The Narcissistic Repetition Compulsion: Thoughts on a Greek Tragedy and it’s Cure by Dean of Research, Demetria De Lia.

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I, myself, in the transports

Of mystic verses, as in study

Of history and science, have found nothing

so strong as Compulsion,

Nor any means to combat her.  

Euripides Alcestis, lines 962-965.

 

One of the (many) things most interesting to me about Greek myths, often lacking in other literary genres, is the genealogy of families, genograms that symbolically suggest that the repetition compulsion is transgenerational. Laius tried to kill his infant son Oedipus, and Oedipus killed Laius, and on and on it goes. Our patients, like characters in Greek tragedies, not only repeat the trauma of their own lives, but also the inherited traumas, conscious or not, of their parents and ancestors.

I wonder why this transgenerational induction to repeat is so powerful. Freud told us that the repetition compulsion is part of the death instinct, and so it appears, that the repetition compulsion is connected to that other death instinct derivative, narcissism. Narcissism in a most basic definition is the wish that everyone thinks and feels exactly as we do, and this is the power of the narcissistic transference. When a child is induced to repeat the parent’s trauma, the unspoken message is “be like me, live like me, feel like me, act like me and suffer like me.” Misery loves company. But the child has no way of defending himself against the powerful gods that live with him and within him. In Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious, D.H. Lawrence writes that a nonverbal induction is like “a lovely, suave, fluid creative electricity that flows in a circuit between nerve centers in mother and child.” Electricity flows silently as does the death instinct. What does the child suffer if he consciously rejects the parent’s implicit demands? He may feel that he has killed someone he loves, and now suffers the guilt, like Oedipus, of being a murderer (oh, those myths just won’t leave me alone). Preoedipal murderers don’t feel guilt but the oedipal type accept responsibility for their impulses.

Preoedipal murder brings to mind Narcissus who turned Echo into stone and then killed himself. The narcissistic parent who induces her child to repeat the family’s trauma isolates the child from a new experience in living that could involve making attachments to a different way of life. The child’s individuation is experienced by the parent as an abandonment, and because the parent is narcissistic (preoedipal), abandonment feels like death. The death instinct destroys connection to anything life affirming as the parent sacrifices the child’s progress to ensure that the family repetition is inherited by the next generation. In this way the narcissistic parent commits symbolic murder and incest (also a death instinct derivative), inducing the child to be a narcissistic twin, to reproduce the parent’s pain, to live in isolation of the broader world, and to align herself with the repetition compulsion of their shared inheritance.

The repetition compulsion in my own family is a very long story. My grandmother, her invalid mother and three brothers were forced to leave their village in the mountains of Turkey. Only my grandmother survived the journey on foot, boiling edible plants to sustain her. Finally arriving in America, she was a stranger in a strange land, not speaking the language, suffering what I would now call PTSD. My Mother grew up as a parentified child, and this repetition was passed down to the next generation. In our family, children at a young age were expected to take care of their parents. This role reversal had many pathological outcomes.

What choice does the child have? Kill your desires or kill theirs, repeat the familiar pattern, sacrificing your own wish to walk in a different path or abandon the parents and suffer the guilt trip. The child looks at the mirror of his narcissistic mother’s face and sees only her reflection, not his own; here is the birth of narcissistic rage in the child, and on and on it goes.. In the freedom of the psychoanalytic experience, the psychoanalyst gives the child a reflection of her own image and the patient finds an adult who is there to take care of her! What a novel idea! What a liberating experience !

Can there be a greater blessing than when the cords

Of care are snapt, and the mind lets slip its burden- when

spent with toil in far-off places, we come to our home

sanctuary and find rest on the long-dreamed of couch?

Catullus, 56 BC

Immigration Experiences from Our Community by ACAP Student Rosemary McGee

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Immigration is a topic of the times, often in the news and being discussed by Congress and by the presidential candidates on both sides of the aisle. President Obama announced amnesty for parents of children who are citizens or legal permanent residents and is helping many young immigrants or Dreamers who came to the US as children, stay in this country with his Dream Act legislation. What we don’t often hear about are the personal experiences of immigrants, how they learn to fit in to a new culture and the losses they suffer by leaving their native land, family and friends.

ACAP is doing something about it. On Friday, October 30, ACAP hosted Our Immigrant Experiences, a panel and open group discussion about the issues immigrants face – the first of a series. Over thirty people attended, representing five of the 7 continents and 18 different countries, including: Russia, Lebanon, Iraq, Ecuador, Cuba, Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Israel, Taiwan, Syria, Armenia, Brazil, South Africa, Macedonia, and 7 states in the US.

The evening began with a warm welcome from Eva Silver who invited brief introductions from around the room. Next, each of the four panelists told their personal immigration history: Branislav Mancevski from Macedonia, Lisa Thomas from South Africa, Huda Shanawani from Syria, and Fr. Arakel from Armenia. Their stories resonated with the group and people started identifying with what was said and sharing their own experiences. Common themes included: loneliness and loss, cultural differences, American born children feeling embarrassed by their parent’s accents and parents being embarrassed to speak English poorly. People expressed the desire to become an American yet the pull to retain the culture and rituals of one’s homeland and how the ambivalence made them feel like they didn’t belong anywhere. It was said that “assimilation is accepting your new environment but not forgetting who you are,” which includes teaching your children their native language.

Some stories were full of humor such as the woman, whose father traveled a lot so she had lived in many places, who said, “I eat Lebanese food so I must be Lebanese,” and Ms. Thomas, having lived in a number of places in South Africa and in Zimbabwe, then coming to the US as a child said, “I didn’t even realize I was an immigrant!” Both of them got a laugh from everyone.

Other stories were heartfelt invoking empathy around the room, such as Monica from Ecuador caring for her ailing mother at home without enough help because that is what their culture demands; or Mrs. Shanawani’s elderly mother returning home to Syria leaving her family in the US because her longing was too intense. Fr. Arakel described how his wife came to America having been a physician in her home country and lost the right to practice medicine. Giving up traditions, food and music and longing for friends and family back home were expressed again and again. Carmen from Cuba thought she could never go home to Cuba not even for a visit, but now she is hopeful it may one day become a reality.

The session ended at 8:30 pm but the conversations continued for another half hour. The next Immigrant Experiences discussion in this series will be held Sunday, December 6th from 2-3:30. These gatherings are free and everyone is welcome, since in America, we or our parents or grandparents are all immigrants from somewhere.