Repetition Compulsion & Complex PTSD

Reflection on Repetition Compulsion (Freud, 1920)

Freud first introduced the idea of repetition compulsion in 1920, suggesting that people unconsciously repeat past traumatic experiences as an attempt to gain mastery or understanding. I disagree with this idea, particularly from my own lived experience. To me, it risks implying that individuals have some form of unconscious choice or complicity in their suffering, which contradicts both trauma-informed understanding and the reality of what it means to live through long-term or childhood trauma.

From my perspective, people are not unconsciously re-enacting trauma. They are continuing from what they know. When a person grows up in an environment where harm, neglect, or instability is normalised, their whole system, emotional, cognitive, and relational, adapts to that reality. These adaptations become internalised templates for how life and relationships feel. Later patterns may look like repetition, but they are not compulsive drives. They are learned, familiar ways of surviving and making sense of the world.

My own experience of heavy-handed trauma over many years makes me cautious about how this theory is used. I find it troubling when therapists refer to “repetition compulsion” without lived experience of trauma, as it can feel pathologising and overlook the adaptive intelligence behind people’s patterns. Understanding these behaviours as survival-based rather than compulsive allows for a more compassionate and human perspective, one that honours resilience rather than implying unconscious repetition of pain.

I also think that, where therapists work, it is essential to include voices of those with lived experience to explain how terminology can be destabilising and unhelpful, particularly terms that might make people feel flawed or as if something is wrong with them. To a point, repetition compulsion can be a useful concept, but it can also be damaging. Therapists need to be aware of this and not use it to label people or assume that what Freud wrote is set in stone.

Photo by 🇸🇮 Janko Ferlič on Unsplash