From Present to Past: The Development of Freudian Theory

Latent dreams, primary process and narcissism are three important concepts in Freud's work, and there is a striking methodological similarity in their development. In formulating each of these, Freud follows the same path, a path which is obscured in his writing but which, when uncovered, leads to a clearing. For when we see how Freud developed these ideas, we come to a better understanding of their meaning, explanatory value and of Freud's methodology in theory construction.

Freud, in building a causal science of the psyche, has in mind the simple sequence: what comes before is a cause of that which occurs later. Phylogeny is recapitulated in ontogeny and infantile development shapes adult personality. Blatantly simplified, Freud's causal sequence is: species history causes in part infantile development which causes, in part, adult personality. This is the obvious path which Freud is constructing and which he means us to follow. But this is not the path that Freud followed in arriving at his views on dreams, primary process, narcissism and infantile sexuality. Freud's actual path is from observed adult functioning via interpretation to infantile events and via interpretation to the history of the human species. Where Freud wishes us to see the path of unfolding causality, we see trails of speculation built from interpretation. In transforming an interpretation into a cause, Freud leads us in the accepted direction of the science of his day, but obscures from us the network of interrelated interpretations which point us to the true path of psychoanalysis as an interpretive and not a causal science. As an interpretive science psychoanalysis works from the present, constructing explanations in terms of the past that hopefully will be beneficial in the future. Freud's work does not provide an actual past full of causes for the present, but a series of concepts derived from observations in the present and via psychoanalytic interpretation transpo