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Republications of certain of the more significant psychoanalytic classics dealing with ego operations4 14 18 and new works reaffirming Freud's insistence upon the superiority of the structural hypothesis1 15 attest to the growing importance of these concepts in psychoanalytic theorizing today. This shift in a natural continuum that began with an exploration of the id, gradually supplemented by a greater and greater interest in the less instinctually determined workings of the psyche, has been primarily an outgrowth of the exigencies of clinical practice. The literature in regard to this is extensive and need not be reviewed at this time.19
With the above in mind it hopefully will not seem too presumptuous if an elaboration of Freud's basic formulations concerning the popular Greek myth, Prometheus, is now attempted. This undertaking seems particularly propitious, not only because Freud interpreted this myth principally in terms of his initial emphasis on “id psychology,” but because the publication in question, “The Acquisition of Fire”8 (1932), came into existence as a response to a criticism of a footnote in an earlier work7 (1930), and hence was probably not considered a definitive interpretation of the Greek legend by Freud himself.
The prehistoric development of the use of fire has already been sketched by Grinstein.13 In a paper dealing with this subject he maintains that Prometheus represents a symbolic statement about a late stage in fire control, when pregenital oral-anal conflicts had already been resolved. He is in agreement with Freud's basically