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When Freud startled his contemporaries with his first publications on the neuroses he was in his late thirties. He had behind him years of training, research, and practice in anatomy, physiology, and neurology. With every step he took in his new venture he became more of a stranger to his colleagues. They could see no link whatever between those years of solid and fruitful medical research and his new interests and methods. Later, many psycho-analysts used to take the opposite view of the first part of Freud's working life: they looked at it as a time spent in a foreign land, at best a period of preparation, at worst a waste of precious years as far as psycho-analysis was concerned.
In recent years, increasing attention has been paid to the origin and foundations of psycho-analysis and to its relationship to current scientific and philosophical trends. It has gradually become apparent that Freud's anatomical, neurological, and psycho-analytical researches form a continuum and that they were strongly influenced by contemporary currents of thought. Important contributions towards a historical analysis of psycho-analysis have already been made (Ernest Jones, Hartmann, Dorer, Binswanger, Brun, Jelliffe, Bernfeld, Kris, Zilboorg, Riese). Some light has been thrown on the relationship between the two periods of Freud's work by the recent publication of a draft of a physiological psychology found among his manuscripts. This was another indication that fully to understand the origin of psycho-analytical concepts, one had to go back to Freud's earlier writings.
I propose to speak about the one of greatest interest for the psycho-analyst. Some of what I am going to say has already been said, or hinted at, by others, but I hope to add to their observations and to fill in details.
Among Freud's contributions to neurology the book on aphasia3 holds a special place. In this treatise, Freud for the first time challenged current theories and put new ones in their place. Ev