In psychoanalytic theory, the impulse to reenact earlier emotional experiences. Considered by Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) to be more fundamental than the pleasure principle. According to Jones, “The blind impulse to repeat earlier experiences and situations quite irrespective of any advantage that doing so might bring from a pleasure-pain point of view.”
A Freudian concept pertaining to the neurotic compulsion to relive traumatic experiences.