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A science, as it grows and matures, moves from a description and classification of relatively gross phenomena to a theory-bound understanding of theory-selected data. In psychology, the step from the description of gross behavior patterns to a focused scrutiny of underlying unconscious structures and their dynamics is the equivalent, for example, to the shift in neuroanatomy from overtly visible organs and gross structures to the microscopic study of postulated hidden pathways that often can be made visible only by the action of certain specific stains.1
To make the hidden visible, to make the unconscious conscious—microanatomy and micropsychology were never very far apart in Freud's attempt to penetrate into the mysteries of nature, including, of course, that of his own “demon,” as he sometimes referred to it. Charcot, Janet, and Breuer had taught Freud that hysterical phenomena were not merely the result of inborn constitutional weakness but could be explained as a dynamic process. They had transformed the medieval view of hysteria into a first scientific theory of neurosis “when once they had replaced the ‘demon’ of clerical phantasy by a psychological formula” (Freud, 1893, p. 22).
The early decades of psychoanalysis were practically synonymous with