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Abreaction of affects is an old idea which was brought more especially to practical significance in the original cathartic method out of which psycho-analysis was evolved. In the neuroses and psychoses for which it has mostly been utilized, however, there are processes which are not compatible with it.
Any resolve, from the simplest reflex action up to the problem of life which ends only with death, produces an activity (Apparat); psychical activities of different complexity can also arise from practice or habit. If they are not to keep on permanently functioning they have to be 'cut off'; this happens either automatically through execution of the action intended, or by a counter-order, or through inhibition in consequence of other opposing functions. Many activities are repressed instead of being 'cut off' or divested of 'current'. Their source of power is contained in themselves, as with every nervous function; it is not an accumulation of energy that is expended, and thus such activities, particularly if they are repressed, can often act with undiminished energy for years.
The effect of psycho-analysis rests on the fact that an 'occasional' activity of this kind is connected by association with the conscious ego, and is thus accessible to discharge or to stoppage and can thus be rendered ineffective.
But even activity which is cut off or divested of 'current' leaves behind an engram, and may therefore be reproduced by a similar stimulus. Hence the risk of relapses in disease. Habit and strength of affect increase the reliability of the 'connections' in an activity.
Symbolic reactions of an activity, arising in consequence of repression and tending not in the direction of the purpose but only in a similar path, mostly do not have the effect of a discharge; because the stoppage does not occur through the reaction as such, but through its result.
The author's attempt to demonstrate psychical processes by likening them to a machine, in particular to an electrical