You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
The aim of this paper is to review the psycho-analytic concept of the primary processes in the light of contemporary knowledge, in order to adapt it to our ever-accumulating clinical and experimental psychoanalytic experience.
Freud, in his pioneering analysis of the unconscious, discovered that unconscious contents and productions seem to be ruled by a quite different mode of organization from the conscious logical ones. According to his inquiries into such phenomena as neurotic symptoms, dreams and jokes, he assumed that there exist 'two fundamentally different kinds of mental processes, which he termed primary and secondary' (Jones, 1953, p. 397).
In his 'Project' (1895) and in 'The Interpretation of Dreams' (1900), Freud presented the theoretical framework for this new classification of the mental processes to primary and secondary. Naturally, according to the developmental stage of psychoanalysis in those days, the theoretical formulation was based entirely on the economic point of view. The primary process was described as working with mobile cathexis, striving toward direct gratification and discharge and dominated by the pleasure principle. The secondary process was described as working with bound and neutralized energy, its discharge delayed and detoured and dominated by the reality principle.
Regarding the formal aspect, Freud described the primary process as operating by three main mechanisms: condensation, displacement and symbolism. The secondary process operates by the mechanisms included in what is called logical thought.
The discovery of the primary process as the organizing mode of the unconscious was regarded by Jones (1953) as 'Freud's chief claim to fame'. But strangely, Freud, who discovered it, never really explored it further. Milner (1958) was probably right in assuming that after Freud discovered the formal rules organizing unconscious contents, he was so fascinated by the new vistas of contents which opened before him that he became tot