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Last week Kyle Sandilands attacked another journalist, Alison Stephenson, and a Twitter storm resulted in Austereo losing almost $8 million in advertising following a mass desertion of his new show by sponsors. But why do we like to watch so much? What are we looking for when we tune in to his attacks of rage? What fascinated us so much about both his tirade and the attempts to take him off the air?

We all want to see our own experiences acted out. We want to see them on television, we want to hear them on the radio and we want to go to the movies and find ourselves there too. We might want the cartoon or the airbrushed or the dramatised versions of our lives, but I think we’re desperate for our own stories to be seen and heard.

If we look at Kyle Sandilands from the point of view of our own need for storytelling — and we have to make some room here for our desire, because of course he’s only on air because of our interest — then we might go some way to explaining why any piece of incoherent vitriol that comes out of this man’s mouth is somehow front page news.

In the early 20th century Freud and several others developed a theory to explain why those of us with traumatic early experiences seemed to end up in similar strife throughout our adult lives. They wanted to understand why violence seemed to breed violence and why it was so hard for people to avoid repeating their past mistakes.

The theory, which became known as the compulsion to repeat, centres on the idea that we recreate our painful childhood scenarios, act them out in a sense, in a compulsive and repetitive way. We may take different roles when we do this, victim, perpetrator, bystander, but there is always a desire to make it come out right this time. But of course it never does, never can, because we can never fix the past.

Sandilands has publicly told the story of his painful childhood experiences, including on Andrew Denton’s Enough Rope in 2007. He described being kicked out of his divorced and warring parents’ homes, his stepfather’s physical abuse and a period of homelessness as a teenager. If you listen to him talking about his childhood, you can hear the rage and humiliation and you can also hear his desire to protect himself from ever feeling that way again.