REPETITION: BETWEEN PRESENCE AND MEANING1

Repetition usually implies comparison. Something is said to repeat itself whenever we can apprehend it from a reference point, a comparable thing of which it is the reiteration. In the psychoanalytic field, however, this is not exactly so. Freud’s exploration of the relationship between remembering, repeating and working-through introduces important features of human affairs that usually go unseen in too general a view of repetition. If we consider the operational definition of remembering (Erinnern) formulated in the 1914 paper as “reproduction in the psychical field”2, repetition itself takes a very specific meaning. Repetition is indeed the name for what Freud (1914) would call “Agieren ” (action) as opposed to “Erinnern”. If we also put in the equation the well known toggle switch between thinking and action, it follows that whatever stands outside of psychic elaboration should be deemed a repetition. This has important consequences both in practice and in theory. Under this definition, indeed, repetition yields a specific understanding of what is repeated in the transference, which in turn may influence our analytical conduct