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Cournut addresses the question of discord and disagreement among analysts. He reviews the many theoretical questions about which analysts disagree and feels
that they sometimes get so involved in their work with the unconscious that they neglect the preconscious formations in which the Freudian system of thought is inscribed. For Cournut there were two types of questions which Freud considered. Questions concerning origins ("why" questions) led to the theory of infantile sexuality, to the search for origins in the prehistory of the infant and eventually in the prehistory of humanity. Freud's attempts to answer questions about how the psychic apparatus functioned were seen first in the Project and the early work on dream and symptom formation. These questions remained in abeyance for many years until the metapsychological papers in 1915 brought questions about how the psychic apparatus worked into prominence again. "How" questions relied on thermodynamics and neurophysiology, while the "why" questions were answered with support from anthropology and biology. Fifty years later the post-Freudians argue about the same problems. The author divides psychoanalytic writing into two classes. One group consists of clinical and auto-analytic studies which attempt to verify and refine the theory of functioning of the mental apparatus. The other group is a continuation of the search for origins and answers to "why" questions. How, then, does one choose among the various theories? The author suggests that, in a sense, such questions are concerned with an area which is "beyond psychoanalysis" and involve psychoanalysis in the larger tradition of Western humanism.