Repetition compulsion describes an unconscious pattern where someone repeatedly places themselves in situations that echo the dynamics of an earlier trauma, rather than simply remembering or processing that trauma directly. Bessel van der Kolk's clinical observation is that this isn't a deliberate choice or a conscious desire to suffer again — it functions more like the mind attempting, unsuccessfully, to gain mastery over something it couldn't control the first time, by recreating a version of it that feels at least somewhat familiar.
Recognizing repetition compulsion in oneself or someone else isn't a matter of willpower correction — it requires actually processing the original trauma, since the pattern is driven by an unresolved wound seeking some kind of resolution, not by poor decision-making that a person could simply choose to stop.
Van der Kolk describes a patient, Julia, whose life followed a recurring pattern: she kept placing herself in dangerous or self-destructive relationships that echoed dynamics from trauma earlier in her life, despite consciously wanting something different each time. He uses her case to introduce the concept of repetition compulsion — not as a character flaw or a series of bad choices, but as an unconscious pull toward reenacting the earlier dynamic, as if some part of her was still trying, and still failing, to get a different outcome from the same familiar shape of danger.