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The comparative study of organ neuroses has shown that the same dynamic tendencies predominate in cases with similar symptomatology. As in all psychoanalytic studies, our judgment regarding the preponderance of a certain dynamic tendency has been based on the usual criteria: behavior in transference, the actual life situation, the early history and finally the direct expression of the dynamic trends in free association and particularly in dreams. We do not question the validity of such judgments and are convinced that an experienced analyst, after long contact with a patient, receives a correct impression regarding the relative intensity of oral aggressive and receptive, and anal sadistic and retentive tendencies. It is well established that in compulsion neuroses anal sadistic impulses play a dominant rôle, and that in melancholias the oral incorporative tendencies and the wish to retain the incorporated object are paramount. However, since Freud introduced into his metapsychology the structural, the dynamic and the economic analysis of psychoanalytic material, the economic approach has remained the least reliable of the three, indeed merely a theoretical postulate.
Detailed records containing the complete free association material and the reported dreams of our patients offered us an obvious opportunity for a quantitative evaluation of analytic material, such as Freud probably had in mind when he introduced