The repetition compulsion is a neurotic attempt to rewrite or undo one's personal history. The history we try to rewrite is typically the troubled or unsatisfactory relationship with our parents, particularly, but not always, the opposite sex parent.
 

When the early parental relationship is fraught with frustration, disappointment, rejection, abandonment, neglect or abuse, the child is in a precarious spot.
 

As young children, we mistakenly conclude that the problem with the parent(s) resides with us, and that, therefore, we possess the power to rectify it by changing ourselves into someone more acceptable to our parents.
 

This illusory cognitive core belief not only nurtures our magical hope, but provides a much-needed sense of power and control over our environment, of which, in reality, children have very little.
  

Children are, for the most part, victims of circumstance, possessing minimal control over their lives. No matter how cleverly they try desperately to change the distressing situation, it is typically to no avail.
 

In order to psychologically protect themselves and survive, children must deny or minimize the painful and depressing reality of their predicament, as well as their frustration, resentment, anger, and rage.
 

So instead, we cling for dear life to hope: childish, irrational, even magical, hope that, if only we can be good, perfect, smart, quiet, kind, funny, pretty enough, etc., that someday will win over Mom or Dad and he or she will finally love us as we need them to-just as we are, unconditionally and consistently.
 

Certainly, not even the best parents are perfect, and so we all go through this to some degree in one way or another. Just as our parents did. This, more or less, is the existential predicament or human condition. In extreme cases, the fervent hope of being able to improve the parent's response by becoming what we perceive he and/or she want us to be wards off "abandonment depression." So long as we desperately cling to hope, we avoid sinking dangerously into despair.
 

Later, during adolescence and adulthood, this childhood scenario can be unconsciously and compulsively recreated. Our wounded "inner child" remains alive within, still actively seeking to transform the rejecting or emotionally unavailable parent into a more loving one, so as to at last receive that which was missed during infancy and childhood. To finally have previously unmet dependency needs met. Only now, it is no longer only the parent, but potential love interests that are targeted.
 

Symbolic stand-ins for the unavailable or rejecting parent. Again, this is powerfully unconscious behavior, compelled by what Jungians call a "negative mother" or "negative father" complex.
 

This magical hope of salvation helps us hang on and get through childhood with some integrity. 

It is in itself a potent defense mechanism. And perhaps the most difficult to let go of.
 

The reality is that the problem typically lies not with the child, but with the parent or parents, who, because of their own psychological issues or situational limitations, are unable or unwilling to provide the love, structure, discipline, support, security, and acceptance all children deserve and require to thrive.
 

In other words, we could say that the parent/parents are more or less physically and/or emotionally unavailable to their children in the ways children most need parents to be available.
 

To look back from the vantage point of adolescence or adulthood and face the excruciating and frustrating existential reality of our childhood takes tremendous courage. And it demands not only a cognitive or intellectual recognition but, at least as importantly, an experiential or emotional one.
 

A confronting of long-dissociated feelings of loss, abandonment, grief, sadness, anger, resentment or rage. We allow ourselves to feel now what we could not tolerate feeling then, and therefore, repressed. Real psychotherapy recognizes the phenomenological reality of unconsciousness.
 

For those who doubt or deny the reality and power of what Freud famously referred to as the "unconscious," the witnessing or experiencing of such irrational and self-destructive repetitive relationship patterns can be convincing, sobering and enlightening empirical evidence.
 

Many adults have an uncanny affinity, a kind of unconscious "radar," for particular members of the opposite sex (or, in some cases, same sex) who, in ways often initially imperceptible, resemble-psychologically or situationally, if not physically-the parent with whom the early difficulties occurred. And these are typically those they tend to "fall in love" with or become romantically involved. They choose them unconsciously, of course.
 

And this begs some profound philosophical questions: Are we responsible for our unconscious choices? Can "unconscious choices" even be correctly called choices at all? Is our freedom negated or precluded by the unconscious?
 

Psychologically speaking, the problem is that the person's rational, adult part is not making adult relationship decisions, but rather obliviously allowing the emotionally needy "inner child" to call the shots.
 

That wounded, rejected, abandoned little boy or girl is still trying to win Mommy or Daddy's love, attention, and affection.
 

In order for the repetition compulsion to play out, the love interest must, by definition, possess at least some of the core emotional deficits or traits as did the original unavailable parent. 
 

Indeed, that is what the repetition compulsion is all about: a recreation of these dysfunctional relationship dynamics, so as to provide a hoped-for opportunity to, this time, change the outcome. To re-write how the movie ends, turning tragedy into triumph.
 

The needy inner child thinks: "This time will be different. I will finally get this person to give me the love I need. I can change him or her, if I only try hard enough and never give up. I won't fail again. Then, at last, I will feel loveable."
 

But tragically, this futile effort is doomed to failure. For if, as part of the repetition compulsion, we specifically seek out and choose individuals who cannot love us because of their personal limitations and problems, what are the odds of making them do so? Can we "fix" them? Force them? Convince them? Not very likely.
 

The rational, conscious, adult part of ourselves knows that. 

But the wounded and needy little boy or girl within is still trying, just as he or she originally did with the parents many years ago, each predictable failure painfully reinforcing old childhood feelings of inadequacy, inferiority and unlovability. And so it goes.
 

These unconscious choices in life which we are unaware of making but nevertheless still do, are potentially the most dangerous and destructive decisions. Because they are basically "blind" choices, driven not by the present and what is best for us, but by the past and what traumatized us, by that from which we are running. This is the nature of a neurosis.
 

Who would consciously choose- and painfully continue to choose to remain with--a romantic partner who is rejecting, unavailable or emotionally/physically abusive? That would be pure masochism.
 

But it is not mere masochism or "bad luck" in most cases. Rather, it is a powerful unconscious repetition compulsion at play.
 

It is as if one is operating under the irresistible influence of a "spell" or "curse" cast upon us by some evil wizard, witch or supernatural entity. But this evil "spell" or "curse" stems from the unconscious repetition compulsion exerting its negative power over us with a vengeance.