The purpose of this article is to analyze Winnicott's perspective on the understanding of the clinical phenomenon that Freud referred to as the compulsion to repeat. We sustain that Winnicott replaced this notion with that of regression to dependence in the analytical situation. This puts a patient's self in a situation that leads him to discard his defenses and return to a situation that existed prior to that of the trauma and to that of the construction of his defenses.
Repetition; regression; dependence; integration