A 'Loose' Chronological Organization of Freud's Different Psychoanalytic Theories
Freud never created a theory in which he was not provocatively controversial in some way or another, and in this regard his later 1915-1920 Life vs. Death Instinct and 'Superego vs. Id with the Ego Mediating' Theory would be no different than any one of his earlier theories in earlier parts of his career.
Let's loosely organize Freud's different theories as follows with me looking up the more precise dates by tomorrow morning:
1. The Beginning of Freud's Theory of The Unconscious and 'The Return of the Repressed' under the influence of 'the talking cure -- chimney sweeping -- and auto-hypnosis' (Anna O, Breuer's patient from 1881, and the 'first' psychoanalytic patient), 1885 Freud studied with Charcot in Paris and learned more about hypnosis and both the common if not always 'traumatic' and 'sexual' etiologies of hysteria combined with the 'unconscious repression' etiology and the idea of 'emotional abreaction' and 'catharsis' in conjunction with the recall of the unconscious, repressed memory under hypnotic suggestion, 'the pressure technique', and/or 'free association' to stimulate the 'removal of the hysterical symptom' associated with the unconscious, repressed memory -- these clinical events and theoretical developments would trigger Freud and Breuer to write a book together describing all these events, and The Birth of 'Psycho-analysis', 1895, Studies in Hysteria.
2. Freud's Seduction Theory (1896, The Aetiology of Hysteria, theorizing for the
first time about the impact of 'adults seducing and sexually abusing children);
3. Freud's Abandonment or Partial Abandonment of The Traumacy-Seduction Theory1896-1899 and towards a more 'sexual wish fulfillment fantasy' view of childhood memories and the human psyche anticipating the various theories that would follow this development.
4. Freud's Screen Memory Theory (1899, 'Screen Memories', Freud speculated that 'conscious' memories can and/or do allude to deeper, darker, 'repressed, unconcious memories interwoven with symbolic wishful fantasies'. This theory paved the way for his classic 'Interpretation of Dreams');
5. Freud's Dream Interpretation Theory (1900, 'The Interpretation of Dreams');
6. Freud's Theories of 'Childhood Sexuality' and 'The Oedipal Complex' (1905, 'Three Essays on Sexuality');
7. Freud's Changing Ideas about Transference, first introduced in 1895, in the book, 'Studies in Hysteria, now years later, after the 'failure' of the 'Dora' case, which he wrote about in his 1905 essay, 'Fragments of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria', Freud much more clearly articulated and elaborated on the clinical phenomenon and Freudian concept of 'transference' in his 1912 essay, 'The Dynamics of The Transference');
8. Freud's First Fully Articulated Theory of Narcissism (1914, On Narcissism);
9. Freud's 'Life and Death Instinct' Theory (1920, Beyond The Pleasure Principle)
10. Freud's famous 'Hegelian Triumvarate': 'The Id' (Thesis), 'The Superego'(Moral Anti-thesis), and 'The Ego' (Mediating and Synthesizing Agent in The Personality)' -- Strachey's translations -- first discussed in 1920, Beyond The Pleasure Principle, later more specifically discussed, 1923, in 'The Ego and The Id').
11. One of Freud's last essays, 1940, 'Splitting of The Ego in The Process of Defence', written in 1938, published in 1940 after his death, anticipates and foreshadows the birth and evolution of 'Object Relations' -- a different 'revolution' in Psychoanalysis, jumped on by Melanie Klein, and further developed by Freudian and post-Freudian theorists such as: Ronald Fairbairn, D.W. Winnicott, Harry Guntrip, and others, leading to the 'Self Psychology' of Heinz Kohut and others...
.................................................................................
DGB Philosophy-Psychology -- in addition to integrating elements of Freudian and Jungian Psychological Theory and others mentioned elsewhere -- also aims to build a philosphical and psychological dialectical bridge over the abyss of Freud's early Traumacy-Seduction Theory and his later theories including the issues of Screen Memories, Dream Interpretation, Infantile and Childhood Sexuality, The Oedipal Complex, Narcissism, Transference Theory, The Repetition Compulsion, The Life and Death Instincts, The Superego, Ego, and Id, and The Splitting of The Ego.
More to come soon...on the DGB development and evolution of this important subject matter.
-- dgb, March 25th, modified and updated, March 31st, 2009.
...................................................................................
