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In January 1962 I listened to a paper by Dr David Rubinfine entitled 'Notes on the Psychoanalytic Theory of Reconstruction' (1962), in which he referred to an old article of mine (1939). As a result I became curious about the extent to which this old article still represented my current thinking. In order to draw a comparison, I want to refer to my earlier article.
In 1936, at a meeting of the Dutch Society for Psychotherapy, I discussed in a larger connection the following problem: how is it possible for the construction of an early childhood experience to lead to a therapeutic result when the memory of this event does not return to consciousness?
When we deduce, from the patient's associations, that one event or another must have played an important role in his development, we do not make such a construction for the primary purpose of bringing about relief in the patient. This relief either does not occur at all or does not last very long. In my estimation, the chief aim of constructions is to afford an opportunity to study the reactions of the ego to the original trauma. Such a study will enable us to throw light upon the participation of the various faculties—namely, ego, superego and id—in the symptom formation and in other reactions. During the working-through following the constructions, the energy which has been neurotically tied up is liberated. It is this working-through that eventually leads to an improvement.
As I defended the point of view that, by means of the construction, only the derivatives of the original traumatic event are open to analysis, it became obvious that the problem could be solved only from this economic point of view. For a therapeutic effect to take place, I reasoned as follows. An original event is repressed. A part of the energy of this original repressed event is displaced on to the derivatives. We now make a construction of what has happened in childhood. As the event does not become conscious again, this event is not t