Repetition compulsion: why we repeat the past and how therapy helps

We often speak about ‘moving on’ as if the past were another country that we might simply depart. But we can no more exit our history then we can escape our own shadow; if only it were that easy. We act out our past in the present with varying degrees of conscious awareness  over and over. Freud’s theory of repetition compulsion describes the unconscious tendency to repeat past dynamics or traumas, by seeking out similar relationship patterns over the lifespan. In this cycle we are drawn to that which feels familiar, even when it is painful or destructive, in an unconscious effort to master or resolve old wounds.

This cycle can manifest in many ways in many of our relationships from intimate partners to friends. Freud’s proposition, one embraced by psychoanalytically informed models of therapy, is that unprocessed wounds from the past will influence adult behaviours and beliefs about ourselves and others. The quiet tragedy of the repetition compulsion lies in the unconscious insistence of turning every new person we meet into a character from our past, a state of willful amnesia rendering us incapable of catching ourselves in the act of repetition.

The comfort of the known

We do not repeat (self defeating) behaviours because we are stupid or because we are gluttons for punishment; we repeat because the familiar, however painful, is the only place we feel at home. An individual with a history of neglect may choose a partner who is emotionally distant, thereby unconsciously recreating a familiar feeling of absence. There is a paradoxical safety in avoiding the terrifying vulnerability of being truly seen by someone who might actually stay.

The predictable nature of a familiar pattern, even a negative one, can feel safer than the anxiety that comes with change or the unknown. When we are caught in an unconscious cycle of repetition, we are also caught in a relentless cycle of hope and disappointment: hope that this time it might be different, and the disappointment that comes when it isn’t. We are always, in some way, repeating our childhood, continuously finding new ways of being disappointed about the same old things. The great seduction of the repetition lies in returning to the scene of the crime in the naive hope of a different ending. 

Freedom to improvise; an act of imagination

Our minds are more circular than linear. Understanding when we are in an unhelpful loop of repetition is the first step towards change, but it is a process that inevitably, and importantly, takes time. The real difficulty is not necessarily in identifying the pattern, but in our ability to imagine that there might be an alternative.

Why we repeat old pain, and how therapy creates space for change

Therapy can be a useful way of understanding the beliefs and behaviours that hold our narratives in place, rendering them unavailable for change. In part, the project of therapy is to make the case for the strangeness of a new experience over the familiarity of an old pain. The repetition we might discover is not an immutable law, but a story, a story that, like all stories, can be told differently, if we can bear the unfamiliar, unsettling freedom of doing so.

The work of therapy is not so much to banish repetition through an act of will, but rather through an act of attention. In noticing our attachment to the stories we tell ourselves, we make them more available for review. Rather than reading from a familiar, well worn script, we might learn to grant ourselves the freedom to improvise, thereby gradually expanding the repertoire of what we allow ourselves to experience. Freedom, in this regard, lies not in the absence of our history, but in our capacity to stop treating it as a prophecy.