Frames of reference in psychoanalytic psychology

BY JOSEPH SANDLER1, CHRISTOPHER DARE2 and ALEX HOLDER3

I. Introduction

Psychoanalytic theory is difficult to teach. This paper introduces a series

intended to help with this problem by adopting an approach which may make both the
teaching and learning of psychoanalytic theory relatively easier.
Teachers of psychoanalysis have often attributed the difficulties which exist in
comprehending psychoanalytic theory entirely to the emotionally based resistance of the
student (whether he be a student in a psychoanalytic training course or a psychiatrist,
psychologist or caseworker). Such resistances were especially common in the early days
of psychoanalysis when, for example, the idea of childhood sexuality and its persisting
influence on mental functioning was particularly unacceptable. There can be little
doubt that the emphasis placed by psychoanalysts on such things as unconscious
incestuous, sadistic, homosexual impulses and the like still evokes responses of
antagonism and rejection of psychoanalysis as a whole.
“... the experience of psychoanalysts, beginning with Freud, has been that attacks on
their theories and findings, however reasonable and scientific they may appear to be, have
often been intensely emotional reactions disguised in the form of intellectual criticism.
However, certain unfortunate consequences follow if this standpoint is maintained,
foremost among these being a tendency for some psychoanalysts to reject legitimate and
reasonable critical evaluation of psychoanalysis as being intrinsically irrational and
tendentious. Such psychoanalysts throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak.
Now there is no doubt that [emotional] resistances to the acceptance of psychoanalytic
ideas ... do occur. Yet I believe that these form only a part, albeit a significant part, of
those difficulties which arise as obstacles to communication. There are other difficulties,
equally linked with psychoanalytic theories, which are not predominantly emotional in
origin, but are essentially intellectual problems relating to the structure and organization
of psychoanalytic concepts. The more we know of the way in which psychoanalytic
theory is organized within itself, the more readily we will be able to distinguish between
the two areas of difficulty”. [Sandler, 1969].
Intellectual resistance to the acceptance of psychoanalytic theory may at times
be due to deficiencies of presentation, for not every accomplished psychoanalytic
clinician is a good exponent of theory, and some may be excessively dogmatic while
others are too inhibited by the complexities and ambiguities of the subject. However, it
is not often realized that certain problems are inherent in psychoanalytic theory
because of the nature of its development (quite apart from its subject-matter).
Even within Freud’s own writings we can observe that theoretical developments
did not take place along a single broad front, and earlier formulations were not always
1
Senior Lecturer, Department of Psychiatry, Institute of Psychiatry, London SE5 8AF; Director, Index Project, Hampstead Child-
Therapy Clinic, London NW3 5SU.

2
Lecturer, Department of Psychiatry, Institute of Psychiatry, London; Consultant Physician, Bethlem Royal and Maudsley Hospitals.

3
Lecturer, Department of Psychiatry, Institute of Psychiatry, London; Research Psychotherapist, Hampstead Child-Therapy Clinic,
London.
integrated into those which were made later. Thus the theory of dreams is still most
explicitly formulated in terms of the so-called topographical model (with its division into
the Unconscious, the Preconscious and the Perceptual-Conscious systems), even
though for many purposes the topographical model has been superseded by the
structural one. Moreover, the same term was used by Freud to mean different things at
different times, and this has persisted in subsequent psychoanalytic writings [Sandler,
1969]. Further, the problems are not only a consequence of the state of psychoanalytic
theory, but are compounded by terminological confusion. In 1947 Ernst Kris remarked:
…Current psychoanalytic terminology is, by and large, that used by Freud.
Freud’s language bears the imprint of the physiology, neurology, psychiatry, and the
classical education of his age. It is coloured by its use in the therapeutic procedure, hence
the richness of metaphors. Freud was not concerned with semantics. The correct use of a
term had little meaning to him; it was the context that mattered. One might say that such
insouciance is the hallmark of genius; it undoubtedly is its prerogative. When a
generation or two of scientists arrogate such a prerogative the lack of concern for
semantics may well lead to confusion
... Even more urgent is the [need for] systematic clarification. Throughout fifty
years, psychoanalytic hypotheses have frequently been revised and reformulated. Rarely,
however, have all previous findings been integrated with new insight ... At present,
hypotheses in psychoanalysis are formulated in various terminologies according to the
various stages of the development of psychoanalysis in which they were suggested.
In the course of studying a number of clinical psychoanalytic concepts (Sandler,
Dare & Holder, 1970 a-d, 1971; Sandler, Holder & Dare, 1970a-e) it became clear that
the understanding of all the concepts investigated (e.g. transference, resistance and
acting out) was bedevilled by the fact that the same term was often used with different
meanings at different times in the developing literature of psychoanalysis. As a
consequence, a clinical term may currently be given a variety of meanings (some of
them even contradictory) derived from different epochs. The same is true of the more
abstract theoretical concepts and the terms used to encompass them. The changes in
meaning of the term ‘unconscious' are an important example of this. Among the many
meanings covered by this term are a ‘quality’ of experience, and the Unconscious, a
mental ‘system’.
Attempts to provide an ex cathedra and comparatively arbitrary set of definitions
fail to solve the problem, for such definitions are relatively static, do not integrate
perfectly with one another, and lead to an omission of important aspects of
psychoanalytic thinking. In our view what should be aimed for is an understanding of
psychoanalytic concepts and theories in their appropriate contexts, set within the
appropriate psychoanalytic frame of reference, of which several have accumulated and
are currently employed in psychoanalysis. It thus becomes essential for those who wish
to master the subject, even at a relatively elementary level, to tolerate the ambiguities
involved in the theory, rather than to try to eliminate them, for ambiguity need not
constitute confusion.
Teachers of psychoanalysis have long been aware of the problems arising from
this state of affairs. In general, their attempts to deal with these have taken two
directions. One attempt is to present knowledge in terms of one particular version of
psychoanalytic theory, creating the fiction that this knowledge can be encompassed
within a unified frame work. The other approach to the teaching of psychoanalytic
theory is that in which the student of psychoanalysis is expected to learn by going
through Freud’s works in chronological order, retracing the path of development
followed by Freud. While this procedure may appeal to some, to many it is a source of
irritation and confusion, for the student does not pursue his studies in vacuo. He may
concurrently be engaged in his clinical practice and be grappling with contemporary
ways of thinking in psychoanalysis. Small wonder that a number are attracted to ‘new’
and apparently all-encompassing theoretical systems, relatively easily grasped. Others

2
are tempted to reject all psychoanalytic theories or to pronounce them irrelevant to
their practical work.
We have spoken of the intellectual aspect of the difficulties in the path towards a
full understanding of psychoanalytic theory. It is our view that the ambiguities which
we have mentioned, the coexistence of different theoretical models, and even the
contradictions within psychoanalytic theory, are intrinsic to and an inevitable aspect of
psychoanalysis as a growing subject. From this point of view an initial schematic
‘overview’ of the subject is essential, and this series of papers is aimed at presenting
such an overview, and the frames of reference necessary to it.
Even those who disdain explicit and formal theorizing develop, of necessity, their
own personal (and to some extent idiosyncratic) inner sets of theories. They may be
unaware of the existence of such theories or frames of reference, or be unable to
verbalize them. They may also be unaware of contradictions between them, and of their
shifts from one to another as appropriate. Even the ‘purest’ clinician has his theories
about his patients. It is our purpose, in this series of papers, to start from the
assumption that more than one frame of reference is necessary in the study of
psychoanalysis and, by presenting what we regard as the basic coexisting conceptual
frameworks, we hope to facilitate comprehensibility and communication.
Formal training in psychoanalysis is complicated by the fact that it has a dual
aim, i.e. to train people to be both scholars and clinicians. While we believe that a
thorough theoretical background is vital for every psychoanalyst, we do not believe that
it is essential for every psychoanalytic practitioner to be burdened with a mammoth
history of psychoanalysis in all its minute detail. Nor do we believe that a detailed
tracing of the vicissitudes of Freud’s theory is appropriate for the student in his early
years. This can be illustrated by an example of the sort of detailed examination of
psychoanalytic chronology - the work of a distinguished psychoanalytic scholar - with
which the student may be confronted. Such examples, which share the characteristic of
being incomprehensible to all but the most sophisticated theoreticians, can be
multiplied a thousandfold.
In his attempt to distinguish Cs. and Pcs., Freud finally, though only
momentarily, exalted Cs. to a position similar to that of the ego in present-day theory,
for he ascribed reality testing and the control of motility to it, and this is not one of
those instances in which he used Cs. interchangeably for Pcs., but on the contrary an
explicit attempt to distinguish between the two systems. This distinction appeared in A
Metapsychological Supplement to the Theory of Dreams, the paper following The
Unconscious. But the attribution of this role to the Cs. was short-lived, for a moment
later Freud attributed both reality testing and the censorship to the ego - an undefined
term at this point - clearly foreshadowing the explicit formulation of The Ego and the Id.
And then Freud described Cs. as an ‘organ’ of the ego. In this last formulation Cs.
becomes a sense organ of the ego (as it was of the Pcs. in the original topographic theory
of 1900) instead of a system which was itself in effect the present-day ego (Gill, 1963).
This formulation by a lucid psychoanalytic commentator is nevertheless difficult
to grasp unless one has had an intensive previous acquaintance with psychoanalytic
theory. It is our view that the presentation of material at this level is inappropriate to
the initial teaching of psychoanalysis. We would advocate rather that it is better to have
a simplified account presented initially, even though the special difficulties inherent in
the communication of psychoanalytic theory make it necessary to preserve the broad
lines of historical change. In this sense, we believe that the approach we are taking is
essentially a historical rather than a chronological one, for a historical approach
involves schematization and the extraction of essentials, even though this may do
injustice to the complexity and detailed development of the subject.
The rationale for the creation of new models during the whole history of
psychoanalysis has been the attempt to understand clinical material in the context of
the particular techniques of treatment in use at the time. Thus, from the point of view of
understanding the processes in a neurotic patient lying flat on his back on the couch,

3
thinking in terms of the older ‘topographical’ model may, in some ways, be more useful
for the analyst’s purposes at that time. Conversely, his understanding of patients with
so-called character disorders or even those who show psychotic defects, may most
easily be gained by the use of the later ‘structural’ frame of reference.
In the fields of general psychology and in medicine, as in other subjects, the
student is presented with a relatively simplified ‘rounded out’ view during the first part
of his training. Theoretical contradictions and historical aspects are, for the most part,
left until later. What he is first taught acts as a frame of reference, a tool with which he
can assess his experience. Because of the difficulties in doing justice to psychoanalytic
theory, even at the simplest level, by using one frame of reference only, we propose to
give a historically ordered sequence of frames of reference. This process entails
simplification in order to make the schemata relatively coherent.
For our purposes we propose to distinguish between ‘frames of reference’ and
‘models’. Although the frames of reference will be located in relation to phases of
development in the history of psychoanalysis, they represent present-day constructions
on our part. They will be schematic and will eliminate, in the interest of simplification,
some of the inconsistencies and variations found in the original writings. We hope that
they will be helpful as ‘organizers’, making the initial comprehension and utilization of
psychoanalytic theory somewhat easier. We would stress that we are not providing new
theories, but rather giving frameworks which are intentionally simplified formulations.
In the paper which follows (Sandler, Dare & Holder, 1972) a historical context
will be provided, in which psychoanalytic history is divided into a number of phases.
For each phase a frame of reference will be provided in later papers (Sandler, Holder &
Dare, 1972a-c).

Acknowledgements
This work was conducted at the Institute of Psychiatry, University of London, in
collaboration with the Index Project, The Hampstead Child-Therapy Clinic, London, and was
supported by a grant from the Foundation for Research in Psychoanalysis, Beverly Hills, California.
The Hampstead Child-Therapy Clinic is an organization which is at present maintained by the Field
Foundation, Inc., New York; the Foundation for Research in Psychoanalysis, Beverly Hills,
California; the Freud Centenary Fund., London; the Anna Freud Foundation, New York; the Grant
Foundation, Inc., New York; the Andrew Mellon Foundation; the National Institute for Mental
Health, Bethesda; The New-Land Foundation, New York; and a number of private supporters.

References
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Kris, E. (1947). Problems in clinical research: discussion remarks. Am. J. Orthopsychiat. 17, 210.
Sandler, J. (1969). On the Communication of Psychoanalytic Thought. Leiden: University Press.
Sandler, J., Dare, C. & Holder, A. (1970 a). Basic psychoanalytic concepts. I. The extension of clinical
concepts outside the psychoanalytic situation, Br. J. Psychiat. 116, 551-554.
Sandler, J., Dare, C. & Holder, A. (19706). Basic psychoanalytic concepts. III. Transference. Br. J.
Psychiat, 116, 667-672.
Sandler, J., Dare, C. & Holder, A, (1970c). Basic psychoanalytic concepts. VIII Special forms of
transference. Br. J. Psychiat. 117, 561-568.
Sandler, J., Dare, C. & Holder, A. (I970d). Basic psychoanalytic concepts. IX. Working through. Br, J.
Psychiat. 117, 617-621.
Sandler, J., Dare, C. & Holder, A. (1971). Basic psychoanalytic concepts. X. Interpretations and other
interventions. Br. J. Psychiat. 118, 53-59.
Sandler, J., Dare, C. & Holder, A. (1972). Frames of reference in psychoanalytic psychology,II. The
historical context and phases in the development of psychoanalysis, Br. J. med. Psychol. 4S, 133-142.
Sandler, J Holder, A. & Dare, C. (1970a). Basic psychoanalytic concepts. II. The treatment alliance,
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Psychiat. 117, 215-221.
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Psychiat. 117, 329-334.
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 Sandler, J. Holder, A. & Dare, C. (1972a), Frames of reference in psychoanalytic psychology. IV. The
affect-trauma frame of reference. Br. J. med. Psychol. 45 (in press).
Sandler, J. Holder, A. & Dare, C. (19726). Frames of reference in psychoanalytic psychology. V. The
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structural frame of reference. Br. J. med. Psychol. 45 (in press).

