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In this article, I will argue that Freud's essentially uninterrupted ambition to construct psychoanalysis as a natural science can be understood as itself an erotic project taking place within a theoretical/epistemological domain. In this domain, psychoanalytic theory functions as the vehicle or proxy through which Freud acts.
In accordance with the essentially erotic structure of the project, Freud steers the theory towards a particular object, natural science. That object then provides the occasion and means for a particular fantasy of satisfaction. In the Project for a Scientific Psychology, Freud articulates this fantasy as the achievement of an articulated set of ‘processes perspicuous and free from contradiction’ (1895a [1950], p.295).
Within this domain, the fantasy of epistemological satisfaction concludes with the elimination of ‘contradiction’. This elimination of contradiction is analogous to the elimination of tension which,