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Freud’s description of the resistance to the analytical work, enunciated in metapsychological writings previous to 1920, culminates in “Beyond the Pleasure Principle”, where the clinical phenomenon of the repetition compulsion assumes drive-like characteristics and demands to undertake the fight against the ego’s need for punishment, which is a consequence of the tragic fault coming from the forbidden oedipal actions to which the subject is driven, martyred at the same time by the super-ego’s demands. If the ego submits itself to an unmerciful super-ego, creating thus an intense masochistic joy, the analysis may be in danger. Even when the analyst sees some progress, a negative therapeutic reaction will arise, resulting in interpretable transferential manifestations of neurotic level. Tragic transferential manifestations (oedipal tragedy, personal prehistory) such as anxiety, lethargy, refer to buried material, ‘actual’, and require a construction of the act, which occurs ‘now’. Also, the buried tragic material may activate itself through a recent trauma and produce a discharge in the somatic, as the ego is above all a body ego (Freud, 1923). Viewed through the lens of such theory developments in “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” and “The Ego and the Id”, murderous superego punishment of the ego, fueled by the id’s death drive, reveals itself in different ways both in Oedipus’ ‘fateful’ tragedy and in Hamlet’s agony. Freud’s introduction of the Second Topography/Structural theory marks an important change in the dynamics of transference. Seen until then as driven by the force of desire, it appears as inexorably tied to the repetition compulsion and to the sphere of action, of discharge. One must note that Freud’s papers on technique come to an end in 1918, before the second topography. Only in 1937, with “Analysis Terminable and Interminable” (Freud, 1937a) and “Constructions in Analysis” (Freud, 1937b) does Freud return to the technical problems raised by the introduction of the repetition compulsion and the death drive, especially in relation to Ferenczi’s (1909) notion of negative transference. With the developments put forward in “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” (1920) and, in particular, with the introduction of the concept of death drive, Freud suggests that, urged by the compulsion to repeat, something beyond the repressed is displayed within the scene of transference: something that now presents itself by means of feelings and perceptions. These, however, have not been repressed because they have not been articulated; they have not been put into words. Taking these considerations as a starting point, in “Moses and Monotheism” (1939 [1934-38]), Freud acknowledges a historical truth, that of parricide, which underlies religious history. Establishing an analogy with the analytic experience, the historical truth would be the one constructed by the analyst (actual construction) based on feelings and experiences, indications of yet other scenes that accompany the scene provided by transference. This construction refers to a tragedy, present albeit silent until now, which, spurred on by the compulsion to repeat, becomes manifest in the analysis with its deadly fate. This unstoppable force can lead to the interruption of the analytic task. The masochistic component
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