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In 1895, having published several papers and a monograph setting forth his epoch-making ideas about the psychogenesis of neurotic symptoms, Freud was seized by a raptus of neurophysiological theorizing aimed at providing a neurological basis for the recently proposed psychological mechanisms of symptom formation. The newly discovered fact that the central nervous system was composed of chains of discrete but interconnected neurones gave Freud the conceptual framework for translating psychology into physiology. In particular, it supplied a useful neurological explanation of memory, which in early psychoanalytic theory was viewed as a central element in the production of neurotic symptoms.
Freud wrote that the neurones serving as vehicles of memory, "are permanently altered by the passage of an excitation. If we introduce the theory of contact-barriers [i.e., the resistance to the passage of an impulse from one neurone to another at their point of contact]; their contact-barriers are brought into a permanently altered state. And since psych(ological) knowledge shows that there is such a thing as a relearning on the basis of memory, the alteration must consist in the contact-barriers becoming more capable of conduction …" (S.E., 1, p. 300).
Here is a remarkable idea—that experience can produce an alteration in the structure and subsequent function of neurones, leading to memory and learning. It was, unfortunately, an idea that was nearly a century ahead of its time. The sudden flaming up of Freud's passion for neurophysiology as suddenly waned, and he abandoned work on