Trauma Bonding and Repetition Compulsion

Repetition is the mute language of the abused child.

-      Judith Herman, Trauma and Recovery (1992)

In my last post, I discussed how child abuse survivors, despite conscious efforts, are more likely to find partners who are abusive. This troubling pattern is not accidental—it is rooted in deep psychological mechanisms that deserve more exploration. In this post, I will delve into why these survivors are drawn into such relationships, focusing on trauma bonding and repetition compulsion as the central forces. 

To get started, I would like to introduce the concept of trauma bonding. This concept has been inaccurately used by the public and even by practitioners in the field. According to Dr. Isabelle Morley, some people think that “trauma bond refers to the incredible closeness we feel with someone after going through a hard time with them.” For example, at a student-faculty gathering, I heard a psychology student jokingly say she and her fellow classmates were trauma-bonded over the hardships of grad school. However, it is not what the term actually means. It described the connection that survivors feel with their abuser, which can involve care, love, empathy, attachment, etc. This explained why people get stuck in abusive relationships, and the fond feelings linger long after they have left their abusers. 

Child abuse survivors are particularly prone to developing a trauma bond with their abusers in childhood as well as in adulthood. As mentioned in Herman (1992), “children who develop in this climate of domination develop pathological attachments to those who abuse and neglect them, attachments that they will strive to maintain even at the sacrifice of their own welfare, their own reality, or their lives… Unable to escape or alter the unbearable reality, in fact, the child alters it in her mind.” As a result, child abuse survivors may believe they are fundamentally flawed and engage in self-blame. They may also work even harder to please or placate their abusers. This drive may lead to occupational success in adulthood, while leaving a hole in their heart. Other forms of maladaptive coping include dissociation and self-harm.

Occasional rewards or removal of punishment from the abuser becomes the source of the survivors' comfort and self-value. More specifically, the abuser may consciously or unconsciously engage in intermittent reinforcement, which is a pattern of unpredictable affection, attention, or rewards mixed with indifference, withdrawal, or abuse. This inconsistency, rather than constant negativity, makes the survivor more desperate for the "good times" and reinforces the trauma bond. This is the same mechanism that makes slot machines so addictive, as you can imagine.

What kept many abused children going was the hope that growing up would bring escape and freedom. Sadly, this is rarely true. Early betrayals of trust leave deep wounds, making it hard for survivors to care for themselves, feel good about who they are, or build healthy relationships. Often, they end up in another abusive relationship as young adults. This happens for two main reasons: they have trouble spotting warning signs, and they feel an unconscious compulsion to reenact the abuse. Like the resonances of a temple drum that aren’t heard so much as felt in the heart’s cavity, as Herman (1992) describes. Survivors may desperately seek protection and care, but new abusers can sense this vulnerability and take advantage of it. Many survivors lack positive role models of healthy relationships. Their coping strategies, such as dissociation, can lead them to miss social cues that signal danger. As a result, they may have poor boundaries, trouble asserting themselves, and act obediently to serve their abusers’ needs. What makes this even more painful is that many survivors learned early on to connect violence with love. They start to expect violence in close relationships. Because of this, they do not look for abuse, but still find themselves stuck in abusive situations.

Repetition compulsion is the term introduced by Sigmund Freud in his 1920 essay Beyond the Pleasure Principle, which helped explain children turning passive unwanted experiences into an active role during play, clients repeating repressed material in therapeutic relationships, and individuals unconsciously repeating unwanted situations in their lives. Later analysts recognized repetition compulsion as a means of mastering a trauma, according to Akhtar (2009). On one hand, this helps us understand why survivors meet with a repetition of the same fatality. On the other hand, it signals the survivors' unconscious efforts to work through the trauma. 

Herman (1992) noted that the defensive structure often begins to break down in the third or fourth decade of life. It is often triggered by major life events involving changes in close relationships, such as the birth of a child, the failure of a marriage, or the illness or death of a parent. For their children’s sake, survivors often find the ability to care for and protect others that they never had for themselves. The profound love they feel for their newborns is so powerful that it may knock them out of the fantasy of being cared for and loved by their abusive parents. This often marks the start of their healing journey.