PSYCHOANALYSIS AT A CROSSROADS: FROM REPETITION OF STRUCTURE TO REPETITION AS TRANSFORMATIVE LEARNING

Feb. 2026

Repetition is not, in itself, therapeutic — taken alone, it does not heal. It acquires transformative potential only when it alters the subject’s mode of relating to experience. If we differentiate three axes of change — awareness, replacement, and repetition understood as learning — we can identify both the strengths and the blind spots of classical psychoanalysis. In Sigmund Freud’s formulation of the compulsion to repeat, particularly in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, repetition is conceptualized as structural rather than hedonic: the subject returns to painful scenes not because they are gratifying, but because they exert a binding force within the psychic economy (Freud, 1920/1955). In this sense, repetition is epistemic — it makes unconscious organization observable through patterned return. The analytic work, on this first axis, consists in transforming enactment into awareness: insight, symbolization, and historicization.

This awareness must extend to what cannot easily be spoken — the unconscious meaning of the indicible, the terrain Freud situates beyond the pleasure principle, where excitation, trauma, shame, and guilt intertwine. There are psychic configurations in which enjoyment and suffering are inseparable, where the symptom contains both protection and self-punishment. Such material can only emerge within a deeply psychodynamic listening capable of tolerating silence, contradiction, and affective intensity without premature closure. Interpretation, in this sense, is not cognitive correction but the gradual articulation of what previously had no signifier.

However, awareness alone does not suffice for transformation. Contemporary research in cognitive and behavioral therapies, as well as affective neuroscience, converges on a central point: insight does not automatically modify entrenched cognitive-emotional patterns. Maladaptive schemas and behavioral repertoires are maintained through reinforcement, avoidance, and biased prediction processes (Beck, 1979; Hofmann et al., 2012). If therapy remains confined to interpretation within a stable frame — same setting, same temporal rhythm, same narrative elaboration — the process risks crystallizing into a closed loop. The subject becomes increasingly lucid about their structure while continuing to enact it outside the consulting room.

The second axis — replacement — corresponds to the deliberate modification of dysfunctional cognitions and behaviors. In cognitive therapy, this takes the form of cognitive restructuring and behavioral experiments (Beck, 1979). From a learning perspective, predictive models change when disconfirmed through lived experience. To understand an unconscious attachment to shame is one movement; to engage in a different relational act that contradicts anticipated rejection is another. Replacement is therefore not superficial technique; it is the pragmatic extension of insight. It operationalizes change.

Replacement, as a therapeutic axis, becomes particularly visible in interventions such as the digital imagery-competing task described by Beckenstrom et al. (2026) in The Lancet Psychiatry, where intrusive memories are attenuated by engaging visuospatial working memory during recall. The logic is clear: by introducing a competing task, the sensory intensity of traumatic intrusions is reduced. Yet the clinical question remains whether reducing intrusive memories is sufficient, or whether we risk substituting one regulatory strategy for another — trading raw intrusion for procedural avoidance. Trauma does not persist as an isolated memory trace; it reorganizes associative networks linking perception, affect, expectation, and relational behavior. Psychodynamic theory speaks of parallel patterns sedimented across relationships and self-concept; cognitive psychology and neuroscience describe distributed memory networks and conditioned responses that generalize across contexts. Replacement at the level of imagery may alleviate acute distress, but trauma has already reshaped the subject’s anticipatory models of the world. Effective replacement therefore cannot be confined to dampening a single symptom; it must extend to modifying the broader network of conditioned beliefs, relational scripts, and behavioral tendencies that crystallized around the traumatic event. Otherwise, symptom relief may occur without structural reorganization.

The third axis — repetition as learning — draws directly on established principles of skill acquisition and neuroplasticity. Repetition is the basis of learning in every domain. One does not acquire a new language by understanding its grammar once; mastery requires repeated exposure, practice, feedback, and consolidation. Similarly, therapeutic change requires repeated enactment of alternative cognitive and behavioral patterns until they stabilize. Empirical research on CBT demonstrates that symptom reduction is associated with repeated practice of new coping strategies and exposure-based learning processes (Hofmann et al., 2012). Neural circuits consolidate through repeated activation; behavioral change becomes durable through rehearsal.

Thus, the three axes of change — awareness, replacement, and repetition — can be seen as complementary rather than antagonistic. Psychoanalysis offers an unparalleled exploration of unconscious meaning, including the indicible zones where pleasure and trauma converge. Yet to remain scientifically grounded, it must integrate principles of learning and behavioral modification supported by contemporary psychological science. The crucial distinction is not between depth and technique, but between repetition that conserves structure and repetition that reorganizes it.

Liviu Poenaru

References

Beck, A. T. (1976). Cognitive therapy and the emotional disorders. New York, NY: International Universities Press.

Beckenström, A. C., Iyadurai, L., et al. (2026). A digital imagery-competing task intervention for stopping intrusive memories in trauma-exposed health-care staff during the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK: A Bayesian adaptive randomised clinical trial. The Lancet Psychiatry, 13(3), 233–247.

Freud, S. (1955). Beyond the pleasure principle (J. Strachey, Trans.). In J. Strachey (Ed. & Trans.), The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 18, pp. 1–64). London, UK: Hogarth Press. (Original work published 1920)

Hofmann, S. G., Asnaani, A., Vonk, I. J. J., Sawyer, A. T., & Fang, A. (2012). The efficacy of cognitive behavioral therapy: A review of meta-analyses. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 36(5), 427–440. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10608-012-9476-1