II. The historical context and phases in the development of psychoanalysis

The history of psychoanalysis has been discussed by Freud (1914b, 1925), by

his main biographer, Jones (1953), and by a variety of authors from one point of view or
another (e.g. Zilboorg, 1941; Levitt, 1959; Whyte, 1959; Wyss, 1966; Ellenberger, 1970).
There are also many brief accounts of the history of psychoanalysis written for relatively
specific purposes. Thus Stewart (1967) has considered the first ten years of Freud's
work in some detail, and other authors have considered such aspects as the
development of the ego concept and the psychology of the ego (e.g. Hartmann, 1956;
Rapaport, 1959). Rapaport, in discussing ego psychology, divides its development into a
number of phases, and we have found it useful to adapt his phases to the consideration
of the history of psychoanalytic theory in general.
In this paper we shall give a short and selective historical account in order to
provide a background to the papers which follow. In it we place emphasis on the
interaction between observed clinical data and treatment methods on the one hand, and
the theoretical constructs devised to account for them on the other. Clinical experience
certainly shaped the theories which Freud and his followers put forward, and the
theoretical formulations, especially in the early years, were affected by prevailing modes
of conceptualization and notions modelled on concepts from other fields (e.g. the
physical sciences and the neurology of the time). Moreover, each theoretical formulation
influenced the perception, evaluation and understanding of the clinical data until a
point was reached at which the ‘theoretical strain’ (Sandler, 1969) was such that a
(somewhat radical) change in theory had to be made in order to encompass the new
observations. It is quite striking how the development of psychoanalytic theory
parallels, in its form, the changes which have been observed and described in other
fields (cf. Kuhn, 1962).4

The first phase

Freud graduated in medicine in Vienna in 1881, and had engaged in some
pharmacological and comparative anatomical research before qualification. He then
spent some time in Meynert’s laboratory, where the neurological causes of psychiatric
disturbances were being sought. In 1885, at the age of 29, Freud obtained a travelling
scholarship which enabled him to make a crucial visit to France. There he was
profoundly impressed by Charcot, whose demonstrations at the Salpêtrière he attended
for a few months in 1885-6, Charcot was showing patients who, even though they were
thought of as having neurological defects (in particular, products of ‘degeneracy’), could
be made to lose their physical symptoms -primarily paralyses, anaesthesiae and ‘fits’-by
psychological interventions, especially suggestion and hypnosis. Freud also noted
Charcot’s belief that these patients (both men and women) had decisive sexual
problems in their lives. He reports having heard Charcot say:
‘…in this sort of case it’s always a question of the genitals - always, always,
always’ (Freud, 1914b).
Freud was impressed by the parallel which such workers as Charcot and
Bernheim had drawn between the phenomenon of mental ‘dissociation’ which could be
4
Clearly an effective theoretical framework acts like other cognitive and perceptual structures which will be used until
they have to give way in the face of overwhelming contradictions or a mass of unexplained information. The process of
scientific development is very much like the way in which the young child’s concepts of the world evolve (Piaget,
1950).

5
induced by hypnosis, and the dissociation between a conscious and unconscious part
of the mind which appeared to occur in patients with hysterical symptoms. This
dissociation was regarded by Charcot, and by the French school in general (notably
Janet), as being due to some fault in the nervous system, an intrinsic weakness, so that
the mind could not be held together in one piece, so to speak.
At a later date Freud (1914b) recounted his indebtedness to the ‘master’ Charcot
for his clinical methods and also for certain hints concerning the origin of hysteria - for
example, the role of psychological trauma as a precipitating agent, as well as the
possible sexual elements in the illness. There seems little doubt that Freud was highly
selective in what he took from Charcot. Zilboorg has pointed out that although Charcot
‘...gave evidence that he was fully aware of deeply-seated psychological currents
and counter-currents in hysteria, he seems nevertheless to have been fully convinced
that these were by-products of a physical, organic, morbid cause combined with
heredity’ (Zilboorg, 1941).
The impact of Freud’s brief experience with Charcot can, for the purpose of this
paper, be thought of as having two major consequences. The first was that Freud was
led towards the conviction that mental disturbances could have psychological origins.
The second was his further development of the notion of dissociation of different aspects
of mental functioning, a concept which, in one form or another, has remained central to
psychoanalytic thinking.
On returning to Vienna Freud found himself committed to full-time private
practice as a neurologist. At that time this meant that he was dealing with patients
suffering from ‘nervous diseases’ in the widest sense of the term. In his work he
attempted to use hypnosis with patients suffering from what we would now call neurotic
disorders, and during this time he was impressed by the Viennese physician and
physiologist Josef Breuer, with whom he began a significant collaboration in pursuit of
an understanding of hysteria and related disturbances. Freud began his collaboration
with Breuer in 1885, and they worked together for a number of years. A jointly written
book appeared in 1895-the famous ‘Studies on Hysteria’ (Breuer & Freud, 1893-5).
Breuer had found that a patient (Anna O.), if allowed to talk about her symptoms in a
particular ‘hypnoid’ state of mind, could recall events which seemed to be related to the
origin of the symptoms, with subsequent relief. The patient herself referred to this
experience as her ‘talking cure’. In Freud’s joint work with Breuer a consideration of the
greatest importance was introduced in which the patient’s symptoms could be regarded
as the breakthrough, in disguised form, of emotional forces which had been dammed up
and kept back by some form of pressure. Freud emphasized, rather more than Breuer,
the active aspect of the process of dissociation, seeing it as a process of defence (in
contrast to the French school, which tended to regard the dissociation of the conscious
and unconscious parts of the mind as an outcome of a weakness, a failure of
integration). Freud’s two papers on the ‘neuropsychoses of defence’ (1894, 1896) bring
this point out very clearly. In addition, Freud became convinced that the division
between conscious and unconscious parts of the mind occurred in everyone, not only in
neurotic patients. Symptoms arose when a quantity of affective energy too great to be
assimilated in the normal way was forced away from consciousness (repressed) and had
to find a means of indirect expression. The pent-up unconscious forces leading to the
symptom were thought of as affects or emotions which had been aroused by real
traumatic experiences. The memories associated with these emotions were, in neurotic
patients, unacceptable to their normal standards of morality and conduct, and could
therefore not be absorbed or discharged in a normal way. Hence such affects were
thought of as being ‘constricted’ or in some way ‘strangulated’. Treatment was based on
the idea that such emotions could be released through bringing them and the memories
associated with them into consciousness, with subsequent release of affect through
abreaction (or catharsis) and assimilation of the previously rejected mental content by
the conscious part of the mind.
Breuer had withdrawn from his collaboration with Freud after some years, and

6
Freud attributed this in part to the reaction of distaste which Breuer had towards
Freud’s putting forward more and more forcibly the importance of sexuality in the
genesis of the neuroses. Freud became rather disenchanted with the use of hypnosis as
not all patients were hypnotizable, and he also did not regard himself as a very good
hypnotist. Moreover, the therapeutic results were not all that might be wished for even
in those cases which could be hypnotized. He then attempted methods using suggestion
in order to force thoughts into the patient’s consciousness, 5 Looking back on the
development of his psychoanalytic technique, Freud commented:
“My patients, I reflected, must in fact ‘know’ all the things which had hitherto
only been made accessible to them in hypnosis; and assurances and encouragement on
my part, assisted perhaps by the touch of my hand, would, I thought, have the power of
forcing the forgotten facts and connections into consciousness. No doubt this seemed a
more laborious process than putting the patients into hypnosis, but it might prove
highly instructive. So I abandoned hypnotism, only retaining my practice of requiring
the patient to lie upon a sofa while I sat behind him, seeing him, but not seen myself”
[1925].
The first phase of psychoanalysis can be thought of as ending in 1897, when a
radical change in Freud’s orientation (to be described later in this paper) was initiated.
During the first phase he had been confronted and stimulated by problems posed by
numbers of hysterical, obsessional, phobic and some ambulatory psychotic patients, as
well as patients with other forms of ‘nervous disorder’. His formulations during this
phase by now included conflict and defence, resistance, and transference. He stressed
the importance of sexual development in the aetiology of the neuroses, and related
psychopathology to the effect of psychological traumas, in particular experiences of
sexual seduction in childhood. He also suggested that certain disturbances were a
consequence of specific sexual frustrations and an abnormal sexual life (e.g the practice
of coitus interrupts, sexual abstinence, masturbation). These he called the ‘actual
neuroses’,6 in contradistinction to the psychoneuroses proper - such as hysteria and
obsessional neurosis. During this time his productions included a very lengthy
encyclopaedia article on childhood cerebral palsies, and a manuscript which
represented a monumental attempt to produce a general psychology in
neurophysiological terms – the ‘Project for a Scientific Psychology’ (1895). This is a work
which has thrown a great deal of light on the development of Freud’s scientific thought.
The theoretical frame of reference associated with the first phase will be discussed in a
later paper in this series (Sandler, Holder & Dare, 1972a).
At this point it is perhaps appropriate to mention some of the ways of thinking
which Freud brought to his first psychological theories. We can distinguish between the
scientific and philosophical influences on him (Jones, 1953; Holzman, 1970). The
former included the ideas of natural causality, determinism and adaptation inherent in
Darwin’s -biology and theory of natural selection. He was also strongly influenced by
the physiology of the Helmholtz school, particularly through the person of his teacher,
Ernst Brücke. These physiologists were intent upon the introduction of the principles of
contemporary physics into their subject. These principles were physicochemical and
mechanistic, in line with the optimism of 19th-century scientists that such principles
would provide explanations for all natural phenomena. Consequently, Freud formulated
his psychological views in terms of energy, its conservation, displacement and
discharge. He (with Breuer) placed great importance on the tendency for the mental
apparatus to keep the energies in it as low as possible or constant. The principle of
5
For a time Freud followed Bernheim’s procedure of laying his hand on the subject’s forehead (the so-called ‘pressure’
technique), insisting that the subject remember. Later he gave up these techniques of suggestion, replacing them with
the method of ‘free association’, in which the patient was asked to report his thoughts as they passed through his mind.
6
The word ‘actual’ is a bad translation of the German prefix Aktual-, which refers to something which is current,
topical, happening in the present. The actual neuroses were seen as arising from the subject’s current life, his current
sexual practices, rather than his earlier experiences. The clinical picture was thought to have more of an organic basis
than did the psychoneuroses, and showed itself in the form of ‘neurasthenia’, anxiety neurosis and hypochondriasis.

7
constancy called for the discharge of quantities of energy if they became too large - as in
the case of the accumulated excitation brought about by the emotional experiences
regarded as being causative factors in the production of neurotic symptoms. In line with
the dominant ideas of the 19th-century scientific trend, Freud systematically attempted
to eliminate teleological explanations in his theories, i.e. he saw mental functioning as
being a form of adaptation to natural causes rather than having an ultimate and final
‘purpose’.7 The mental apparatus was conceived of as running on the principles of
physics, with emphasis on the ways in which energy which had been generated could
be discharged or expended.
From the side of philosophy Freud brought to his thinking the general idea of an
‘unconscious mind’, a concept which he was to sharpen considerably in his theories of
unconscious mental functioning. A number of authors (e.g. Jones, 1953; Whyte, 1959;
Ellenberger, 1970) have shown that a notion of ‘unconscious mind’ was generally
current in the Vienna of Freud,s student days in the form propounded, for example, by
von Hartrnann, Herbart and von Brentano8.

The second phase

The second phase lasted from 1897 to 1923, and was a period of rapid and
substantial development in psychoanalytic theory and practice. Although the third
phase, which can be thought of as commencing with the publication of ‘The Ego and the
Id’ (Freud, 1923), brought considerable changes, many general accounts of
psychoanalytic theory focus on the discoveries and formulations of the second phase. It
is extremely difficult to do justice to the developments during this second phase in a
short account, and in what follows we have had, of necessity, to be highly selective.
The experiences which led Freud to make the changes which initiated this phase
were documented in his letters to an old friend, the nose and throat specialist Wilhelm
Fliess. (Freud, 1887-1902). These experiences related, on the one hand, to his clinical
work with his patients, and on the other to his self-analysis. Towards the end of the
first phase Freud had been studying his patients’ dreams and current daydreams. He
came to see that he could reconstruct (and at times recover in the patients’ memories)
childhood events which showed themselves in later behaviour, dreams and symptoms.
He still adhered to the view that behind all of this lay real traumatic happenings.
It is clear from his correspondence with Fliess that he was heading towards a
decisive change in his views during 1897. His work with his patients and the revelations
of his self-analysis led him finally to the realization that many of the traumas (especially
those of sexual seduction) recalled by his patients, or reconstructed by him, were not in
fact memories of real events at all. Rather, they were fantasies which the patient had
created in his childhood, daydreams which had been pushed out of consciousness and
which subsequently seemed to operate as if they were indeed memories of real events.
The incestuous incidents recalled by his patients, which he previously had taken at face
value, represented wishes on the part of his patients gratified by fulfilment in fantasy.
Probably the most powerful force in this realization were the findings derived from his
self-analysis, which consisted largely of the systematic recording of his associations to
his dreams (cf. letter to Fliess of 21 September 1897). As Freud put it later (1925):
“…I must mention an error into which I fell for a while and which might well have
had fatal consequences for the whole of ray work. Under the influence of the technical
7
G. Klein (1966) shows decisively that the concern to eliminate teleological concepts often looks like an attempt to
remove all ideas of psychological motivation. This is, of course, not possible or desirable, and psychoanalytic
psychology includes a theory of motivation as a central feature. However, there is a fundamental difference between
teleological statements of the sort ‘the aim of sexual intercourse is the survival of the species’ and motivational
statements of the sort ‘the aim of sexual intercourse is to gain a particular sort of pleasure and to relieve a particular
type of tension’.
8
A second philosophical predisposition, ascribed to Freud’s general education (cf. Bibring, 1941), was a tendency to
conceptualize in a dualistic manner - in terms of bipolarities, antitheses and oppositional forces - throughout his
scientific life.

8
procedure which I used at that time, the majority of my patients reproduced from their
childhood scenes in which they were sexually seduced by some grown-up person. …I
believed these stories, and consequently supposed that I had discovered the roots of the
subsequent neurosis in these experiences of sexual seduction in childhood... however, I
was at last obliged to recognize that these scenes of seduction had never taken place,
and that they were only phantasies which my patients had made up or which I myself
had perhaps forced on them... When I had pulled myself together, I was able to draw the
right conclusions from my discovery: namely, that the neurotic symptoms were not related
to actual events but to wishful phantasies.”
Freud was at first puzzled by the direction in which his observations were to
take his theories, but soon realized that in these observations lay a basic ingredient of
mental functioning in general, and of mental conflict in particular. Thus a repressed
early wish-fulfilling daydream may find new expression at a later date in a different
form, as a symptom, slip (parapraxis), dream or a creative work of art. With this we see
the abandonment of the theory of the traumatic origins of the neurosis and a shift of
emphasis instead to the history and vicissitudes of the patient’s inner strivings, and of
the struggle to deal with them. The analysis of dreams, became extremely important in
studying the way in which these psychological impulses found surface expression. He
had found dream analysis the most useful way of conducting his self-analysis, and
applied this method more and more to his patients, who were asked to associate to the
individual elements of the dream as they related it (i.e. to the ‘manifest content’ of the
dream). The dream became known as the ‘royal road to the Unconscious’. Freud’s
intense interest in dream analysis culminated in the publication of his most detailed
and worked-out psychoanalytic contribution - the monumental The Interpretation of
Dreams (1900). In this work he elaborated a new framework which was to form the
basis for the theories of the second phase. Because the psychological model which he
proposed contains the notion of psychological systems related spatially in depth, it has
come to be known as the topographical model of the mental apparatus.
In 1901 Freud published The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, in which a
variety of phenomena, such as slips of the tongue and symbolic actions (‘symptomatic
acts’), were investigated as expressions of unconscious impulses. A crucial work in the
early part of the second phase was Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905). In
this the so-called ‘instinct’9 theory of psychoanalysis had its first elaboration.
Instinctual drives were seen as the basis for the whole variety of sexual wishes of
childhood and adult life. Their manifold expression, ranging from normal sexuality to
the perversions, was studied. Indeed, the basis for the Essays was the clinical study of
the perversions, leading to the conclusion that so-called perverse tendencies were
present in everyone, although they might be strenuously fought against and denied.
This work established infantile and childhood sexuality, in its various forms, as one of
the fundamental bases of psychoanalytic theory, which now became unequivocally a
drive-psychology. Whereas in the first phase Freud had concentrated on adaptation to
events in the external world, his orientation now shifted to the way in which the
individual adapts to internal forces. While the impact of external forces and occurrences
was not neglected, the theory of the second phase was directly influenced by the clinical
procedure employed by Freud and his by now growing number of colleagues. The theory
reflected the situation in which the patient lay on the couch, following the so-called
‘basic rule’ of free association, producing his dreams and his associations to the various
dream elements. The analyst was not seen, told the patient little or nothing of himself,
and concealed his own beliefs and attitudes as far as possible. This highlighted what
came from within the patient, and the theory reflects the preoccupation with this. A full
description of the clinical situation and the relevant clinical concepts can be found

9
As many have pointed out, much confusion has been generated by the faulty translation of the German Trieb as
‘instinct’ rather than ‘drive’. In recent years an attempt has been made to remedy this by making use of the compromise
terra ‘instinctual drive’, to be distinguished from ‘instinctive’ tendencies and behaviour studied by ethologists.

