The Structure of Freudian Thought. Melvin Feffer. New York:  International Universities Press, 1982.  298 pp.

In The Structure of Freudian Thought Melvin Feffer makes the case that limitations in Freud's epistemology have created significant logical inconsistencies in his theory of personality development. Feffer provides a thorough overview of Freud's various theories of development. He then describes the inconsistencies that he finds in each of them. He argues that they are all related, and states that they are indicative of “the problem of immutability and discontinuity” (p. 41).

This problem is complex. It is most clearly illustrated in Feffer's analysis of the evolution of the pleasure principle into the reality principle. According to one of Freud's accounts, the primitive personality consists solely of impulses striving for discharge. The ability to delay gratification develops as these impulses are frustrated by reality. Drawing on the work of Hartmann and White, Feffer points out that if there is nothing in the personality except these impulses, then there is nothing there which could develop the capacity to delay gratification. Freud makes the reality principle appear out of nothing—as if by magic. This leap in development, whereby structures appear in the psyche as if out of nothing, is what Feffer calls the problem of discontinuity.

This problem is not solved by assuming that some capacity to understand frustration and to delay gratification also exists in the primitive personality, for these abilities are supposed to be the results