Repetition and the compulsion to repeat, a French perspective.

The discovery of a compulsion to repeat and its involvement in the elaboration of the second drive theory of the libido and the death drive was fundamental in the evolution of Freud's thought: psychic functioning was no longer governed by the pleasure principle alone, and this changed analytic technique. This led in 1923 to a change of topography in order to take into consideration the existence of destructiveness within the mind that Freud had hitherto underestimated.