9
elsewhere (Sandler, Dare & Holder, 1972), where the development of such concepts as
transference, resistance, acting out and working through is discussed.
In the first phase Freud had distinguished between conscious and unconscious
aspects of the mind, and this distinction is elaborated in the topographical model,
Freud described two main sorts of unconsciousness. One was characteristic of the
processes in the system Unconscious, which was regarded as containing instinctual
drives and wishes which, if they were allowed to emerge into consciousness, would
constitute a danger, a threat, and would give rise to the most unpleasant feelings. The
strivings in the Unconscious were thought of as constantly being propelled towards
discharge, but if they are expressed in consciousness (reach the system Conscious) or
behaviour, can commonly only achieve this in a distorted or censored form. The other
sort of unconsciousness was that which was attributed to a system which he called the
Pre-conscious, which was conceived of as containing knowledge, thoughts and
memories of all sorts which were not defended against, and which could enter
consciousness freely at the appropriate time 10 and which were utilized by the individual
not only for rational tasks, but could also be seized upon by wishes from the
Unconscious system in their path from the depths to the surface.
The instinctual wishes characteristic of the system Unconscious represent
infantile bisexual impulses derived from the various stages of psychosexual
development of the child, including those intense and ambivalent feelings of sexual
longing, jealousy and rivalry towards the parent, a constellation which constitutes the
well-known Oedipus complex.
It is important in understanding the formulations of this period to take into
account the fact that Freud initially saw the instinctual wishes as being predominantly
sexual in nature - and gave the energy of these drives the name ‘libido’. Later in the
second phase he added aggressive wishes to the contents of the Unconscious, but did
not specify any comparable term for the energy behind aggressive drives. Freud made a
number of changes in his ‘instinct’ theory during the second phase, and these have
been well documented by Bibring (1941).
It was during this phase that Freud developed the view that even the highest
and most refined interests in our lives can be traced in part to transformations of
infantile sexual and aggressive urges which have remained in the Unconscious, and he
believed that the transformation of crude instinctual wishes into more refined and
apparently non-sexual forms was attained by a process to which he attached great
importance-that of sublimation.
The system Unconscious can be regarded as being characterized by a very
primitive mode of functioning which Freud designated as the primary process. Logical
and formal relations between the elements in the Unconscious are absent, and simple
rules of primitive association apply. Drives and wishes in the Unconscious function only
according to what Freud termed the pleasure principle, i.e. they seek discharge,
gratification and relief of painful tension at all cost. The systems Preconscious and
Conscious could be considered as being in direct opposition to this. Here the secondary
process, i.e. logic, reason and the knowledge of external reality and of our conscious
ideals and standards of conduct, predominates. In opposition to the Unconscious, the
Preconscious and Conscious systems follow, or attempt to follow, what Freud called the
reality principle (1911), and it seems obvious that situations of conflict - for example,
between sexual wishes of a primitive sort and the person’s moral and ethical standards
- must inevitably and constantly arise, and that some sort of solution would be sought
which would take all the opposing forces into account.
In 1914 Freud introduced the concept of narcissism (1914a), attempting to
clarify the complicated problem of the person’s relation to his love-objects and himself

10
Freud modified this view and found it necessary to introduce the idea of a defensive barrier operating between the
Preconscious and the Conscious, as well as between the Unconscious and the Preconscious. The topographical frame of
reference will be discussed in a later paper in this series (Sandler, Holder & Dare, 1972 b).

10
in both normal and pathological states. In this paper Freud was also concerned with the
child’s formation of ideals on the basis of his parents as models, and introduced the
concept of the ego ideal, foreshadowing at this time the later (third phase) concept of the
superego.
Towards the end of the second phase Freud became interested in problems
relating to aggression (in all likelihood stimulated by World War I). He explored
problems of masochism and aggression turned against the person’s own self, as well as
the pathology of severe melancholic depression. In 1920 he made a speculative
biological excursion in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, introducing there the well-known
and controversial idea of the ‘death instinct’.
From the point of view of psychoanalytic psychology (Freud referred to it as
‘metapsychology’) a number of formulations were put forward during the second phase
which emained relatively unchanged in his later work, and many of these will be
touched on later in this series. Freud’s writings during the second phase extend
through 15 of the 23 volumes of the Standard Edition of his complete psychological
works.

The third phase

The third phase can be considered to have begun with the publication of The
Ego and the Id in 1923. Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety was published in 1926, and
these two works introduce substantial changes in Freud’s psychoanalytic psychology.
They form the basis of the structural theory, as contrasted with the ‘topographical’
theory of the second phase.11
Towards the end of the second phase certain inconsistencies began to be
apparent in Freud’s view of the mental apparatus and its functioning. Problems arose in
connexion with the descriptive and ‘systemic’ use of the word unconscious. The term
‘preconscious’, which at one time referred to mental content which was freely accessible
to consciousness, also designated a ‘system’ and, moreover, Freud found it necessary to
postulate a repression ‘barrier’ between the Preconscious and the Conscious, as
described earlier. In addition to this, Freud had earlier used the term ego to denote an
organization of ideas largely linked with consciousness, but gradually moved towards a
concept of an ego in which the relation to consciousness became less crucial than in the
past. Indeed, during the long second phase, the topographical model, which had
originally been based on qualities of experience, came more and more to be regarded as
consisting of organized functional systems.
Freud introduced the structural theory in 1923 with a discussion of the
existence of an unconscious sense of guilt, and found it necessary to attribute it to the
workings of an organized part of the mind (the superego) which was not adequately
encompassed by the topographical model. We may add that Freud’s formulations
during the second phase in regard to narcissism and the clinical conditions of
melancholia, paranoia and hypochondriasis, all contributed to the strain imposed on
the explanatory potential of the topographical model. Thus in Mourning and Melancholia
(1917) he had been forced to speak of a ‘splitting of the ego’, with one part turning
against the other, in order to explain the self-reproaches of the melancholic.
In the structural theory Freud put forward a model which represented a
tripartite division of the mental apparatus into the major structures, which he called id,
ego and superego.
The id corresponds roughly to much of what had been encompassed by the
concept of the Unconscious in the past. It can be regarded as the area containing the
primitive instinctual drives, with all their hereditary and constitutional elements. It is
dominated by the pleasure principle and functions according to the primary process.
During development a portion of the id undergoes modification, under the influence of

11
Occasionally the term ‘topographical’ has also been used in connexion with the structural theory of the third phase
(cf. Freud, 1940).

11
the child’s interaction with the external world, to become the ego. The primary function
of this latter agency is the task of self-preservation and the acquisition of means
whereby a simultaneous adaptation to the pressure of the id and the demands of reality
can be brought about. It gains the function of delaying instinctual discharge, or of
controlling it by means of a variety of mechanisms, including the mechanisms of
defence. The third agency, the superego, was seen as developing as a sort of internal
precipitate or residue of the child’s early conflicts, particularly in relation to his parents
or other figures of authority. It is the vehicle of the conscience, and of the child’s ideals,
but not only those parts which are conscious, for a large part of the superego, as well as
of the ego, and all of the id, was seen as functioning outside consciousness.
Consciousness was now seen as a ‘sense-organ of the ego’, The ego was
portrayed as an organization trying to serve three masters at once - the id, the superego
and the demands of the external world. Anxiety could be aroused by threats from any
one of these three. Instead of anxiety being regarded simply as the way in which a
threatening instinctual wish showed itself in consciousness (via a ‘transformation’ of
libido), it was now seen as a response of the ego. In Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety
(1926) this was spelled out in detail, with the ego’s anxiety response being seen as a
signal of danger - ultimately the danger of being traumatically overwhelmed. The signal
of anxiety was seen as prompting the ego to take appropriate adaptive and defensive
measures so that its own integrity and security could be preserved.
Aggression was now given a place equal to libido in the id, developing a view put
forward in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920).
The concern with the way in which the ego adapted to the various and often
conflicting demands made upon it was reflected in changes in psychoanalytic
technique. The real world had restored to it some of the significance which had been
taken from it in the second phase. Mechanisms of defence came to be more intensely
studied and interpreted in the treatment situation. Many changes following closely on
the introduction of the structural theory were initiated and elaborated by
psychoanalysts other than Freud, and because of this are placed, for our purposes, in a
notional fourth phase. Of course, during the second phase, distinguished contributions
were being made by Freud’s colleagues, notably Karl Abraham, Sandor Ferenczi, Ernest
Jones, C. G. Jung and Otto Rank (both the two last-named were to break with Freud).
The third phase can be considered as ending with Freud’s death in 1939.

The fourth phase

This phase can be linked, rather arbitrarily, with those contributions of analysts
other than Freud made after the introduction of the structural theory. It therefore
overlaps considerably with the third phase. No brief account can do justice to the fourth
phase, which continues to the present day.12 We can but mention Anna Freud’s The Ego
and the Mechanisms of Defence (1936) and Hartmann’s Ego Psychology and the Problem
of Adaptation (1939) as relatively immediate outcomes of the innovations with regard to
the theory of the ego made in the third phase. These contributions initiated an
important line of development in psychoanalytic thinking in the area of what is
generally known as ‘ego psychology’. In this connexion, the further work of Anna Freud
and Heinz Hartmann can be mentioned, as well as the contributions of Ernst Kris, Erik
Erikson and David Rapaport.
Significant advances in psychoanalytic theory and technique were made early in
the fourth phase by Anna Freud and Melanie Klein, and have given rise to their
distinctive schools. August Aichhorn introduced the application of a psychoanalytic
approach to problems of delinquency in the mid-twenties.
C. G. Jung’s early work in psychosis was taken up again by Victor Tausk, H.

12
There are indications that a fifth phase may be crystallizing, as a consequence of the influence on
psychoanalytic thinking of findings in general psychology (in particular, the work of Piaget), and of
formulations in other disciplines.

12
Nunberg and Paul Federn. The study of the relation of defences to character and
personality received a major impetus through the work of Wilhelm Reich. The later work
of Ferenczi and his followers (e.g. M. Balint) should be mentioned, as well as the
contributions of Ernest Jones, Edward Glover, Ronald Fairbairn and D. W. Winnicott.
In the field of psychosomatic medicine, the contributions of Franz Alexander,
and Felix and Helene Deutsch, began an important field of study. In the area of
psychoanalytic psychotherapy Frieda Fromm-Reichmann made a fundamental
contribution.
We are conscious of the fact that we have mentioned only a relatively few
significant and early contributors to the fourth phase. A detailed account of this phase,
in which the number of psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic papers in many different
areas of application expanded so abundantly, is impracticable. More detailed references,
within the scope of this series, will be made in later papers.

Acknowledgements
This work was conducted at the Institute of Psychiatry, University of London, in
collaboration with the Index Project, The Hampstead Child-Therapy Clinic, London, and was
supported by a grant from the Foundation for Research in Psychoanalysis, Beverly Hills, California.
The Hampstead Child-Therapy Clinic is an organization which is at present maintained by the Field
Foundation, Inc., New York; the Foundation for Research in Psychoanalysis, Beverly Hills,
California; the Freud Centenary Fund, London; the Anna Freud Foundation, New York; the Grant
Foundation, Inc., New York; the Andrew Mellon Foundation; the National Institute for Mental
Health, Bethesda; The New-Land Foundation, New York; and a number of private supporters.

References
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22, 102-131.
Ellenberger, H. F. (1970). The Discovery of the Unconscious. London: Allen Lane.
Freud, A, (1936). The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence. London: Hogarth Press.
Freud, S. (1887-1902). The Origins of Psychoanalysis: Letters to Wilhelm Fliess, Drafts and Notes.
London: Imago, 1954.
Freud, S. (1893-1895). Studies on hysteria. S.E. 2.
Freud, S. (1894). The neuropsychoses of defence, S.E. 3.
Freud, S. (1895). Project for a scientific psychology. S.E. 1.
Freud, S. (1896). Further remarks on the neuropsychoses of defence. S.E. 3.
Freud, S. (1900). The interpretation of dreams. S.E. 4-5.
Freud, S. (1901). The psychopathology of everyday life. S.E. 6.
Freud, S. (1905). Three essays on the theory of sexuality. S.E. 7.
Freud, S. (1911). Formulations on the two principles of mental functioning. S.E. 12.
Freud, S. (1914a). On narcissism: an introduction. S.E. 14.
Freud, S. (1914b). On the history of the psychoanalytic movement. S.E. 14.
Freud, S. (1917). Mourning and melancholia. S.E. 14.
Freud, S. (1920). Beyond the pleasure principle. S.E. 18.
Freud, S. (1923). The ego and the id. S.E. 19.
Freud, S. (1925). An autobiographical study. S.E. 20.
Freud, S. (1926). Inhibitions, symptoms and anxiety. S.E. 20.
Freud, S. (1940). An outline of psychoanalysis. S.E. 23.
Hartmann, H. (1939). Ego Psychology and the Problem of Adaptation. New York: International
Universities Press.
Hartmann, H. (1956). The development of the ego concept in Freu’'s work. In Essays on Ego
Psychology. London: Hogarth Press, 1964,
Holzman, P. S. (1970). Psychoanalysis and Psychopathology. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Jones, E. (1953). The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud. 3 vols. London: Hogarth Press.
Klein, G. (1966). Perspectives to change in psychoanalytic theory. (Mimeographed manuscript.)
Kuhn, T. (1962). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago University Press.
Levitt, M. (1959). Sigmund Freud: a biographical study. In M. Levitt (ed.), Readings in Psychoanalytic
Psychology. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
Piaget, J. (1950). The Psychology of Intelligence. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Rapaport, D. (1959). A historical survey of psychoanalytic ego psychology, Psychol. Issues 1, no. 1.
Sandler, J. (1969). On the Communication of Psychoanalytic Thought. Leiden: University Press.
Sandler, J., Dare, C. & Holder, A. (1972). The Patient and the Analyst: the Clinical Framework of
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Sandler, J., Holder, A. & Dare, C. (1972a). Frames of reference in psychoanalytic psychology. IV. The

13
affect-trauma frame of reference. Br. J. med. Psychol. 45 (in press).
Sandler, J., Holder, A. & Dare, C. (1972b). Frames of reference in psychoanalytic psychology. V. The
topographical frame of reference. Br. J. med. Psychol. 45 (in press).
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Whyte, L.L. (1959). The Unconscious before Freud. London: Tavistock Publications.
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Zilboorg, G. (1941). A History of Medical Psychology. New York: Norton.

