Psychoanalysis: the study of Freud?

I have the impression that research into the life and work of Sigmund Freud is an ever increasing enterprise. Among many other expressions for this we have in this journal published Carlo Bonomi's survey Sexuality and Death; and in this issue Daniel Burston's Freud, the Serpent and the Sexual Enlightenment of Children is presented. One important reason for the new additions to our picture of Freud is of course that sources of information which have previously not been available, now have successively been opened for research. This is the case especially for Freud's extensive correspondence from which more and more parts are made available for researchers. But equally important are new interpretations of old facts and new combinations of data, which move and change the meaning and understanding of the psychological forces at work in Freud.

The study of Freud's psyche was initiated by his own self-analysis, if not before. His enormous literary production, including his extensive correspondence can be seen as a continuation of his self-analysis. Thus the whole psychoanalytic theoretical edifice is in a way formed according to the psychological structure of its founder. The restructuring of the theoretical building, which he undertook on several occasions, seems to no small degree to be expressive of changes in his own life circumstances and concomitant reforms in his view of the psyche. Both Bonomi's and Burston's papers bear witness of close correlations between life events and theoretical formulations.

What implications does this state of affair have for our daily clinical work as psychoanalysts? It seems to me, that working within the psychoanalytical vocabulary, we are in some way working from inside Freud's psyche, or at least as if we were within his clothes. In this way one can see our psychoanalytical work as a continuous exploration of Freud's psyche, or rather as an exploration with Freud's psyche as our model and point of reference. Even taking Freud's origina