Paul Russell and repetition

Abstract

In Boston in the 1980's and 1990's Paul Russell wrote and taught about psychotherapy in a way that conveyed a lively engagement with the experience of the therapist or analyst as well as that of the patient. He foreshadowed ideas that would be elaborated by later relational thinkers. This paper seeks to introduce the reader to his thinking about the repetition compulsion and to bring it to bear on two clinical cases, one where the repetition extended over a long period and another where it was swift and pivotal. In this way I show how Russell's ideas have power to sharpen and enliven the way therapists might work with repetition with both its difficulty and its potency.