III. A note on the basic assumptions

In the previous paper in this series (Sandler et al. 1972) the history of
psychoanalysis was divided, for our purposes, into a number of ‘phases’. The first can
conveniently be regarded as starting from Freud’s return to Vienna in 1886 after his
visit to Charcot, and ending in 1897 with his realization that the ‘traumas’ produced by
his hysterical patients had not necessarily occurred in reality, but were very often
childhood daydreams which had been expelled from conscious memory. This, together
with a crucial reorientation towards mental functioning (arising in large part from
Freud’s self-analysis), initiated the long second phase, which lasted until 1923. The
quarter of a century of the second phase saw extensive developments in psychoanalytic
theory, and psychoanalytic psychology had its main emphasis (which was not the case
in the first phase) on the instinctual drives and their vicissitudes. The third phase, from
1923 to 1939, began with the introduction of the ‘structural theory’ and ended with the
publication of Freud’s last work, An Outline of Psychoanalysis (1940). The fourth phase
does not follow on the previous one, but overlaps with it, and continues till the present
day. The division into phases is, to some extent, arbitrary and artificial, but it is useful
for our purposes, for it enables us to construct, in the papers which follow, a series of
frames of reference corresponding to the different phases as we have described them.
Inasmuch as the fourth phase encompasses the writings of psychoanalysts other than
Freud, it is obvious that a single frame of reference cannot do justice to it.
It seems appropriate to supplement the description of the historical context and
phases given in the previous paper with a short account of what have been called ‘basic
hypotheses’, ‘fundamental concepts’ etc., and which we will refer to as basic
assumptions. We do not propose to discuss the semantic, philosophical and scientific
issues involved, but rather to present these tenets from the point of view of their being
indispensable cornerstones, without any one of which the whole theoretical structure
would collapse (cf. Rapaport, 1967).
Before presenting our own list (which is not necessarily complete), it may be of
interest to examine what a number of previous authors have regarded as ‘fundamental’
or ‘basic’.
In 1949 Alexander spoke of ‘two fundamental postulates’. These were, first, that
‘minds can study minds’ and, secondly, that
…‘The functions of the mind are as truly biological as locomotion and breathing
and are adaptive mechanisms... In the present state of our knowledge... the psychological
approach gives a... detailed insight into these complex biological problems.’
Brenner (1955) writes of ‘two fundamental hypotheses’ which have received so
much confirmation and appear to be so fundamental in their significance that we are
inclined to view them as established laws of the mind. Two such fundamental
hypotheses, which have been abundantly confirmed, are the principle of psychic
determinism, or causality, and the proposition that consciousness is an exceptional
rather than a regular attribute of psychic processes.
Munroe (1955) refers to ‘underlying premises’ of psychoanalysis, and includes
psychological determinism, the role of the unconscious, 13 the concept of motivation (the
13
Munroe, in her presentation, falls into a common error which often makes the presentation of
psychoanalytic theory confusing. Unconscious mental processes are equated with the system ‘'the

14
‘goal-directed quality of human behaviour’), and the genetic 14 approach (current events
depend upon the past ‘in creative interaction with the present’).
In a series of lectures given in 1944, Rapaport (1967) discusses the tenets or
axioms of psychoanalytic psychology. He refers to the postulates of continuity, meaning,
determinism, instinct (instinctual drive) and the unconscious. Others (e.g. Waelder,
1960; Holzman, 1970) have considered the general assumptions of psychoanalytic
theory from the point of view of the understanding of clinical phenomena.
In the list of ‘basic assumptions’ given below we will take a broader view of
psychoanalytic theory (as evident from the first hypothesis discussed). To some extent
they overlap with one another, and all are interrelated.

1. Psychoanalysis is a general psychology

While the term ‘psychoanalysis’ refers to a specific treatment method, to a set of
theories of psychopathology, and to a body of data collected by the psychoanalytic
method, it also attempts to understand and explain normal as well as abnormal
psychological phenomena. Pathological manifestations can be understood by means of
the more general psychology of psychoanalysis. If we take the parallel with organic
medicine, this would be equivalent to saying that the field of somatic pathology,
although possessing certain specific features of its own, is embedded in the more
general theory of somatic functioning, which includes the consideration of normal
bodily processes and their interaction. Indeed, one may go further and take the general
view that the pathological can only be fully understood in terms of the normal.
One of the distinguishing features of psychoanalytic psychology is its emphasis,
in both normal and abnormal mental functioning, on the role of instinctual drives and
of mental conflict.

2. The mental apparatus

The assumption of the existence of a mental apparatus implies the existence of a
stable, or relatively stable, organization in the individual. While it may be argued validly
that psychological processes are a function of the nervous system, psychoanalysis
assumes, for the purposes of its theory, that psychological phenomena can be
conceptualized as involving a psychological ‘apparatus’. In effect, the concept of a
mental apparatus here too parallels the physiologist’s concepts of the cardiovascular,
nervous, digestive, genito-urinary and other systems. It is an added ‘system’ which is a
psychological rather than an organic one, although it is influenced by and has effects
on the other systems. From the psychoanalytic point of view, psychology can be
regarded as the study of the mental apparatus and its functioning, just as disciplines
such as physiology, anatomy and biochemistry study the physical apparatuses and
their functions. The notion of a mental apparatus implies the idea of processes involving
psychological ‘structures’ - psychological organizations with a slow rate of change
(Rapaport) - but psychoanalytic psychology includes not only the study of behaviour in
terms of psychological structures and functions, but also of subjective experience. A
further assumption linked with the hypothesis of a mental apparatus (and which could
just as well be regarded as a separate basic hypothesis, although it is related to all) is
that of development. The mental apparatus is regarded as relatively simple early in life,
increasing in complexity in the course of development. Thus the apparatus is capable of
modification, and its development is a function both of maturation and of the forces
entering into psychological adaptation (in the sense in which adaptation is discussed
below).

Unconscious’. The properties ascribed to this mental system in the second phase (e.g. ‘primary process’
functioning) are then mistakenly ascribed to unconscious processes in general.
14
‘Genetic’ in psychoanalysis refers to the ‘genesis’ or origins of some aspect of psychological functioning,
and not to inheritance (although inheritance does, naturally, play a part in the individual’s development).

15
 3. Psychological adaptation
This is linked with the concept of the mental apparatus. Essentially it is the
assumption that the apparatus functions (among other things) to maintain a ‘steady
state’ (it can be compared with the physiological notion of homeostasis), in the face of
constant disturbances of that notional state. It should be emphasized that such
disturbances may arise from outside the individual, as well as from within 15. From the
second phase there is the assumption that disequilibrium may originate from within the
apparatus itself, in the form of psychological drives. From the point of view of
psychoanalytic psychology, all behaviour and experience can be related to processes of
psychological adaptation16 to disturbances of the ‘steady state’. The processes of
adaptation in turn bring about changes in the structure and mode of functioning of the
mental apparatus.
Related to the idea of adaptation are the concepts of conflict as a source of
disequilibrium and of defences as particular adaptive manoeuvres of the mental
apparatus.

4. Psychological determinism
In the first phase Freud took over the idea of determinism from the physical
sciences and applied it to the psychological sphere. The assumption of psychological
determinism is still a cornerstone of psychoanalytic thinking. Briefly, it is the belief that
every aspect of behaviour or subjective experience, and every aspect of the functioning
of the mental apparatus, can be seen as the outcome of the events (psychological as
well as non-psychological) which precede it. It implies that theoretically it should be
possible to predict and to understand a psychological ‘event’ in terms of all the forces
operative at the time and which have operated in the past. While this is theoretically so
practically such precision is impossible, although psychoanalytic psychologists make
the assumption that every psychological manifestation or experience stands in a
definite and theoretically explicable relationship to the whole of the person’s
psychological life. Psychological determinism has sometimes been referred to as the
principle of causality. Determinism is, of course, an assumption which has been
generally made in science.
The importance of this assumption for psychoanalysis is that it leads the
psychoanalyst to look for causes. This does not mean that the causes will always be
found. If we allow a stone to roll down a hill, we can assume that the position in which
it finally comes to rest is determined by such factors as its shape, weight, consistency,
and the whole sequence of forces acting on it. This does not mean that all the factors
which caused the stone to end up where it did can readily be discovered, nor indeed
that it would be useful to amass such a wealth of information regarding such an event.
What is important in regard to the assumption of psychological determinism is
the point of view that causes do exist, that mental events do not occur entirely at
random, or at the caprice of some supernatural force. Thus the ‘free associations’ of a
patient are not regarded as random thoughts, but it is assumed that there is some
underlying connexion, however complicated, between the different associations
produced by the patient.
As in the physical sciences, attempts are made to simplify matters by the
construction of laws and theories. As these are simplifications and generalizations, their
‘truth’ lies in their usefulness in particular circumstances. On the whole, in spite of the
acceptance of determinism, the ‘laws’ relating to mental functioning (and this probably
applies to the physical and biological sciences as well) become laws of probability.

15
Disturbances of the equilibrium of the mental apparatus arising from within the body can be regarded as
originating outside the mental apparatus.
16
This approach to adaptation is radically different from that which emphasizes adaptation to the social
environment only. From the psychoanalytic point of view, even the grossest antisocial or self damaging
behaviour can be considered to be the outcome of attempts at psychological adaptation.

16
However, the practising psychoanalyst takes the view that the more one knows of
specific features of the individual’s behaviour and of his mental processes and
experience, the more certain one can be of the conclusions drawn. Generally speaking,
no single cause is regarded as being a sufficient explanation, and the further
assumption of multiple causes (overdetermination) is made.
Psychological determinism has sometimes been seen as being in conflict with
the idea of ‘free will’. This conflict has, on the whole, been exaggerated. An individual
may possess a high degree of internal security, and be in a position to exercise his
judgement consciously in regard to which of a number of courses he will pursue.
Nevertheless, the assumption of psychological determinism could still apply to his final
decision, in that one could regard that decision as the outcome of the operation of many
factors, including those entering into his assessment and judgement of the situation.
However, because of the assumption of the existence of unconscious mental functioning
(see below), the psychoanalyst would take the view that many actions which appear on
the surface to be a consequence of free acts of will are inevitably determined by the
influence of unconscious psychological forces acting on the individual.
There are other misconceptions arising from the hypothesis of psychological
determinism. One of these is that the psychoanalyst can ‘explain’ every psychological
event. Another is that all psychological events are the consequence of purely
psychological causes. And a further misconception is that the psychoanalyst believes
that every act or piece of conscious experience is entirely the outcome of unconscious
forces operating in the present (particularly unconscious instinctual wishes). 17

5. Unconscious mental functioning

This basic hypothesis is one which Freud derived from his previous scientific
and philosophical education, rather than being a new ‘discovery’. Nevertheless, it is
absolutely fundamental to psychoanalytic psychology, and Freud’s systematic use and
elaboration of the concept has raised it to a special status. For psychoanalysis, it is a
basic tenet that behaviour and subjective experience can have unconscious
determinants. This idea is central to all psychoanalytic theories of normal as well as of
abnormal mental functioning. The hypothesis includes the view that a large part of the
mental apparatus, indeed by far the largest part of it, functions outside conscious
experience; it also includes the view that psychological adaptation occurs in large part
unconsciously, and that the principle of psychological determinism applies equally to
unconscious as to conscious processes and events.
It is of some importance to note that it is not only psychological forces,
processes and organizations which are assumed to be capable of existing outside
consciousness. Ideas and other subjective experiences (including feelings) can also be
regarded as existing unconsciously in one form or another, i.e, below the threshold of
conscious awareness.18

Acknowledgements
This work was conducted at the Institute of Psychiatry, University of London, in
collaboration with the Index Project, The Hampstead Child-Therapy Clinic, London, and was
17
It is certainly true that some psychoanalysts believe that it is possible to ‘explain’ everything. This is particularly true
of those who believe that all later behaviour is determined by the events and experiences occurring in the first months
and years of life. However, it should be said that most psychoanalysts subscribe to the view that early experiences are
significant factors in determining later mental functioning, particularly in relation to the appearance of psychological
illness. We would again emphasize that the importance placed by psychoanalysts on early experiences and reactions
does not mean that everything which occurs later has been predetermined by them.
18
Freud commented: ‘mental processes are in themselves unconscious and. of all mental life it is only certain
individual acts and portions that are conscious. ...[Psychoanalysis] is obliged to maintain that there is unconscious
thinking and unapprehended willing’ (1916-17). Although throughout psychoanalytic writings the term ‘the
unconscious’ is used loosely to describe unconscious mental functioning in general, in the second phase ‘the
Unconscious’ is the name given to a particular major psychological system, and is not synonymous with ‘all that can be
assumed to be unconscious’.

17
supported by a grant from the Foundation for Research in Psychoanalysis, Beverly Hills, California.
The Hampstead Child-Therapy Clinic is an organization which is at present maintained by the Field
Foundation, Inc., New York; the Foundation for Research in Psychoanalysis, Beverly Hills,
California; the Freud Centenary Fund, London; the Anna Freud Foundation, New York; the Grant
Foundation, Inc., New York; the Andrew Mellon Foundation; the National Institute for Mental
Health, Bethesda; The New-Land Foundation, New York; and a number of private supporters.

References
Alexander, F. (1949). Fundamentals of Psychoanalysis. London: Allen & Unwin.
Brenner, C. (1955). An Elementary Textbook of Psychoanalysis. New York: International Universities
Press.
Freud, S. (1916-17). Introductory lectures on psychoanalysis. S.E. 15-16.
Freud, S. (1923). The ego and the id. S.E. 19.
Freud, S. (1940). An outline of psychoanalysis. S.E. 23.
Holzman, P. S. (1970). Psychoanalysis and Ps-chopathology. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Munroe, R. (1955). Schools of Psychoanalytic Thought. New York: Dryden Press.
Rapaport, D. (1967). The scientific methodology of psychoanalysis. In Collected Papers (ed. M. Gill).
New York: Basic Books.
Sandler, J., Dare, C. & Holder, A. (1972). Frames of reference in psychoanalytic psychology. II. The
historical context and phases in the development of psychoanalysis. Br. J. med. Psychol. 45, 133-142.
Waelder, R. (1960). Basic Theory of Psychoanalysis. New York: International Universities Press.

