The Neurological Origins of Psychoanalysis

Fancher, Raymond E. (2002) The Neurological Origins of Psychoanalysis.

Abstract

An analysis of Sigmund Freud's posthumously published Project for a Scientific Psychology (1895) shows that many of his key psychoanalytic concepts originated in the context of neurological speculation, in spite of his later contention that psychoanalysis is a purely psychological science. Among these concepts are the ego, cathexis, psychic energy, the wish fulfillment theory of dreams, and the basic formulations of the primary and secondary processes.This paper describes Freud's treatment of these concepts in the Project, and argues that it is unlikely that mature psychoanalytic theory would have developed as it did without its neurological underpinnings.