Repetition compulsion

Repetition compulsion is when a person repeats a traumatic event or something having to do with it over and over again in an attempt to deal with it. This "re-living" can take the form of dreams, repeating the story of what happened, and even hallucination.

Freud believes there are two ways to relive your past: 1) through memories, or 2) through actions. This is known as repetition compulsion, that is, where one chooses his most familiar experiences consistently as a means to deal with problems of the past. For example, one may choose to stay with their normal pattern of pain and chaos instead of risking the perceived trauma of new experiences. Someone experiencing repetitive compulsion might believe these new experiences to be more painful than their present situation or too new and untested to imagine.

A real world example of this might be: A man decides that he hates his job (for whatever reason), but he consistently fails to remove himself from this situation by finding a new job that he will enjoy more. His previous patterns of behavior and his daily routines centered around this "awful job" justify his means. Thus, the newness of finding a new and better job are far too uncertain and rocky in comparision to the measured amount of pain he feels now -- really, the known turmoil of the present versus the uncertainty of the future.

This is similar to Cognitive Therapy's Maladaptive Schema.

More recent research has also related this concept to childhood development and it's affects on adult life. This is best summarized by the statement that events that are terrifying in childhood become sources of attraction in adulthood. The likelihood of and direct relation are not well understood, nor is the mechanism by which this occurs. Examples can be seen in child sexual abuse victims who statistically have a much higher likelihood of being victimized again in adulthood, double to triple that of the population (Arata, Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, Volume 9 Issue 2 Page 135 - June 2002). It's theorized (data is limited) that these persons somehow are attracted to potential perpetrators who share traits with their original victimizers. These same persons also tend to have sexual preoccupation and even compulsion (rather than aversion) though again, why this happens is still poorly understood. (Noll et al.,J ournal of Interpersonal Violence, Vol. 18, No. 12, 1452-1471, 2003)