IV. The affect-trauma frame of reference

In the three papers which introduced this series (Sandler et al, 1972a, b, c) we
began an attempt to provide an overview of psychoanalytic psychology. This was
regarded as necessary because of the complexity of psychoanalytic theory, and because
no complete and integrated theory exists. It was felt that the subject could be
approached by dividing the history of psychoanalysis into phases (cf. Sandler et al.
1972b), proceeding next to sketch the outlines of what we have referred to as frames of
reference appropriate to each phase. Four historical phases were delineated, and these,
together with the corresponding frames of reference, are given below:
Phase 1 (up to 1897). The affect-trauma frame of reference.
Phase 2 (1897-1923). The topographical frame of reference.
Phase 3 (1923-1939). The structural frame of reference.
Phase 4 (1923 onwards). Contributions of psychoanalysts other than Freud.
Several frames of reference relate to phase 4, including not only those referring
to the continuation and extension of the structural approach in the mainstream of
psychoanalytic psychology, but also those necessary to understand the work of other
contributors.
The present paper is concerned with the affect-trauma frame of reference,
derived from Freud’s thinking up to 1897. Its essence lies in the emphasis on external
traumatic events as instigators of pathology, and on the role played by ‘charges of affect’
in normal and abnormal mental functioning.
The first phase is not only of historical significance. Many of the concepts
introduced during it have remained, in one form or another, in later psychoanalytic
theory. The concept of trauma, for example, has persisted more or less unchanged in
later phases. The idea that a repressed traumatic experience may lie behind the
patient’s psychopathology, and the hope that this can be recovered, together with the
abreaction of the associated emotions, still affects the psychoanalytic treatment of the
neuroses. The notion of quantities of affect, held back in a ‘pent-up’ state, endures (with
a certain clinical validity), and enters into descriptions of psychoanalytic treatment (‘The
patient was at last able to release the hostile feelings he had kept back for so long’ etc.).
The concept of mental energy and its discharge has played a crucial role in later
formulations in psychoanalytic psychology, even though the equation of affect and
energy was, in the second and later phases, not maintained. Energy became linked with
the instinctual drives (as in the idea of ‘libidinal energy’). The concept of defence,

18
introduced in the first phase, has remained, although ideas of what is defended against
have changed. Other concepts - such as that of the ego - were later radically altered.
Each phase of psychoanalysis has left a legacy of ideas which have, where it has proved
possible, been incorporated into the formulations of later phases. It is our contention, in
this series of papers, that an understanding of the essential concepts of each phase is
necessary for the comprehension of what has developed later, and for the
understanding of the many inconsistencies which still exist in psychoanalytic
psychology (cf. Sandler et al., 1972a).

I. The mental apparatus and its functioning

In common with the other Freudian frames of reference, the existence of a
mental (or psychic) ‘apparatus’ is assumed in the first phase (cf. Sandler et al., 1972b).
In the affect-trauma frame of reference, as in others, it is regarded as a psychological
organization, within which psychological processes occur, and is conceived of as being
relatively rudimentary in early childhood, increasing in complexity during the course of
development. It functions as a vehicle for adaptation to demands from both internal and
external sources, although - and this is of the greatest importance - in this first frame of
reference adaptation to experiences deriving from external reality is emphasized 19
Among the other functions of the mental apparatus are the control and
discharge of excitation, as well as that of defence against distressing affects and
‘incompatible’ ideas. The latter ideas are those which are rejected as being unacceptable
to the conscious standards, beliefs and wishes of the individual. A further function of
the apparatus is to lay down memory traces. Associative links between such traces are
created, these links being based on such factors as contemporaneity and similarity of
the content of the events recorded. Attention, perception and the transformation of
mental energy from one state to another are regarded as further functions of the
apparatus.
Development brings about a differentiation within the apparatus. One of these
differentiated aspects is referred to as the ego20, a term which is used in this frame of
reference to designate both consciousness and an agency which can perform the
function of defence. The ego is thought of as coming into existence on the basis of the
interaction between biological needs (which create sums of excitation in the apparatus)
and the external world (which produces substantially larger amounts of excitation). A
constitutional disposition (Anlage) for the development of the ego is assumed. Hand in
hand with the appearance of the ego in the sense of conscious awareness there develops
the capacity for splitting off memories and ideas which are incompatible with
consciousness, and which are relegated to an unconscious part of the mind. This
dissociation of certain contents and associated emotions is brought about by processes
of defence, initiated by the ego.

Mental energy in the affect-trauma frame of reference

The mental apparatus is regarded as deploying and regulating mental energy,
which can exist in a number of different states. It can be quiescent, in which case a
state of equilibrium exists, in accordance with Fechner’s ‘principle of constancy’.

19
While Freud acknowledged, in the first phase, the influence of internal biological and psychological needs and
pressures, and their influence on the mental apparatus, these were considered to be of secondary importance. The fuller
appreciation of the role of internal forces was to come later - indeed, rather dramatically, in 1897. Due to the weight of
the clinical evidence pertaining to the crucial significance of real events in the person’s life, accumulated during the
first phase, the emphasis on the quantity of stimulation impinging on the apparatus from the side of the external world
was very much greater than that given to the amount of stimulation arising spontaneously from internal sources.
20
The meaning of the term ‘ego’ was to change radically with the development of psychoanalytic psychology. In the
first phase it was more or less synonymous with consciousness and ‘conscious self’, whereas in the third phase it was
no longer equated with consciousness, but was seen as a highly complex structure, with consciousness being regarded
as a ‘sense-organ’ of the ego.

19
Alternatively, mental energy can exert a force, associated with disequilibrium in the
mental apparatus, creating a ‘pressure towards discharge’, i.e. a ‘demand’ for the
restoration of the constant state (energic homeostasis). The apparatus thus functions in
the direction of maintaining a certain equilibrium, i.e. towards operating at a relatively
constant and low level of excitation. Mental energy is regarded as a quantity which may
be augmented or diminished, by stimulation or discharge respectively. Affect or emotion
is equated with energic excitation.21

Defences
If there is an arousal of emotional excitation associated with an idea it can be
dealt with in a number of ways. Normal processes such as motor action and the
conscious expression of feelings and emotions may occur and suffice for ‘discharge’ if
the amount of energy involved is not too great. 22 However, if the energy and the
associated ideas are treated as threatening and potentially overwhelming to the ego (i.e.
‘incompatible’) they may be dealt with by special psychological mechanisms which serve
to protect consciousness by bringing about, in effect, a form of dissociation of the
energy and ideas from consciousness. This dissociation is brought about by the
defences, and their operation may or may not lead to pathology.
The basic defence is regarded as being repression, which always represents the
first line of defence. It is a ‘pushing away’ (Verdrängung) of unacceptable ideas and
associated emotions, so that these are relegated to the unconscious part of the
apparatus. If repression is successful no trace of the distressing idea or feeling remains
in consciousness, but a quantity of affective excitation remains ‘dammed up’ or
‘strangulated’ outside consciousness, creating an energic disequilibrium. Repression is
also the simplest of the defences. An instance of its operation (given by Freud) is the
case of a person having forgotten and being unable to recall something which he had
read (and which he could normally have been expected to remember) because the
content of the particular passage aroused unpalatable memories of past sexual events.
These memories and associated emotions then gave rise to an affective reaction of
repugnance, and the memories, affects, and also the associated content of what had
been recently read, were ‘pushed away’ from consciousness, i.e. repressed.
The defence of substitution is concerned with the displacement of a certain
affect from an ‘incompatible idea’ to one which can be tolerated in consciousness. Freud
gives an example, typical of obsessional pathology, in a description (1895 a) of a girl
who reproached herself for things which she knew were absurd - for having stolen,
made counterfeit money, etc. Originally she had reproached herself for her secret
masturbation. The feelings of self-reproach and guilt could be permitted to emerge in
association with the ‘absurd’ compulsive thoughts which replaced the memory of the
masturbation.
Finally, the defence of transformation of affect is concerned with the
replacement of one affect by another. This accounts, in this frame of reference, for the
appearance of anxiety as a consequence of the transformation of some other
‘strangulated affect’.23

21
Freud used the ‘working hypothesis’ that ‘in mental functions something is to be distinguished - a quota of affect or
sum of excitation -which possesses all the characteristics of a quantity (though we have no means of measuring it),
which is capable of increase, diminution, displacement and discharge, and which is spread over the memory-traces of
ideas somewhat as an electric charge is spread over the surface of a body’ (1894)
22
Freud also wrote, in the first phase, of other processes involved in the reduction of energic tension - a normal
‘wearing away’ (along associative pathways) and ‘absorption’ of relatively small quantities of energy over a period of
time.
23
Freud described this (1896a) when he remarked that ‘The affect of the self-reproach may be transformed by various
psychical processes into other affects, which then enter consciousness more clearly than the affect itself: for instance,
into anxiety (fear of the consequences of the action to which the self-reproach applies), hypochondria (fear of its bodily
effects), delusions of persecution (fear of its social effects), shame (fear of other people knowing about it), and so on.’

20
 While the defensive efforts on the part of the mental apparatus are regarded as
fundamental and necessary to normal mental functioning, their excessive use may lead
to pathology. It should be remembered that in the first phase, and in this frame of
reference, the predominant emphasis is placed on processes of defence against
quantities of affect which may threaten to overwhelm the conscious ego in a painful
fashion, or because they are associated with ideas (particularly those based on
memories) which consciousness finds repugnant.

II. Pathogenic processes

In the first phase, and in the affect-trauma frame of reference which
corresponds to it, pathological processes are seen as particular processes of adaptation
to a disequilibrium in the mental apparatus caused by the existence of an intense
charge of affective energy associated with certain ideas. If the energy cannot be dealt
with normally, then it may find expression in one or other form of psychological
disturbance. A major cause of the disequilibrium is mental trauma, although there are
other causes as well (as in the so-called ‘actual’ neuroses). Special emphasis is placed
on the occurrence of events, particularly sexual experiences, in the patient’s life which
may, in one way or another, lead to the existence of a state of ‘dammed-up’ affect which
can only find a psychopathological expression, because of the need of the conscious ego
to defend itself. This leads to repression, and as a result the dammed-up affect may find
a disguised and distorted expression in the neurotic symptom.
It is worth mentioning that the formulations of the first phase represented a
major attempt to explain the occurrence of pathological conditions (such as conversion
hysteria) in terms of mental processes - psychological conflict, the effect of distressing
or threatening affects, mental traumas and the psychological effect of sexual factors
such as seductions, frustrations, etc. However, the possible contributions from the side
of hereditary and constitutional predispositions are given a place as well. Indeed, such
factors, inherent in the makeup of the individual, are considered to play a part in
explaining why a person may develop one type of pathology rather than another, or
none at all. It is the interaction of constitutional factors with the specific experiences of
the individual which is regarded as important in determining the way in which the
mental apparatus adapts to the forces acting on it, and whether or not pathological
processes will ensue. If these do develop, then both sets of relevant factors interact to
determine the form of the pathological adaptation.24

Mental trauma
The mental apparatus can only cope with a certain amount of energy at any one
time. This depends to some extent on the degree of maturity of the apparatus. If it is
exposed to too great a quantity of affective energy it can be overwhelmed, i.e. the normal
stimulus barrier-can be breached. In childhood the immature apparatus is more prone
to be overcome by a sudden influx of stimulation (i.e. energy which it is unable to
regulate by appropriate and controlled discharge along normal channels).
The state of being helplessly overwhelmed by unmanageable excitation is that of
mental (‘psychic’, ‘psychical’ or ‘psychological’) trauma. While trauma is defined
unambiguously in this way, it is necessary to distinguish (because of the relevance to
pathological processes as understood in this frame of reference) between the following: 25
24
Freud put it as follows: ‘Since there is no such thing as chance in neurotic pathogenesis any more than anywhere
else, it must be allowed that it is not heredity that presides over the choice of the particular nervous disorder which is to
develop in the predisposed member of a family, but that there are grounds for suspecting the existence of other
aetiological influences, of a less incomprehensible nature, which would then deserve to be called the specific aetiology
of such and such a nervous affection. Without the existence of this special aetiological factor, heredity could have done
nothing; it would have lent itself to the production of another nervous disorder if the specific aetiology in question had
been replaced by some other influence’ (1896b).
25
Because the emphasis in the first phase was placed so much on the pathogenic effect of external events, the
distinction between the different types of trauma was important. With the shift of emphasis to the role of the drives in

21
 (a) Current traumas, i.e. those which represent an overwhelming of the mental
apparatus by energy as an immediate or relatively immediate response to a real
situation or event. Such traumas occur, for example, as a consequence of accidents,
which may be followed by the appearance of neurotic symptoms.
(b) Retroactive traumas. While these are not in essence different from current
traumas in that they represent a state of being overwhelmed by uncontrollable energy,
they differ from current traumas in their time relation to the significant environmental
event. In the case of these traumas, the memory traces of the significant event have
been registered in the apparatus before (often long before) the trauma occurs. The
retroactive traumas are linked with events which, though exciting, were not experienced
as traumatic at the time of their occurrence (e.g. experiences, particularly sexual
seductions, in which the individual played a passive role, occurring in childhood).
However, the memories of these extraordinarily stimulating events give rise to a trauma
when they become revived by an experience in later life, linked in some way with the
earlier memories. The trauma which then occurs consists of the apparatus being
overcome by a combination of the revived excitement of the past and strong affective
reactions such as shame, disgust, self-reproach and anxiety. A state of conflict arises
because what had previously been acceptable (and had not overwhelmed the ego) now
brings about a powerful affective reaction to the revived memory and the excitement
associated with it. The event of the past now assumes a different significance for the
individual and represents something which is unacceptable to his current standards of
morality and conduct.26

A note on concepts of pathology in the first phase

The symptoms of ‘nervous’ disorder were thought of as being the consequence of
pent-up or ‘strangulated’ affect which could not be dealt with by normal processes of
‘discharge’. While a certain quantity of affective energy can normally be contained, if
necessary, by repression, if it is beyond a certain amount the affect charge may find its
own expression (not being under conscious control) in some form of involuntary
symptom. The symptom thus represents a manifestation, in one form or another, of the
way in which the repressed affect and the ideas attached to it find surface expression.
It is not our intention to go into the various forms of pathology considered in the
first phase in any great detail in this paper. The various clinical conditions which were
studied by Freud, and which gave rise to his formulations during this phase, will be
considered more fully elsewhere. However, it is appropriate to point out that Freud
distinguished between the psychoneuroses (or neuro-psychoses) and the actual
neuroses.
The psychoneuroses take two main forms: hysteria and obsessional neurosis.
The actual neuroses were also thought to take two main forms, representing the third
and fourth of the ‘major neuroses’.27 These are neurasthenia and anxiety neurosis. It has
been pointed out previously that the word ‘actual’ is a misleading translation of the
German prefix Aktual-, which refers to something current, in the present (Sandler et al.,
1972b).
The difference between the real neuroses and the psychoneuroses is that in the
former the symptoms are regarded as manifestations of current physical sexual factors
rather than psychological ones.
1. Hysteria. This condition was no longer considered to be the result of

the second phase, the distinction between categories of trauma became less significant.
26
In speaking of the aetiology of hysteria, Freud says: ‘The event of which the subject has retained an unconscious
memory is a precocious experience of sexual relations with actual excitement of the genitals, resulting from sexual
abuse committed by another person; and the period of life at which this fatal event takes place is earliest youth - the
years up to the age of eight to ten, before the child has reached sexual maturity... The memory will operate as though it
were a contemporary event’. (1896b).
27
Freud also distinguished the ‘traumatic neurosis’ proper, in which the symptoms are regarded as a consequence of a
physical rather than a mental trauma.

