[1] Sigmund Freud's use of the concept of "repetition compulsion" (German: Wiederholungszwang)[2] was first defined in the article of 1914, Erinnern, Wiederholen und Durcharbeiten ("Remembering, Repeating and Working-Through").
Following this line of thought, he would come to stress that "an instinct is an urge inherent in organic life to restore an earlier state of things"[7]: 308 (an explanation that some scholars have labeled as "metaphysical biology"),[11] so to arrive eventually at his concept of the death drive.
Along the way, however, Freud had in addition considered a variety of more purely psychological explanations for the phenomena of the repetition compulsion which he had observed.
Erik Erikson saw the destiny neurosis—the way "that some people make the same mistakes over and over"—in the same light: "the individual unconsciously arranges for variations of an original theme which he has not learned either to overcome or to live with".
[19] Object relations theory, stressing the way "the transference is a live relationship ... in the here-and-now of the analysis, repeating the way that the patient has used his objects from early in life" considered that "this newer conception reveals a purpose ... [in] the repetition compulsion":[20] thus "unconscious hope may be found in repetition compulsion, when unresolved conflicts continue to generate attempts at solutions which do not really work ... [until] a genuine solution is found".
Attachment theory saw early developmental experiences leading to "schemas or mental representations of relationship ... [which] become organized, encoded experiential and cognitive data ... that led to self-confirmation".
[24] In some cases psychological schemas may be seen as analogous to the role in psychoanalytic theory of early unconscious fixations in fueling the repetition compulsion.