[Column by Eunsoo Jang: The Second Chance]

From a Life Bound by Repetition Compulsion to a Life of Recovery

The 'Second Chance' Interpreted by Shakespeare and Freud

People often think that we only live once. In reality, that's not the case. Most people live at least twice. Our physical and bodily life is indeed only once. However, our mental and social lives are different. Because the path of life is never smooth, moments inevitably arrive when we cannot simply repeat yesterday—such as failing an exam, experiencing heartbreak, falling ill, or retiring. When that happens, whether we climb over a wall, break through a barrier, or turn onto a side path, we have no choice but to revise a life of frustration and fix a life of failure to begin again. There are certainly times when one life ends and another continues.

The real problem is the helplessness that comes from believing life cannot be rewritten. Those who believe their mistakes are irreparable cannot apologize. Those who believe they cannot overcome failure cannot rise from where they've fallen. These people are stuck in the past. They try desperately to go back and restore their old selves exactly as they were. Sigmund Freud called this compulsive repetition the "repetition compulsion." Having lost the power to rewrite their lives, such people endlessly replay the good times within themselves. They are trapped in their old lives.

According to Shakespeare and Freud (Eidos), the inability to revise the past, correct one's mistakes, or recover from failure leads human life to tragedy. This book was co-authored by Steven Greenblatt, a renowned Harvard professor of Shakespeare studies, and Adam Phillips, known as the "poet of psychoanalysis." The two explore the concept of the "second chance," bridging eras and disciplines to facilitate a conversation between Shakespeare and Freud.

The second chance is one of the most captivating and beloved themes found in religious stories, literary creations, and the tales that psychoanalysis addresses. It is about rising again after a setback, recovering after loss, and regaining what was missed—reminding us of the human condition. Because humans are fragile beings, we cannot avoid moments when we must bear the pain of regret within loss and downfall, and dream of recovery.

Shakespeare's early comedies, such as Twelfth Night, focus on how not to lose and how to preserve the first chances in life—family and love. Optimism and fortune rule this world. Characters in crisis regain everything they originally possessed, often without much struggle or pain. This is a pleasant dream, a fantasy, and the story of the naive. True recovery is not a miracle that rewinds time. What is lost does not return. In real life, what actually happens is either to succumb to tragedy or to rewrite a damaged life.

Afterward, Shakespeare turned his attention to tragedy. In works like Romeo and Juliet, King Lear, and Othello, the characters become obsessed with their former good days, fall into anger and despair, miss the chance for recovery, and sink deeper into turmoil. It was only in his later years that Shakespeare realized that life offers a second chance. His masterpiece tragicomedy The Winter's Tale tells the story of Leontes, a middle-aged man. Consumed by baseless jealousy, he loses his wife, abandons his daughter, and drives his son to death. After sixteen years of regret and self-reproach, Leontes barely regains happiness through the forgiveness of his wife and daughter. Through this, Shakespeare illustrates that humans possess the power to recover what once seemed irretrievably lost.

For Leontes, the days of suffering are a process of recognizing and accepting his inner contradictions, and a time of maturity marked by accepting change and letting go of the old past. In this way, only those who accept that they are no longer the center of the world, that the world does not move according to their desires and jealousy, and that a good life is possible only through reconciliation and compromise with others, can live a second life. Leontes' happiness is possible only through the forgiveness of the wife and daughter he hurt.

A "second chance" is not a miracle that turns back the past life, but moving forward to a different life while carrying the marks of loss and regret.

Not everyone can seize a second chance and rewrite their lives. Some people refuse the opportunity and remain forever stuck in "again." How dreadful a life is it that cannot recover from loss or resolve conflict? There is neither healing nor hope in such a life. A life tormented by insurmountable guilt and irreparable shame continues endlessly. Such a person endlessly repeats severe self-deprecation and fatal self-betrayal.

Tragedy is the story of helplessness, the result of an inability to imagine another self because one is fixated on an old self. Macbeth flees into delusion, Lear into arrogance, and Hamlet into indecision, but none turn back to care for their own lives. In their ruined worlds, they cannot let go of their attachment to the past. They would rather not be given a second chance and harbor resentment and vengefulness toward those who counsel change. Such people, who block their own happiness, only come to realize "it is too late" after all has been destroyed.

In his clinic, Freud sought to help people trapped in the drive for self-destruction—those endlessly repeating their first life under the spell of the death drive. He listened to the stories of patients imprisoned in their own pain and tried to rewrite these as tales of healing. In his view, people did not wish to know themselves, and because of this, they could never escape endless suffering. He hoped that people would turn inward to understand themselves and rewrite their life stories, thereby escaping a frustrated past and a dissatisfied present. In this way, he became "the greatest interpreter of the second chance."

According to Freud, what is needed to gain a second chance is memory. "Prospects come from retrospection." Like Leontes, those trapped in anxiety and compulsion must look back on their past, face their failures, acknowledge their wounds, and learn to live with trauma. This is also the act of finding progress within regression, joy within compulsion, and rehabilitation within despair.

Therefore, a second chance can never be a perfect restoration. While Leontes spent years in tears, his wife's face grew wrinkled and his daughter matured. Happiness does not exist in "again." Recovery means embracing scars and wrinkles and moving forward to a different life. Only those who believe in change and redemption and rewrite the story of their lives, who bet on an uncertain future instead of the good old days, can seize a second chance and gain a better life. Shakespeare and Freud remind us of this undeniable truth.

Eunsoo Jang, Publishing Culture Critic

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.