22
degeneracy, but rather as a specific reaction of the mental apparatus to a mental
trauma. The symptoms of hysteria are determined by the real traumatic experiences
which are reproduced in a symbolic fashion. But, as Freud put it (1896c): ‘...no
hysterical symptom can arise from a real experience alone, but... in every case the
memory of earlier experiences awakened in association to it plays a part in causing the
symptom.’
In hysteria the charge of affect is transformed by being ‘discharged’ along a path
of motor or sensory innervation.
In hysteria, the incompatible idea is rendered innocuous by its sum of excitation
being transformed into something somatic. For this I should like to propose the name of
conversion (Freud, 1894).28
In hysteria, mechanisms of dissociation and conversion could bring about motor
paralyses, fits, anaesthesiae, pains and even certain hallucinations.
2. Obsessional neurosis. Whereas in hysteria the sum of excitation finding
pathological discharge was ‘transformed into something somatic’, in the second of the
major neuroses (which included obsessions and a number of phobias), the individual
concerned lacks ‘the capacity for conversion’ (1894). The affect, now separated from the
‘incompatible idea’, is obliged to remain in the psychical sphere. The idea, now
weakened, is still left in consciousness, separated from all association. But its affect,
which has become free, attaches itself to other ideas which are not in themselves
incompatible; and, thanks to this ‘false connection’, those ideas turn into obsessional
ideas (1894).
As in hysteria, the distressing affect is thought to have arisen from the subject’s
sexual life and the main mechanism of defence involved is repression. The mechanism
used in obsessional neurosis is ‘substitution’. However, whereas in obsessions we may
get a whole range of affective states (such as doubt, remorse, shame, self-reproaches,
anger, etc.), in the phobias which come under this heading the distressing affect is
always that of anxiety.
3. Neurasthenia. A variety of physical symptoms, including fatigue, dyspepsia
with flatulence, and indications of intracranial pressure and spinal irritation are
included in this category. The condition is acquired ‘by excessive masturbation or arises
spontaneously from frequent emissions’ (1898).
Originally Freud included the symptoms of anxiety neurosis in the category of
neurasthenia, but these were separated from neurasthenia ‘proper’ in 1895 (1895b).
However, throughout the first phase he emphasized the existence of clinically ‘mixed’
pictures, and neurasthenia and anxiety neurosis were thought to coexist in many cases,
even though they came to be regarded as separate conditions. Hereditary factors were
regarded as being of minimal importance in neurasthenia. Greater importance is given
to the strains imposed by civilization, with the factors of overwork, fatigue and
exhaustion combining with the effects of ‘sexual noxae’ to produce the illness.
4. Anxiety neurosis. The specific cause of an anxiety neurosis ‘is the
accumulation of sexual tension, produced by abstinence or by unconsummated sexual
excitation’ (1895a). While the essential causes of the anxiety neurosis are regarded as
physical, it produces psychological symptoms, including phobias (although some
phobias are regarded as being more closely related to obsessional neurosis).
Freud considered that in anxiety neurosis ‘the symptoms of this syndrome are
more closely related to one another than those of genuine neurasthenia’ (1895b).
The clinical picture included the following symptoms: general irritability;
anxious expectation (this is regarded as the nuclear symptom of the neurosis, being a
quantity of anxiety which is ‘free-floating’ and which can link itself with any suitable
idea); anxiety attacks; pavor nocturnus (night terrors), and vertigo.
While anxiety neurosis may be predominantly ‘acquired’ or due to hereditary

28
The concept of conversion, although deriving from the first phase of psychoanalysis, and thought to involve a
transformation of energy, is still in current use.

23
factors, the ‘acquired’ aspects are due to the effect of sexual ‘noxae’ resulting (in men)
from abstinence, states of unconsummated excitation, the practice of coitus interruptus
and senescence. In women, predisposing factors are ‘virginal anxiety’ (‘first night
nerves’), abstinence, the effects of the climacterium, as well as marriage to a husband
suffering from ejaculatio praecox, impotence or who practises coitus interruptus. In
both sexes masturbation and overwork were thought to be contributing factors.
The emphasis in all of this is on the accumulation of undischarged somatic
tensions which are then transformed into anxiety. The anxiety thus has a physical
rather than a psychological origin. Freud puts it (1895b): ‘...the mechanism of anxiety
neurosis is to be looked for in a deflection of somatic sexual excitation... and in a
consequent abnormal employment of that excitation.
It is worth noting that Freud explicitly distinguishes these somatic sexual
tensions from the energy represented by sexual affect, already referred to in the first
phase as ‘libido’, even though this term was to undergo a change of meaning in the
second phase.
While the descriptions of these syndromes, written almost 80 years ago, may
sound relatively archaic, they are of importance in providing some indication of the
sorts of clinical conditions which Freud had concerned himself with, and which
provided the basis for his psychological theories at that time. We have attempted to
encompass the essentials of these theoretical formulations within the ‘affect-trauma’
frame of reference. It will be seen later, when the ‘topographical’ frame of reference is
discussed, that Freud’s theoretical viewpoint underwent a radical change, even though
the influence of the first phase on those which succeeded it was profound.

Acknowledgements
This work was conducted at the Institute of Psychiatry, University of London, in
collaboration with the Index Project, The Hampstead Child-Therapy Clinic, London, and was
supported by a grant from the Foundation for Research in Psychoanalysis, Beverly Hills, California.
The Hampstead Child-Therapy Clinic is an organization which is at present maintained by the Field
Foundation, Inc., New York; the Foundation for Research in Psychoanalysis, Beverly Hills,
California; the Freud Centenary Fund, London; the Anna Freud Foundation, New York; the Grant
Foundation, Inc., New York; the Andrew Mellon Foundation; the National Institute for Mental
Health, Bethesda; The New-Land Foundation, New York; and a number of private supporters. We
are indebted to Dr Joseph B. Cramer and Dr Robert L. Tyson for their constructive comments on the
drafts of this paper.

References
Freud, S. (1894). The neuro-psychoses of defence.S.E. 3.
Freud, S. (1895a). Obsessions and phobias: their psychical mechanism and their aetiology. S.E. 3.
Freud, S. (1895b). On the grounds for detaching a particular syndrome from neurasthenia under the
description ‘anxiety neurosis’. S.E. 3.
Freud, S. (1896a). Draft K. The neuroses of defence. In Extracts from the Fliess Papers, S.E. 1
Freud, S. (1896b). Heredity and the aetiology of the neuroses. S.E. 3.
Freud, S. (1896c). The aetiology of hysteria. S.E. 3.
Freud, S. (189S). Sexuality in the aetiology of the neuroses. S.E, 3.
Sandler, J, Dare, C. & Holder, A, (1972a). Frames of reference in psychoanalytic psychology. I.
Introduction, Br. J. med. Psychol, 45, 127-131.
Sandler, J., Dare, C. & Holder, A. (1972b). Frames of reference in psychoanalytic psychology. II. The
historical context and phases in the development of psychoanalysis. Br. J. med, Psychol. 45, 133-142.
Sandler, J., Dare, C. & Holder, A, (1972c). Frames of reference in psychoanalytic psychology. III. A
note on the basic assumptions. Br. J. med. Psychol. 45,143-147.

V. The topographical frame of reference: the organization of the mental apparatus

The first phase of psychoanalysis was comparatively short, ending in 1897 (cf.
Sandler, Dare & Holder, 1972b), and Freud’s psychological theories during that phase
can be encompassed within what we have termed the ‘affect-trauma’ frame of reference.

24
 The psychoanalytic psychology of the second phase was developed by Freud
(together with a small number of colleagues) over a much longer period of time,
spanning a quarter of a century (1897-1923). In an earlier paper (Sandler, Dare &.
Holder, 1972b) we pointed to the tremendous developments which took place during
this phase. A wealth of important theoretical formulations emerged, along with a
number of case-reports, clinical observations and studies on psychoanalytic technique.
Freud’s essential clinical constructs have been considered elsewhere (Sandler, Dare &
Holder, 1973), and although in the present series of papers we are concerned with
Freud’s general psychological theories, we would emphasize the constant interaction in
this phase, as had occurred in the first phase, between Freud’s clinical formulations
and theoretical constructions. This interaction led to continual theoretical
modifications, and in providing a frame of reference for the second phase we have
ventured on a task which we have found to be far from easy. In this presentation we
shall undoubtedly do violence to a great many details of Freud’s formulations. However,
we are convinced that the provision of a relatively simplified frame of reference for the
complicated developments of the second phase is essential (cf. Sandler, Dare & Holder,
1972a). This is all the more so because topographical concepts were not entirely
discarded after the publication of the structural model (Freud, 1923), and are still very
much in current use. For this reason several papers in this series will be devoted to the
topographical frame of reference.
The main theoretical propositions of the second phase were first put forward by
Freud in The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), in particular in the famous seventh
chapter, which spelled out the first full formulation of the ‘topography of the mind’. 29 Of
special relevance to the theories of the second phase are the three essays on sexuality
(1905), ‘two principles of mental functioning’ (1911), a note ‘on the Unconscious’ (1912),
the article on narcissism (1914), the whole series of papers on metapsychology30 (1915a,
b, c, 1917a, b), and certain of the Introductory Lectures(1916-17).
We have previously mentioned (Sandler, Dare & Holder, 1972b; Sandler, Holder
& Dare, 1972) the importance of Freud’s self-analysis and the analysis of his patients’
and his own dreams in fostering decisive changes in his views. These changes
crystallized at the end of the century, leading to a shift of focus in psychoanalytic
thinking from the influence of external reality (especially traumatic events) to the way in
which the mental apparatus dealt with spontaneous inner urges and demands and
their manifold representatives. In the first phase the patients’ ‘memories’ of childhood
seductions were, on the whole, thought to be of real events, charged with the ‘energy’ of
affects which were, in their turn, mainly seen as responses to external events. Fantasies
brought by the patient were previously regarded as defences against the recall of
traumatic memories, but essentially as ‘refinements’ of these memories (Freud, 1897).
With the introduction of the idea that such fantasies and ‘memories’ of real events were
wish-fulfilments, the second phase could be regarded as having begun.
From the clinical viewpoint the initiation of the second phase involved the
abandonment in 1897 of the hypothesis of real sexual seduction, and resulted in a
massive shift of interest on to the clinical and theoretical importance of sexual wishes

29
‘Chapter Seven’ has often been used to provide an implicit frame of reference for the whole of the second
phase, and its detailed study frequently finds a place early in psychoanalytic training courses. In our view it
is not only difficult to comprehend, but includes a number of propositions which are over-complicated and
superfluous, in the light of later developments. This most important chapter can, we believe, be studied
with most profit after the essentials of psychoanalytic psychology have been mastered.
30
What we have referred to as ‘psychoanalytic psychology’ in this series has traditionally been called
‘metapsychology’ (i.e. the theories ‘beyond’ psychology). The term was coined by Freud in the first phase
when ‘psychology’ referred to the study of conscious phenomena only. It continues to be used in
psychoanalytic writings, but as modern psychology is much more than the study of conscious mental
experiences, the term is essentially anachronistic and its continued use adds an archaic flavour to
psychoanalytic writings.

25
and wish-fulfilling daydreams which might or might not be within the patient’s
conscious awareness. Throughout the second phase the fundamental function of the
mental apparatus was seen as that of harnessing the instinctual drives. This
‘harnessing’ normally took account of external reality, gratification of the drives being
allowed in one form or another whenever possible.
This was an enormous change. The individual was seen to be, to a large degree,
at the mercy of impulses (largely sexual) arising from within himself. These impulses
could not be allowed direct expression after early childhood, but could only show
themselves indirectly - as surface manifestations of instinctual drives and wishes
arising from the depths of the apparatus. They could instigate conflict, and the
attempted solutions to such conflicts could result in pathology. Conflicts could arise
because of the enduring influence of past reality within the mind of the individual, and
because of his need to take present-day reality into account as well, in the interest of
self-preservation. Essentially, conflict arose because of the discrepancy between the
urge to gratify instinctual wishes on the one hand, and the threat of being traumatically
overwhelmed on the other. Trauma was now seen both in terms of the danger of being
hurt, rejected or punished to an intolerable degree (in particular the threat of castration
or of loss of the parents’ love) or in terms of the individual being overwhelmed by
instinctual drive excitation, rather than by externally aroused excitation, as in the first
phase. In the second phase both normal and pathological processes came to be
described in terms of internal psychological (‘intrapsychic’) adaptations to the pressure
and ‘demands’ of the drives.31 Processes such as defence against the expression of
crude instinctual wishes, their ‘censorship’, transformation and disguised gratification
were highlighted.
In presenting the topographical frame of reference we shall attempt to provide a
basis for comprehending the various hypothetical systems and processes involved.
Throughout the second phase such phenomena as dreams, daydreams, symptoms,
character traits, works of art and other forms of behaviour and experience are regarded
as compromise-formations between the instinctual wish and all the forces which
opposed instinctual gratification, i.e. were regarded as derivatives of the instinctual
wish. The long second phase was the time during which the many ways in which
unconscious wishes controlled behaviour were studied in extenso. The translation of
surface expressions back into unconscious meanings, the detailed study of symbols and
of the repetition of the childhood past (especially the sexual life of the child) all
preoccupied psychoanalysts, both in the consulting room| and in psychoanalytic
studies outside it.

31
The nature and development of the instinctual drives received a great deal of attention during the
second phase, in particular the idea of phases of development in regard to childhood sexuality, as well as
the special problems relating to the role of aggression. All of this deserves separate discussion, but in
general the psychoanalytic models of the mental apparatus can for our present purposes be considered
separately from the specific character of the individual instinctual drive components. The instinctual drives
can be taken (following Freud) as ‘demands for work’ on the mental apparatus, although they were also
seen as quantities of ‘energy’ which pressed for ‘discharge’. As Freud put it (1915a), the drive can be
regarded ‘as a concept on the frontier between the mental and the somatic, as the psychical representative
of the stimuli originating from within the organism and reaching the mind, as a measure of the demand
made upon the mind for work in consequence of its connection with the body’. The historical development
of the important topic of instinctual drives will be dealt with in detail in a later paper.

