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Seventy years ago, in 1905, Freud published his 'Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality'. Five years previously he had published his book on dreams (Freud, 1900) which, in its seventh chapter, described the mind according to a model called topographical. This same topographical model, replaced 18 years later by a structural model (Freud, 1923), together with the ideas Freud then espoused about instincts and the mechanisms of libido repression and charge–discharge, exerted an influence on his concepts of sexuality, clearly tinted with biopsychological undertones.
Freud's studies especially emphasized the quantitative aspects of libido use, assigning to sexuality some characteristics and pressures of a bio-economic and object-oedipal nature.
The origin of the Freudian ideas on sexuality and its role in the genesis of neuroses and psychoses dates back to 1895.
His Letters to Fliess (Freud, 1950a) the 'Project' (Freud, 1950b) and his paper on neurasthenia and anxiety neurosis (Freud, 1895) were written at that time and they contain the major ingredients of his future theory of sexuality: childhood sexuality (the Oedipus complex), anxiety neurosis and early childhood sexual seduction (which he connected to the development of hysteria).
Meissner (this issue) has studied the influences of Freud's early thoughts put forth in the 'Project' (Freud, 1950b) on his concept of sexuality (Freud, 1905). Its three major assumptions are: (1) the topographical operational model (Conscious, Preconscious and Unconscious) retaining the causal determinism theories (derived from Helmholtz's physics) directed towards a biologic determinism; (2) the economic point of view of the libido, including the constancy principle of all mental operations which would ultimately account for the pleasure principle. The studies about countercathectic forces are derived from this and such forces are expressed in repressive terms of shame, disgust, horror and morality. The blockage caused by these count