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In Freud's theory of the mind at about the turn of the century there were permanent elements to which he adhered all his life. There were others which he subsequently modified or added to, and there were still others which were themselves modifications of views he had held at an earlier period.
The reason why the date chosen is the most convenient to discuss the subject is that the fullest exposition Freud ever gave of it was in the well-known seventh chapter of The Interpretation of Dreams (1900). Most students have found this the most abstruse and difficult part of any of Freud's writings, which are usually pellucid. Fortunately, in the documents accompanying the Fliess correspondence, we now have material that throws light on the genesis of those later ideas and also helps to explicate the meaning they had in Freud's mind.
It is for philosophers to decide according to their way of thinking what label they would attach to Freud's basic conceptions, but an attempt may be made here at least to describe some of them.
Freud came from his early training deeply imbued with the belief in the universality of natural law and with a disbelief in the occurrence of miracles or spontaneous or uncaused acts. Scientific investigation would indeed be pointless if the order it strove to ascertain did not exist. He would certainly have subscribed to the closing words of his teacher Meynert's address to the 54th Versammlung Deutscher Naturforscher und Ärzte:1 ‘Über die Gesetzmässigkeit des menschlichen Denkens und Handelns’: ‘I should like to say in general that all philosophy, all human acceptance of wisdom so far as history spans, has really brought to light only two conclusions in which the outlook of those who have made use of the thought of all mankind differs