26
 Fig. 1. The ‘systems’ of the mental apparatus in topographical relation to one
another.

Topography
During the second phase the mental apparatus was seen in terms of one or
other variant of the ‘topographical’ model. This model derives its name from Freud’s
attempts to describe the ‘topography’ of the mind, with emphasis on the psychological
interrelationships and the interaction of qualitatively different strata of the apparatus.
Freud put it as follows when he first introduced the notion of mental topography or
‘psychical locality’ in The Interpretation of Dreams (1900):
I shall entirely disregard the fact that the mental apparatus with which we are
here concerned is also known to us in the form of an anatomical preparation, and I
shall carefully avoid the temptation to determine psychical locality in any anatomical
fashion. I shall remain upon psychological ground, and I propose simply to follow the
suggestion that we should picture the instrument which carries out our mental
functions as resembling a compound microscope or a photographic apparatus, or
something of the kind. On that basis, psychical locality will correspond to a point inside
the apparatus at which one of the preliminary stages of an image comes into being. In
the microscope and telescope, as we know, these occur in part at ideal points, regions
in which no tangible component of the apparatus is situated.
The principal reference point for the ‘topography’ is the psychological quality of
consciousness. The names chosen for the various parts of the mental apparatus
indicate their relationship to the surface, i.e. to consciousness. The three systems
which are involved are designated as the Conscious, Preconscious and Unconscious
systems (see Fig. 1). Boundaries are thought to exist between these systems, and before
discussing the topographical frame of reference it is worth commenting that the
boundaries are presented as concepts useful for the sake of exposition (indeed, Freud
regarded them in this light), and that they should not be thought of as clear-cut at all
times. At periods of relative mental harmony or of ‘psychic equilibrium’ the dividing
lines must be regarded as being blurred, and it is only during periods of conflict that
the various systems can be thought of as though they were sharply defined and
separate entities. For example, a wish to see a rival killed may be tolerated by all three
systems as long as the rival is fit and well, but conflict may be aroused if the rival falls
ill (especially if he is also a loved member of the family), and the wish may be relegated
to the system Unconscious. For certain purposes it may also be useful to consider the
mental systems as being to some extent on a continuum, the boundaries in the
schematic presentations serving the same purpose as the contour lines on a map.
Pursuing the spatial metaphor further, mental contents may be regarded as being in
the deep or in the superficial layers of any one of the systems of the apparatus. The

27
individual systems will be discussed in detail in the papers which follow. 32

A comment on the use of the term ‘unconscious’

At this point we would like to re-emphasize the fact that confusion often arises
as a result of the (at times indiscriminate) attribution of different meanings to the term
‘unconscious’. In the present series of papers the phrase ‘the Unconscious’ is used to
denote a system which is part of the mental apparatus, and which is thought of as
functioning according to certain specific laws. Its contents, as long as they remain in
this system, always have the quality of unconsciousness (or lack the quality of
consciousness). The system Preconscious has contents which also have the quality of
unconsciousness (i.e. are, descriptively speaking, unconscious); but these contents are,
by definition, not at that particular moment in time contents of the system
Unconscious. The distinction between what is, from the point of view of description,
unconscious, and the use of the term to refer to a specific system should always be kept
in mind. An inordinate amount of muddle has been introduced into psychoanalytic
writings and discussions by the failure to indicate (or even, in some cases, to
appreciate) the sense in which the term is being used.
Inasmuch as the contents of the system Unconscious are regarded, as we shall
see, as actively pressing, forward; towards surface expression, and are held in check by
active counterforces, they have been referred to as being dynamically unconscious. An
important distinction should be made between the system Unconscious and what is
descriptively unconscious (sometimes referred to as the descriptive unconscious). The
latter includes the system Preconscious. In general, the term ‘unconscious’ used as a
descriptive adjective includes the contents of both the Unconscious and Preconscious
systems.33 This is indicated in Fig. 2.

Fig. 2. The relation of the three systems in the topographical frame of reference to the qualities of
consciousness and unconsciousness. (For convenience the frame of reference is presented horizontally rather
than vertically - as in Fig. 1 - and the ‘depths’ are on the left-hand side of the diagram, the ‘surface’ on the
right-hand side.)

A comment on the use of the term 'preconscious'

The term ‘preconscious’ may give the impression that the contents of the
32
The need for simplification is exemplified by the fact that in the model of the mind put forward by Freud in 1900 he
wrote of a system which receives perceptions (the system Pcpt.). At a later point he introduced the notion of a separate
system in which consciousness arises (the system Cs.). It was only in 1915 that these two separate systems were
regarded as one (the system Pcpt.-Cs.), Freud also occasionally wrote of the Conscious and Preconscious as if they
were one system (e.g. in 1915c), but we will maintain a consistent distinction between the two. Moreover, we will
regard perceptual input as impinging on the apparatus either through consciousness or outside it, and that it can affect,
directly or indirectly, any or all of the three major systems.
33
Part (but only part) of the confusion surrounding the term ‘unconscious’ comes from the fact that in German nouns
are always written with a capital first letter. In translation the nouns referring to the Unconscious and Preconscious
systems have sometimes been written as ‘the Unconscious’ and ‘the Preconscious’ and sometimes as ‘the unconscious’
and ‘the preconscious’. We have adhered to the practice of using the capital letter when referring to the system and not
when using the word in a descriptive sense. Unfortunately, the Standard Edition of Freud’s works often refers to ‘the
unconscious’ when the system is being discussed.

28
Preconscious system are somewhat less unconscious from the point of view of their
quality. This is quite incorrect. Descriptively speaking, they are quite outside
consciousness. However, the term was first introduced in the second phase to refer to
contents which are, descriptively speaking, unconscious, but which were capable of
becoming conscious if attention was directed towards them. Thus, if one is asked what
one had for breakfast or where one was born, these pieces of information were
unconscious in the sense that one was not thinking of them at the time. However, they
can normally be readily recalled, and in this sense differ enormously from childhood
memories which had been subject to repression, which formed part of the Unconscious
system, and could not normally be recalled. Early in the second phase (e.g. Freud,
1900) censorship was thought to exist only between the Unconscious and the
Preconscious, and the contents of the Preconscious were thought to be freely accessible
to consciousness.
We shall see later in this paper that Freud was forced to change this view and to
postulate a censorship between the Preconscious and Conscious systems. While the
workings of the Unconscious and the Preconscious can be regarded as vastly different
(for example, preconscious functioning may make use of formal modes of thinking,
while the Unconscious, by definition, cannot), the contents of both systems are
descriptively unconscious and are liable to repression. While contents which can be
allowed into consciousness without hindrance if attention is directed to them can, in
this frame of reference, be referred to as being ‘preconscious’, they are not the only
contents of the system. In this frame of reference we shall adhere to Freud’s later
formulation (cf. 1916-17) that a ‘censor’ exists between the Preconscious and Conscious
systems. Not all preconscious contents are freely accessible to consciousness, but may
only be permitted to pass to consciousness in a disguised form. Equally, they may be
repressed into the Unconscious before they gain entry into consciousness.

The interrelation of the mental systems

In presenting the topographical frame of reference we shall primarily be
concerned with the vicissitudes of the instinctual wish as it makes its way (or attempts
to do so) from the system Unconscious to surface expression. A considerable degree of
dynamic interaction between and within the different systems is involved in this
movement. This dynamic interaction will be illustrated in a later paper by means of
examples, but its importance has made it necessary to emphasize the boundaries
between the different systems.

Boundaries between systems

The notion of defence against ‘incompatible ideas’ was put forward in the first
phase, and greatly elaborated in the second. This development was intimately linked up
with a view of the boundaries between the different systems as having the function of
censorship. Essentially, the censorship is seen as functioning to protect consciousness
from the awareness of those instinctual wishes which, in direct or indirect form, would
represent a threat if they were permitted surface expression. 34 This censoring takes
place completely outside consciousness. The scanning and scrutiny of instinctual
wishes and their derivatives involved in the censorship presumes the existence of a
form of ‘unconscious awareness’ in the Preconscious.
It is appropriate to make use of Freud’s metaphorical description of the
censoring processes:
34
The topographical viewpoint evolved in relation to the clinical method of the second phase of psychoanalysis, and it
is not difficult to see how this way of considering mental functioning came into being. The patient’s relatively
unguided ‘free associations’ were assumed to reflect the emergence of inner instinctual urges from the depths to the
surface, and this assumption was then generalized to other aspects of behaviour and mental functioning via the study of
dreams, slips of the tongue, faulty acts, symptom-formation, artistic productions, etc. In the second phase, and in the
topographical frame of reference, behaviour in general is regarded as predominantly motivated by the instinctual
drives, as modified by the censorship, and regarded as attempts at the fulfilment of instinctual wishes.

29
 “Let us... compare the system of the Unconscious to a large entrance hall, in which
the mental impulses jostle one another like separate individuals. Adjoining this entrance
hall there is a second, narrower, room - a kind of drawing-room, - in which
consciousness... [also]... resides. But on the threshold between these two rooms a
watchman performs his function: he examines the different mental impulses, acts as a
censor, and will not admit them into the drawing-room if they displease him... it does not
make much difference if the watchman turns away a particular impulse at the threshold
itself or if he pushes it back across the threshold after it has entered the drawing-room...
If they have already pushed their way forward to the threshold and have been turned
back by the watchman, then they are inadmissible to consciousness; we speak of them
as repressed. But even the impulses which the watchman has allowed to cross the
threshold are not on that account necessarily conscious as well; they can only become so
if they succeed in catching the eye of consciousness. We are therefore justified in calling
this second room the system of the Preconscious” [1916-17].
In the topographical frame of reference presented in this paper it would be
necessary to add that contents in the Preconscious not only have to ‘catch the eye of
consciousness’ but also have to overcome the second censorship operating between the
Preconscious and Conscious systems. Freud’s metaphor brings in a most important,
but often forgotten notion, developed during the second phase, i.e. that repression not
only occurs at the transition from the Unconscious to the Preconscious system, but
may equally well affect contents of the Preconscious itself, including derivatives of the
system Unconscious at some point in their development towards surface expression.
This point is of crucial importance in this frame of reference and for the understanding
of the way in which Freud came to see the functioning of the mental apparatus in the
second phase. It is a point which has been obscured and neglected in much of the
relevant psychoanalytic literature, and it is partly because of this that we want to
emphasize it as strongly as possible here. Its implication is that, in this frame of
reference, repression and the other mechanisms of defence do not constitute a static
boundary or dam at the border between the Unconscious and Preconscious systems.
Wishes arising in the Unconscious are regarded as passing through the Preconscious
on their way to surface expression, being transformed in the process of becoming
‘derivatives’ of the Unconscious. Such derivatives bear the stamp of Preconscious
mental functioning (which we shall discuss in detail later), but may be defended against
at any point in their journey to the system Conscious (or even after they have entered
the system Conscious, as when a conscious wish-fulfilling daydream is repressed) and
may be relegated to the deeper layers of the apparatus. In order to attain the system
Conscious (i.e. to achieve ‘discharge’) the derivative of the wish from the Unconscious
must be sufficiently disguised so as to evade the censorship, so that we may see the
formation of a sequence of derivatives of the instinctual wish until one is formed which
appears to be sufficiently innocuous to be allowed to proceed.
It is necessary to add that the point at which the censorship actually occurs
depends not only on the content of the instinctual wish in question but also on the
state of the various systems at any one time. Thus the ‘level of censorship’ may be less
during states of sleep, inattention or intoxication than when the person is fully alert.
Further, we should add that a derivative of an instinctual wish may be perfectly
acceptable at one time in the person’s life, but not at another (or not in other
circumstances) when it is less acceptable to the censor.
During the second phase the clinical manifestation of the functioning of defence
was seen as resistance during the course of psychoanalytic treatment. (In the next
phase resistance was regarded as having several additional sources.) Using the
topographical frame of reference, interpretation of resistance was seen as a method of
bringing preconscious derivatives, which, were active but were not being allowed access
to the system Conscious, into consciousness. These processes, involving a dynamic
interaction between the systems, will, we hope, become clearer after the individual
systems have been described in the papers which follow.

30
 It will be remembered that the systems within this frame of reference are
conceived of as being arranged in a spatial order, implying a continuum from depth to
surface. The ‘deepest’ system is that of the Unconscious, the most superficial that of the
Conscious, with the Preconscious lying between the two (see Figs. 1 and 2); and we
would reiterate, for the point cannot be made too often, that the descriptive term
‘unconscious’ applies to both the Unconscious and Preconscious systems in the
topographical frame of reference.

Acknowledgements
This work was conducted at the Institute of Psychiatry, University of London, in
collaboration with the Index Project, The Hampstead Child-Therapy Clinic, London, and was
supported by a grant from the Foundation for Research in Psychoanalysis, Beverly Hills, California.
The Hampstead Child-Therapy Clinic is an organization which is at present maintained by the Field
Foundation, Inc., New York; the Foundation for Research in Psychoanalysis, Beverly Hills,
California; the Freud Centenary Fund, London; the Anna Freud Foundation, New York; the Grant
Foundation, Inc., New York; the Andrew Mellon Foundation; the National Institute for Mental
Health, Bethesda; The New-Land Foundation, New York; and a number of private supporters.

References
Freud, S. (1897). Draft L, The architecture of hysteria. In Extracts from the Fliess Papers. S.E. 1.
Freud, S. (1900). The interpretation of dreams. S.E. 4-5.
Freud, S, (1905). Three essays on the theory of sexuality. S.E. 7.
Freud, S. (1911). Formulations on the two principles of mental functioning. S.E. 12.
Freud, S. (1912). A note on the Unconscious in psycho-analysis. S.E. 12.
Freud, S. (1914). On narcissism: an introduction. S.E. 14.
Freud, S. (1915 a). Instincts and their vicissitudes. S.E. 14.
Freud, S. (1915b). Repression. S.E. 14.
Freud, S. (1915c). The Unconscious. S.E. 14,
Freud, S. (1916-17). Introductory lectures on psycho-analysis. S.E. 15-16.
Freud, S. (1917a). A metapsychological supplement to the theory of dreams. S.E. 14.
Freud, S. (1917b). Mourning and melancholia. S.E. 14.
Freud, S. (1923). The ego and the id. S.E. 19.
Sandler, J., Dare, C. & Holder, A. (1972a). Frames of reference in psychoanalytic psychology. I.
Introduction. Br. J. med. Psychol. 45, 127-131.
Sandler, X, Dare, C. & Holder, A. (1972b). Frames of reference in psychoanalytic psychology. II. The
historical context and phases in the development of psychoanalysis. Br. J. med. Psychol. 45, 133-142.
Sandler, J., Dare, C. & Holder, A. (1973). The Patient and the Analyst: the Basis of the Psychoanalytic
Process. London: Allen & Unwin,
Sandler, J., Holder, A. & Dare, C. (1972). Frames of reference in psychoanalytic psychology. IV. The
affect-trauma frame of reference. Br. J. med, Psychol. 45, 265-272.

