Freud and the Semiotics of Repetition

Anyone who has been caught in grip of a compulsion to repeat a traumatic experience and who also happens to be a student of psychoanalysis naturally seeks an explanation of this phenomenon in of Freud. This search leads one back, sooner or later, to what many assume to be locus classicus of Freud's account of repetition-compulsion, Beyond Pleasure Principle, a book Laplanche describes as the most fascinating and baffling text of entire Freudian corpus (1967:106). For reasons that will become apparent, what I have to say about semiotic implications of Freud's discussion of repetition will have to be disentangled from beknotted pages of that strange text. As for nature of repetition-compulsion, entry on it in dictionary of Laplanche and Pontalis speaks both of value of concept and of confusion surrounding it: notion of compulsion to repeat is at center of Beyond Pleasure Principle.... So important is part played by this idea at this crucial moment that it is difficult either to lay down its strict meaning or to define its own particular problematic: concept reflects all hesitations, dead ends, and even contradictions of Freud's speculative hypotheses. This is one of reasons why discussion of repetition-compulsion is so confused-and so often resumed-in psychoanalytic literature. The debate inevitably involves fundamental options regarding most vital notions of Freud's work (1973:78). Lacan stresses enigmatic character of repetition-compulsion. He remarks, Nothing has been more enigmatic than this Wiederholen, which is very close, so most prudent etymologists tell us, to verb 'to haul' (haler)hauling as on a towpath-very close to a hauling of subject

Confusion · Epistemology · Freudian slip · Linguistics · Nothing · Phenomenon · Pleasure · Pleasure principle · Psychoanalysis · Psychoanalytic theory · Semiotics · Narrative Theory and Analysis · Philosophy · Psychology

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