Repetition and remembering otherwise

Batuhan Demir

In “Remembering Repeating and Working-Through”,[1] Freud presents repetition as a form of remembering. Repetition is not a form of conscious memory, but itself a form of unconscious memory. What has been forgotten is as if gathered in this repetition. But this repetition is not just a signifying repetition; something more is involved. As Freud says:

“If we confine ourselves to this second type in order to bring out the difference, we may say that the patient does not remember anything of what he has forgotten and repressed, but acts it out. He reproduces it not as a memory but as an action; he repeats it, without, of course, knowing that he is repeating it.”[2]

Lacan does not see repetition as a simple technical matter. “I will take this opportunity to point out to you that in Freud's texts repetition is not reproduction. There is never any ambiguity on this point: Wiederholen is not Reproduzieren.”[3]

Lacan clarifies the difference between reproduction, repetition and act with reference to the real. By reading Freud in relation to the real, Lacan opens the way to a new dimension of the act.

“Repetition first appears in a form that is not clear, that is not self-evident, like a reproduction, or a making present, in act. That is why I have placed The Act with a large question-mark at the bottom of the blackboard so as to indicate that, as long as we speak of the relations of repetition with the real, this act will remain on our horizon.”[4]

References

[1] Freud S. (1914). “Remembering, Repeating and Working-Through”, S.E. XII, pp.145-156.

[2] Ibid., p. 150.

[3] Lacan J. (1964). The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. (Ed. Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. A. Sheridan), London/New York, Norton & Co., 1998. p. 50

[4] Ibid.