Wiederholung or Wiederkehr?

Many colleagues reread Lacan's fundamental contribution on repetition in Seminar XI, putting this contribution against Freud's discovery of this concept, or its amplification by J.-A. Miller in his last lectures.

Miriam Zorn

On the track of Wiederholung (repetition) in Freud, one comes across the concept of Wiederkehr (return), which at first glance can be read synonymously with Wiederholung. What is the relationship between Wiederkehr and Wiederholung? Gradually, Freud seemed to concede to Wiederholung a dimension beyond a mere Wiederkehr. This becomes noticeable in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, where, a new direction also emerges for Wiederholung. This differentiation between Wiederkehr and Wiederholung becomes explicit, for example, in "Remarks on the Theory and Practice of Dream-Interpretation" where Freud writes:

“Thus an alliance has been made between the treatment and the compulsion to repeat, an alliance which is directed in the first instance against the pleasure principle but of which the ultimate purpose is the establishment of the dominion of the reality principle. As I have shown in the passage to which I am referring, it happens only too often that the compulsion to repeat throws over its obligations under this alliance and is not content with the return of the repressed merely in the form of dream-pictures.”1

What returns is repressed dream-pictures; but repetition goes in another direction, and is not content with that. Lacan also refers to the distinction between Wiederkehr and Wiederholung in Seminar XI: "[…] the very constitution of the field of the unconscious is based on the Wiederkehr."2 This, Lacan continues, has nothing to do with the function of repetition. Subsequently, Lacan introduces Wiederholung in relation to Erinnerung (remembering). "Here, the real is that which always comes back at the same place – to the place where the subject in so far as he thinks, where the res cogitans, does not meet it."3

Perhaps it can be concluded that by means of Wiederkehr (of repressed contents, dream pictures, "of the same"4), something like a map is created that represents all the material that the subject will wiederholt (repeatedly) stumble upon - without knowing it - along his/her way. It seems that it takes work for the subject, in terms of the wiederkehrt/returns, to also become aware of its Wiederholungen/ repetitions. In this way, Wiederholung rather than Wiederkehr is brought closer to the real, closer to chance, closer to surprises that can be approached with the help of remembering and transference.

References

1 Freud S., Remarks on the Theory and Practice of Dream-Interpretation (1923), Standard Edition XIX, 118.

2 Lacan J., Book XI. The four fundamental concepts of psycho-analysis (1973) (ed. J.-A. Miller, trans. A. Sheridan), New York and London, Norton & Co., 1998. 48.

3 Ibidem, 49.

4 Freud S., Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), Standard Edition XVIII, 1-64.