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Singe it is not always realized that the paradigm Freud employed throughout in his metapsychology is pre-Darwinian in its assumptions, it is of interest to consider how that should have been so.
During the latter part of last century two separate debates were being held, the first about the historical reality of evolution and the second about how evolution, should it prove to have occurred, comes about. Not infrequently the adjective ‘Darwinian’ is used to refer to a belief in the historical reality of evolution. That, of course, is mistaken. Many others besides Charles Darwin advocated the historical reality of evolution, though it is true that none organized and displayed the evidence so cogently as he. Nevertheless the adjective Darwinian should not be applied in a general way to the occurrence of evolution but must be kept strictly for the theory that it has been brought about by a particular biological process, the one Darwin named ‘natural selection’, which is best described in terms of the differential breeding success, or failure, of naturally occurring variants that transmit their characteristics to their offspring.
Freud was certainly an evolutionist, but there is no evidence that he was ever a Darwinian. No doubt it is largely because a belief in evolution is so often regarded as Darwinian that it is easy to overlook how deeply Freud was committed to a pre-Darwinian standpoint. In his Autobiographical Study (1925) Freud describes how, as a student in the 1870s, ‘the theories of Darwin, which were then of topical interest, strongly attracted me’ (SE 20: 8); and we learn from Jones (1953) that in his first year at the University of Vienna (1872-3) Freud took a course on ‘Biology and Darwinism’. Such references, combined with Freud's enthusiasm for evolution in general and his occasional and always favourable references to some others of Darwin's ideas, e.g. the primal horde and the expression of emotions, are deceptive and lead easily to the supposition that