Early and late Freud

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Early Freud | Later Freud | See also

Freud went through two main phases of thought.

Early Freud

In his early work of the 1880s, he had many patients with hysterical symptoms such as fits obsessions who reported early sexual traumas that ranged from unpleasant to shocking. From this, he theorized that later trauma was caused by re-awakening of those early experiences and that hysterical symptoms were displaced sexual desires. Psychoanalysis included catharsis, whereby regression to the event to allow the repressed energy to be released.

Later Freud

By the late 1890s, he concluded that many of these reported experiences had not actually happened and were actually memories that were based in early phantasy. Like False Memory Syndrome, what is genuinely experienced as a memory is actually a construction. He called the mix of perception and emotion 'psychical reality'.

He also discovered transference where the patient replaces an earlier loved person with the analyst. Refusal to reciprocate becomes a part of the treatment.

The two Freudian phases are summarized in this table:

	Early Freud	Later Freud
Model	Mechanical, neurophysiological	unconscious fantasy
Repression	Memories	Phantasies and conflicts
Emphasis	External events	Translation of events into inner world
Technique	Catharsis	Free association
Understanding	Of presenting symptoms	Of transference