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In Andreas Giannakoulas's book on the independent British psychoanalytic tradition, entitled La tradizione psicoanalitica britannica indipendente (2010), the author does not directly consider the issue of the two models - the energy model and the object-relations model - but in fact contends that the roots of innovation and creativity lie in tradition. Yet the theme of object-relations theory as an alternative to the energy model actually permeates the various essays in the book, until the problem is finally addressed specifically in the chapter whose title translates as «Psycho-analysis between play, dreams and reality». The ideas put forward in this paper have their origins in that essay.
These reflections are based on the drastic change in Freud's views that occurred in the four years that separate the failed attempt represented by the «Project» of 1895 from The Interpretation of Dreams in 1899.
Giannakoulas argues that the ideas put forward in the «Project», which is grounded in neurophysiology and resorts primarily to energy-related and quantitative explanations, were not developed further owing to the absence of a methodology that did not exist at the time - namely, that of present-day neurophysiology and in particular the neurosciences. With The Interpretation of Dreams, on the other hand, the psychical apparatus has become a wishful structure operating without an anatomical reference, and, the author claims, Freud's conception alternates between a reality-based representation, as in the «Project», and a figurative representation.
I shall return to this point later, since I believe that a fundamental aspect of the epistemological status of psychoanalysis itself is contained precisely in what is here - in my view wrongly - described as «alternation».
It is, however, certainly true that, since the dream work is accessible only through interpretation, Freud's approach in this text is essentially hermeneutic. This is the case even if - it is important to note - the f