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The repetition compulsion is an unconscious recapitulation of the past.

Resolving the repetition compulsion requires confronting the past both cognitively and emotionally.

Effective therapy involves both cognitive understanding and re-experiencing abandonment feelings.

There are numerous secrets that psychotherapists learn over time about certain commonly occurring symptoms, situations, or patterns of experience and human behavior and what can help to mitigate or alleviate them. One example of this rich clinical wisdom regarding the resolution of such problematical situations pertains to the repetition compulsion as it applies to romantic relationships, as previously discussed in Part 3 of this series

First Phase of Therapy: Naming or Diagnosing the Problem

During the initial phase of therapy for resolving the repetition compulsion in romantic and other relationships, it is essential to help the patient become cognizant of this pattern in their own life, its consequences, its universality, and, sometimes, to provide a name for it in order to render it more concrete and comprehensible. Hence, cognitively sharing with the patient the concept of a repetition compulsion can be useful in the same way as speaking with them about the phenomena of anxiety or depression can be. Now, the symptom or suffering has a name, can be intellectually understood, and therapeutically confronted. It is no longer something completely unknown, mysterious, or unconscious and can become a meaningful part of the therapeutic conversation.

Middle Phase of Therapy: Working Through

Traditionally, the middle phase of psychodynamic psychotherapy is referred to as the "working through" stage. In addressing the repetition compulsion in therapy, there is sometimes, at some point, an interchange vaguely resembling the scene from the film, Good Will Hunting (1997), between the brilliant, physically and emotionally deeply traumatized and consequently pathologically detached patient (Matt Damon) and his psychotherapist (Robin Williams), albeit typically far less intense, cathartic, and dramatic in reality as opposed to the movies. The conversation might go........

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