failure of symbolic integration, a return of the repressed that is enacted rather than remembered.
Initially articulated by Sigmund Freud as the repetition compulsion (Wiederholungszwang), the concept exposes a paradox at the heart of psychic life: the tendency to repeat precisely what one does not remember or understand, even when such repetitions produce suffering. Freud linked this dynamic to the death drive, which pushes the subject beyond the pleasure principle, toward repetition of trauma, fixation, and the inorganic.
Jacques Lacan reorients this idea through the structure of language, interpreting repetition as the “insistence of the signifier”—a structural return of certain symbolic elements that mark the subject's relation to jouissance, lack, and the Other. Repetition thus becomes central not only to clinical psychoanalysis but to the very structure of the unconscious and the subject.
Sigmund Freud
The Compulsion to Repeat
Freud identifies the compulsion to repeat as a force that overrides the pleasure principle, most notably in trauma, neurosis, and the transference. The subject does not merely recall traumatic experiences but reenacts them, often without awareness of the connection to past events. The repetition takes the form of actions, symptoms, or relational patterns that are acted out rather than spoken.
This dynamic was first noted in Freud’s work with war neuroses, children’s play (e.g., Fort/Da), and in dreams of trauma survivors, where painful events were relived rather than avoided. Freud theorized this as the work of the death drive: a deep, enigmatic impulse driving the organism toward repetition and return to an earlier, more primitive state of being.
Jacques Lacan
Automatism, Insistence, and the Letter
Lacan preserves Freud’s insight into repetition as non-pleasurable and unconscious, but he relocates it within the symbolic order. Repetition, for Lacan, is the automated return of the signifier, a consequence of how language structures the unconscious.
As the subject is inserted into language, certain signifiers become fixed, and their reappearance structures the subject’s position in the symbolic field. Even if the subject represses the meaning of a past event, the signifier returns, disguised and insistent.
“Repetition is fundamentally the insistence of speech.”[1]
In this sense, repetition is no longer only tied to trauma or memory, but to the way the unconscious speaks, particularly through lapses, symptoms, dreams, and above all, transference.
Repetition and Resistance
Repetition and resistance are deeply entwined. The very effort to avoid or repress certain meanings paradoxically ensures their return. Lacan captures this in Schema L, where:
- The line A–S represents the axis of symbolic repetition, the movement from the Other (A) to the subject (S),
- While a–a′ represents the imaginary resistance—the ego’s attempts to sustain coherence and avoid destabilizing truths.
Repetition, in this model, slips past resistance, sometimes emerging in subtle gestures, narrative loops, or bodily symptoms that defy conscious control.
Repetition and Jouissance
In his later work, Lacan links repetition more explicitly with jouissance—a kind of excessive, painful enjoyment that goes beyond the pleasure principle. Repetition thus becomes the return of that unbearable enjoyment, what cannot be integrated, represented, or resolved.
“Repetition is the return of jouissance in the face of the symbolic limit.”[2]
This perspective helps explain why repetition often produces suffering: the subject is drawn again and again to the scene of impossibility, where desire meets its impasse.
Transference and Repetition
The transference is a privileged site of repetition. Here, the analysand unconsciously repeats earlier relational patterns in their interaction with the analyst, assigning to the analyst roles drawn from the subject’s past (parents, rivals, caretakers, etc.).
Freud emphasized that true therapeutic change depends on helping the patient shift from unconscious repetition toward conscious recollection and working-through.
Lacan, however, insists on a rigorous distinction:
“The concept of repetition has nothing to do with the concept of transference.”[3]
Transference is a specific modality of repetition that occurs within analysis, but repetition exceeds the analytic setting—it is a universal property of the unconscious, manifesting in symptoms, speech, dreams, and behaviors.
Clinical Vignettes
1. Repetition of Abandonment: A Case of Hysterical Structure
Case: A woman enters treatment after the collapse of yet another romantic relationship. In each case, she describes having been “left” without warning, often after testing the boundaries of her partner’s affection. Despite being the one to provoke rupture, she experiences herself as a passive victim of abandonment.
Interpretation: Rather than remembering the early childhood loss of a primary caregiver, she unconsciously recreates the conditions of that loss—provoking it to confirm it. Her symptom lies in the repetition of abandonment, which enacts a demand that cannot be directly spoken. Through analysis, she begins to articulate this demand, shifting from acting-out to symbolic elaboration.
2. Repetition and Jouissance: A Case of Obsessive Structure
Case: A man compulsively delays decision-making, especially around career and intimacy. Each time he nears a decisive step, he becomes paralyzed by doubt and withdraws. He describes this as “protecting himself from failure,” yet ends up in situations of loss, stagnation, and self-beratement.
Interpretation: The subject repeats a structure of missed encounters, constantly returning to a place where choice is suspended, and jouissance is extracted from not choosing. This repetition is not about safety but about maintaining a relation to castration that preserves the subject’s fantasy of completeness. Analysis reveals how this structure is held together by the insistence of certain signifiers—"failure," "not enough," "too soon"—whose interpretation loosens their grip.
3. Repetition in Transference: The Analyst as the ‘Other Who Fails’
Case: A young man repeatedly accuses his analyst of neglect—"You weren’t there for me,” “You don't care.” These statements recur with slight variations across sessions. The analyst notes that similar phrases were once used in relation to the patient's father.
Interpretation: The repetition in the transference enacts an earlier experience of disappointment in the paternal figure, which the subject displaces onto the analyst. The aim is not to relive the past, but to make it present in a way that allows the subject to hear it differently. The repetition becomes the vehicle for uncovering the signifying structure of loss, now available to speech.
Summary
In both Freudian and Lacanian traditions, repetition is not simply a symptom but a structure of subjectivity. It is the way the unconscious insists, the drive returns, and jouissance circulates. Whether in trauma, transference, or everyday speech, repetition names the site where the subject encounters the real of their division, again and again.
Psychoanalytic treatment does not aim to stop repetition, but to make it speak—to bring it into relation with the symbolic, and thus shift its function from acting-out to interpretation.
See Also
References
- ↑ Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar. Book III. The Psychoses, 1955-56. Trans. Russell Grigg. London: Routledge, 1993. p. 242
- ↑ Lacan, Jacques. Le Séminaire. Livre XVII. L'envers de la psychanalyse, 19669-70. Ed. Jacques-Alain Miller. Paris: Seuil, 1991. p. 51
- ↑ Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar. Book XI. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, 1964. Trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Hogarth Press and Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1977. p. 33