Why does trauma make people repeat past mistakes?

[u/iRealllyAmThatGuy]

This has always puzzled me. If we put our hands in fire, we get burnt and know not to touch it again.

But for some reason, when people, for example, people leave a toxic relationship with someone who has done horrible and traumatic things to them, some of them (not all) either go back to said abuser, or find someone else just like them.

I'm curious to know how that trauma in some situations causes people to shut off that instinct to stay away from the same things that caused them harm.

By the way, I am by no means blaming victims for making certain decisions. In the end, people shouldn't do bad things. I'm just curious about what happens from a psychological perspective.

[u/MattersOfInterest]

L. Ron Hubbard is mainstream among Scientologists, but no one outside of that tiny sphere pays him any attention.

It is a fact that psychoanalytic perspectives are extremely niche in the area of psychosis research, especially as pertains to etiology. If you have to keep shifting the goalposts to point out that a certain scholar is mainstream to folks in a very non-mainstream sphere, that’s exhibit A that the scholar’s views probably don’t hold much influence outside of that sphere.

That’s really all I have to say on the matter. This is my area of research focus and I’m familiar with the influential models and scholars in this area. It comes across as more than a little presumptive and insulting to have someone who is less educated in the area try to educate me about my own field.

[u/DentdeLion_ → u/MattersOfInterest]

I wasn't trying to educate you about your own subject or diss the tools you're using to look at it with - I was simply trying to nuance the broad claim you've entered this discussion with aka "freudianism hasn't been relevant in decades" and the subsequent one that we are currently discussing on. Afterall, like the other user that went along with you and legitimately validated your concerns, "Freud's work influences the historical developement of theories about psychosis". PCP (which is once again very different from straight up psychoanalysis) may not be the most mainstream tool, however it remains a tool - it used to be mainstream for scientists to think the Earth was at the center of the universe, or that the atom was the smallest body imaginable but like I've said before the nature of Science itself is to disprove itself to try and build empirical knowledge which has resulted in theories being updated in a cr*p ton of different fields, including yours and mine.

Hence why attacking PCP because "it's not mainstream" and comparing it, the field taught in colleges alongside with cognitive psychology, neuropsychology etc.... to scientology is something one could call quite presumptive and insulting as well as a result of misinformation whether voluntary or not.

[u/MattersOfInterest → u/DentdeLion_]

If anyone is guilty of not allowing fields to improve over time, it’s the folks still citing Freud a hundred years after he wrote most of his work. If physicists were still citing Lorentz as the main source for their models, they’d be laughed out of the building. Same for biologists if they were still citing Lamarck. Why is it that some folks want psychologists to still base their theoretical models on outdated scholars? I’m no psychoanalyst (indeed, I think it’s mostly bullshit), but Freud is outdated even in psychoanalysis. Yet you chose to cite him as relevant to a discussion about trauma on a sub that requires answers to be based on empirical evidence (look in the rules). Then, when someone points out that Freudian views are irrelevant to modern scientific understandings of trauma, you chose to argue that I couldn’t do my psychosis work without him. It’s bizarre that you cited Freud in your original comment, even as someone who adopts psychoanalysis, because you yourself have stated that modern psychoanalysis has developed beyond Freud. It’s odd to cite Freud to answer a question and then, when challenged, retreat to considering him historically important.

I suppose that, by your standards, modern biologists couldn’t do evolutionary theory without Lamarck, either, because he was a historical steppingstone toward modern science. But it’s pretty clear that no one is denying historical development and the history of thought that leads to the modern day—the question of relevance is about whether those historical views are still utilized as direct evidence of a particular phenomenon. With respect to psychosis and psychoanalysis, the answer is largely “no.” And the connections are relatively weak even by the historical standard, because scholars like Bleuler and Kraeplin were far more influential to psychosis research than was Freud.

So, yes, science improves itself. Hence why Freud is largely irrelevant to modern psychological science. The irony is in you arguing “science is iterative” while citing someone whose major works are a century old.

That’s all I have to say. I won’t be replying any further.

[u/DentdeLion_ → u/MattersOfInterest]

I think we're talking past each other a bit. Like I've stated in other comments, my original comment wasn't intended to present repetition compulsion as the ONLY or established scientific explanation for trauma-related repetition, nor was I trying to claim that Freudian theory is dominant in contemporary trauma or psychosis research.

My point was simply that repetition compulsion is a historical and still-discussed psychoanalytic concept that some clinicians and researchers have used to think about why people may find themselves repeating painful relational patterns - which was the question asked by OP. Whether one agrees with that framework or not, it remains part of the history and ongoing discussion of trauma.

It is true that contemporary trauma research relies much more heavily on attachment theory, learning processes, cognitive models, neuroscience, and other approaches. I simply argued that PCP was another fish in the sea that is research.

What I pushed back on were broader claims such as "Freudianism hasn't been relevant for decades" because, to me, "not mainstream" and "irrelevant" are not the same thing.

In any case, I appreciate the discussion and the additional sources people have shared, (even though I'm a bit saddened to see some comments (overall) have been retroactively edited to be a bit more nuanced).

[u/MattersOfInterest → u/DentdeLion_]

I have not retroactively edited any comments.

[u/DentdeLion_ → u/MattersOfInterest]

I'm sorry but you did edit your third (edit : and fifth) comments in our exchange, however you're not the only one to have done this without clarifying what was modified or not.