Could it have been a cosmic traffic accident that set up a series of temperature traumas that gave complex life the compulsion to evolve, variegate and eventually deliver the intelligence that begat The X Factor, Twitter and thermonuclear war?
And when she informs her husband that she suffers from a "repetition compulsion complex," you wonder why she needs the "shrink" he's so desperate for her to visit.
The level of complexity of the behaviour may also help to differentiate tics from compulsions; even complex tics are relatively straightforward behaviours (eg, a brief tapping action), whereas compulsions are often more elaborate and performed according to a rule (eg, tapping four times with the left hand and four times with the right hand).
Mr. Heppner's hearty tenor showed occasional signs of strain, but it would be difficult to imagine a performer better suited to convey Ahab's complex mix of demoniac compulsion and fleeting heroism.
If they moved a lot as children, they may be experiencing what Freudian analysts call "repetition compulsion," or a Goldilocks complex, always looking for the just the right place.
Dunlap is very aware of the complex factors that contribute to such grisly compulsions.
The arts exist to offer a complex "non-answer" to all life's compulsions that science cannot prove, and, really, mutual expression is the closest to an answer that we're able to get.
Kassig's compulsion to return to Syria was complex — a combination of genuine bravery and altruism and his own, more personal impulses.
Religious people, including Catholics, came to see that due regard for the unconscious can open into a more rightly formed conscience; that reckoning with compulsions and complexes may narrow the apparent range of free will but can also sharpen one's sense of what moral agency actually requires; that neurotic scruples indulged in the name of "being good" can make authentic virtue impossible.
Mathematicians' compulsion to make things more and more complex is both a blessing and a curse.