VI. The topographical frame of reference: the Unconscious

Previously (Sandler et al., 1973a) we have introduced a discussion of the

topographical frame of reference, and considered the division of the mental apparatus
into three systems which varied in their ‘depth’ from the ‘surface’ of the mental
apparatus. The deepest of these systems was the Unconscious, the most superficial the
Conscious system. The Preconscious was located between the two. While the interaction
between the systems and the function of the ‘censorship’ have been discussed, more
detailed consideration of the individual systems has been left to this and subsequent
papers.

The system Unconscious

The contents of the system Unconscious can be regarded, as being composed of
unsatisfied instinctual wishes which are the mental representations of drives which
have biological roots. Broadly speaking, these can be differentiated into sexual and
aggressive drives, although there is a further subdivision in terms of so-called
‘component’ or ‘partial’ drives which have their origin at different stages of the
individual’s development.

31
 Each component drive is regarded as having a source (in the second phase
regarded as being an erotogenic-erotic, erogenic or erogenous - zone such as the lips,
anus and genitals). Tension (lack of ‘discharge’) in these zones is postulated as arousing
quantities of instinctual drive energy which presses towards discharge. The component
drive is also seen as having an aim (e.g. to suck, thereby achieving ‘instinctual
gratification’ and ‘discharge’). It is also connected with an object (e.g. the mother’s
breast) towards which the aim is directed and upon which the drive is normally
satisfied. It has a pressure which can be considered to be a measure of its intensity and
the impulsion to ‘discharge’.35
Although the drives are regarded as having sources, aims and objects, it is
necessary to make a distinction between their biological and psychological aspects. The
instinctual drives are psychological constructs, even though they are put forward as
being closely related to biological processes. In Freud’s descriptions throughout the
second phase, these two aspects are not clearly distinguished.
Thus he postulated biological sources, aims and objects for the component
instincts, although the hypothetical pressure of the drive was essentially a
psychological construct. It is essential to point out that although, from the point of view
of the observer, the infant may be satisfying its instinctual drives in relation to an object
(e.g. pleasurably sucking at its mother’s breast), it may have no psychological
knowledge of the object from which its satisfaction is derived. Indeed, it may, early in
life, know little more than the experience of the sequence of unpleasurable tension and
pleasurable satiation. We mention this because of the widespread influence in
psychoanalytic writings of the ‘psychologist’s fallacy’, which results in the presumption
that what the observer sees the infant knows. As William James put it:
“The great snare of the psychologist is the confusion of his own standpoint with
that of the mental fact about which he is making his report” [1890].
Nevertheless, from early in its development the infant receives and retains
impressions connected with drive tension and gratification which are regarded as being
laid down in the mental apparatus in the form of memory traces.
The instinctual drive is conceptualized, from a quantitative point of view, as a
fluctuating quantity of energy which, having reached a certain level of intensity, ‘seeks
discharge’. In this context the drive is spoken of as ‘satisfied’ or ‘discharged’ when it is
at a low level, and as ‘unsatisfied’, creating ‘drive tension’, when its pressure is high. It
is of some interest that Freud transferred the concept of a ‘quantity of energy’ pressing
forward for ‘discharge’ from the affect-trauma model of mental functioning, Freud first
considered the sexual drives almost exclusively, and referred to their energy as ‘libido’,
but never coined a corresponding term for the energy of the aggressive drives (usually
referred to now as ‘aggressive energy’). Although Freud often used the term ‘libido’ to
refer to instinctual energies in general, we will refer to ‘instinctual energy’ to include
both sexual and aggressive energies in this frame of reference.
The idea of ‘psychic energy’ was consistent with 19th-century energic concepts,
especially those of the physical sciences and the neurophysiology of the time. The idea
of the ‘discharge’ of psychological energies paralleled the notion of the ‘discharge’ of
nervous energy along the nervous pathways. Although the concept of ‘discharge’
subsequently changed in biology, it has endured in psychoanalytic theory. It is certainly
central to the way in which the contents of the system Unconscious are seen as
functioning in the topographical frame of reference.
An instinctual drive can be thought of as being ‘aroused’ by stimuli from within
35
It is evident that there are a number of problems connected with these formulations. These arise in part from the
historical fact that Freud only gave aggression the status of an independent instinctual drive relatively late in the second
phase (cf. Freud, 1920). While the sexual component instincts were linked by Freud (from 1905 onwards) with
erotogenic zones (cf. 1905a), links cannot be made in the same way for the aggressive drives, although attempts have
been made to associate aggressive impulses with the use of certain body parts. The development of Freud’s drive
theories has been discussed by Bibring (1941) and will be rediscussed by us in a later paper. The hypothetical sources,
aims and objects of the drives will also be considered later in this series of papers.

32
the individual or by stimulation from without. In this frame of reference allowance must
be made for both these sources of increase in the pressure of a drive. With the arousal
of a quantity of drive energy memory traces of previously satisfying experiences are
stimulated and are cathected36 with drive energy.
Instinctual wishes
The instinctual drives are hypothetical concepts and are regarded as being
represented in the system Unconscious by instinctual wishes. Indeed, the instinctual
wish can be regarded as the basic unit in the Unconscious. It has two components. The
first is the instinctual energic charge and the second the revived memory derived from
the memory trace or traces which it has cathected. If an experience has previously
provided instinctual gratification (drive discharge) then the arousal of the instinctual
drive is regarded as activating the memory of the previous gratification. The revived
memory is referred to as the ideational content (the ‘idea’ component) of the wish. In the
first instance, the wish arouses unpleasurable tension in the apparatus and ‘presses
forward’ towards activity and consciousness, so that the previously satisfying
experiences can be repeated and the satisfaction re-experienced. If the wish were to be
fulfilled, the unpleasure37 of instinctual tension would be replaced by pleasurable
gratification.
The instinctual wishes in the Unconscious have a peremptory quality - they seek
pleasurable discharge and the reduction of unpleasurable tension at all costs (i.e. they
function according to the pleasure principle or the pleasure-unpleasure principle). It
should be noted that the pressure for such direct and immediate gratification,
characteristic of the system Unconscious, may arouse conflict during the passage of the
wish through the other systems, and as a consequence the instinctual wish becomes
subjected to censorship. In the previous paper we have alluded to the way in which
instinctual wishes can, as a consequence, become transformed into derivatives
(‘derivatives of the Unconscious’) which do manage to pass the censor, and which
provide instinctual gratification in a disguised form.
The Unconscious contains a central core of instinctual wishes related to the
most primitive forms of instinctual gratification. Linked with these are further repressed
derivatives of the basic infantile instinctual wishes which, though acceptable to the
censorship at one time in the individual’s life, were later subjected to repression
because they aroused unpleasurable conflict. Thus, from the point of view of the
topographical frame of reference, the contents of the Unconscious can be regarded as
consisting essentially of infantile sexual and aggressive wishes and their repressed
derivatives which may be prevented from finding direct expression and discharge by the
censorship, and can only in normal circumstances reach the surface of the apparatus
by the formation of suitably disguised derivatives. 38 In the older child or adult
instinctual wishes containing primitive sexual and aggressive content, as well as the
constellation of wishes involved in the well-known Oedipus comlplex, are normally
36
The term cathexis is an unfortunate rendering of the original German Besetzung which means (and should have been
translated as) ‘investment’. However, it would appear that ‘cathexis’ is here to stay. In psychoanalytic writings the term
‘libidinal cathexis’ is often used to indicate the investment of an object or an idea with any instinctual charge, but the
term ‘aggressive cathexis’ is perfectly appropriate, although infrequently found. The term ‘cathexis’ is also used in
psychoanalytic psychology in relation to attention, although here the phrase ‘investment with attention cathexis’ is the
appropriate one (in a model which assumes that the making of something conscious implies investing it with a form of
non-instinctual energy). The phrase ‘to cathect a love-object’ may simply mean ‘to invest the mental representation of
the object with libido’, but the phrase is often used to denote a combination of instinctual cathexis and attention
cathexis, i.e. meaning ‘to be lovingly interested in’ the person concerned. In the second phase, and in the topographical
frame of reference, ‘to love’ is identical with ‘to invest with libido’. This subject will be dealt with in greater detail in
subsequent papers, particularly in connexion with the development of object-relationships.
37
The German Lust is usually translated as ‘pleasure’, and its opposite (Unlust) as ‘unpleasure’. Early translations
rendered Unlust as ‘pain’, but this should be reserved for the translation of Schmerz, which Freud distinguished from
Unlust.
38
The question of inherited memories, as well as the whole issue of ‘primal’ or ‘primary’ repression, can safely be left
for later consideration and debate.

33
repressed and can only emerge in disguised form. In the course of psychoanalytic
treatment the development of various forms of transference are regarded, from this
point of view, as representing derivatives of the Unconscious. The same can be
considered to be true for the dream, the analysis of which was regarded, particularly in
the early days of psychoanalysis, as the ‘royal road to the Unconscious’. We have
commented on the fact that, in the second phase of psychoanalysis, the focus of the
psychoanalyst’s attention was on ‘the language of the Unconscious’, i.e. the forms in
which the instinctual wishes of the Unconscious found their expression in preconscious
derivatives or in surface behaviour and experience.
After a certain point in development has been reached, repression of an
instinctual wish or its derivative (or even of innocuous content unconsciously
associated with an instinctual wish, as in the temporary forgetting of a friend’s name)
can occur at any time. The motive for repression is the unpleasure of conflict, or the
anxiety associated with the threat of an unpleasant experience of any sort. Thus, at all
times the contents of the Unconscious are being augmented by fresh repressions. At the
same time, the instinctual wishes of the Unconscious constantly stimulate the
formation of derivatives which find their way into the Preconscious and, if unacceptable
aspects are sufficiently disguised to escape the ‘censor’, to consciousness and motility.
Earlier it was pointed out that in this frame of reference memories of earlier
satisfying experiences are cathected by the instinctual drives in the formation of
instinctual wishes. These satisfying experiences need not have been real events, but can
also have been wish-fulfilling daydreams. Once these have been repressed they are
treated in the Unconscious as if they were memories of real events, and when cathected
by an instinctual drive become the content of an instinctual wish. From the point of
view of the topographical frame of reference we would say that in the first phase of
psychoanalysis Freud did not distinguish between the recall of a past wish-fulfilling
fantasy and the recovery of a repressed traumatic memory. It was, of course, the
realization of this distinction by Freud which led to the clinical and theoretical
developments of the second phase.
Mental functioning within the Unconscious
A number of hypothetical processes were postulated by Freud as occurring
within this system. These ‘characteristic’ modes of functioning include the concept of
primary process (which stands in marked opposition to the secondary process which we
shall discuss in connexion with the two other systems).
In order to present the concept of primary process it is necessary to point out
that Freud considered the energic cathexes of the Unconscious to be ‘freely mobile’, i.e.
the instinctual energy which invested memory traces (with the corresponding revival of
memories as part of the instinctual wish) was ‘fluid’ and could be transferred from one
idea or image to another. It was regarded as being able to move from the whole of an
idea to one of its parts; or the energy could be transferred from an idea to any other
ideational element which had been associated with it in any way; or two ideational
elements (e.g. two memories) could be compounded, by super-imposition, so to speak,
so that a composite entity is temporarily formed. One might conceive of this as the
instinctual energy cathecting whole networks of ideas which are linked together by the
most primitive of associational ties.
It could be said that the arousal of drives in the Unconscious (either as a
consequence of internal stimuli or of perception of the external world) causes a cathexis
(investment with a charge of energy) of memory traces associated with past drive
gratification. While it is the most important memories of satisfaction which are initially
cathected by drive energy to give content to the instinctual wish, the energic element in
the wish can be regarded as relatively mobile and capable of being transferred to other
elements if obstacles exist in the path of direct wish-fulfilment. This in turn can
produce a whole host of alternative forms of the particular wish. In other words, if one
could hypothetically view the process from the side of the Unconscious, derivatives are
initially formed by means of the transferring of mobile instinctual cathexis. (The further

34
processes involved in the formation of derivatives, in the Preconscious system, are very
different).

The characteristics of primary process are therefore:

1. Displacement. The transferring of instinctual cathexis from one mental
content (idea, memory image, etc.) to another. It can result in a part substituting for the
whole in the instinctual wish, or vice versa. There is no logic in this displacement; no
formal rules are followed. One idea can stand for another in the Unconscious if they
share an associative link of any sort. Moreover, instinctual cathexis may be transferred
from element A to an element C simply because A and C each have something in
common with B; and so on.
2. Condensation. The amalgamation, of two or more ideational elements
cathected by the same charge of instinctual energy- In a sense, the instinctual drive, if
it has been linked with two separate ideas or memories, can get ‘two for the price of one’
by the superimposition of one idea upon another.
Freud was of the view that the primary-process mechanisms can be discerned in
the content of dream’s and of slips of the tongue. By getting the patient’s associations to
such material, it was hoped that the analyst and patient would be able to trace the
overt material back to the underlying instinctual wish and to early memories and
conflicts.
Symbolization is sometimes included as a primary-process mechanism, but
because symbolization and symbol-formation are a highly complex process, we can refer
to that aspect of symbolization which is primary process in nature as being a special
case of pars pro toto displacement.
The instinctual wishes in the Unconscious derive largely from the first few years
of life, and the characteristics of mental functioning within the Unconscious more or
less follow from the concepts of freely mobile cathexis and primary process. They can be
listed as follows:
(1) Timelessness. As Freud put it (1915): ‘The processes... are not ordered
temporally, are not altered by the passage of time; they have no reference to time at all’
As the concept of time is one which only develops after a period of time in the mind of
the child, and is an aspect of the whole of his cognitive development, it is linked, as we
shall see, with the more formal secondary-process functioning and thus linked with the
Preconscious and Conscious systems.
(2) Disregard of reality. Instinctual wishes are considered to follow the pleasure-
unpleasure principle. Here again, we see a sharp difference in mode of functioning
between the Unconscious on the one hand and the Preconscious and Conscious on the
other. In the latter systems the ‘reality principle’ obtains, whereas in the Unconscious
the pleasure principle and the pressure towards the satisfaction of infantile instinctual
wishes, however unreasonable in the present, still persist.
(3) Psychical reality. As far as the Unconscious is concerned, memories of real
events and of imagined experiences are not distinguished. Abstract symbols are not
recognized as abstract but are treated as if they represented concrete reality. 39
(4) Absence of contradiction. Inasmuch as the awareness of contradictions
involves a degree of formal thinking and judgement, as far as the Unconscious is
concerned contradictory elements are quite compatible and exist side by side. Freud
commented (1915): ‘When two wishful impulses whose aims must appear to us
incompatible become simultaneously active, the two impulses do not diminish each
other or cancel each other out.’
Absence of contradiction in the Unconscious also exists in the form of so-called
identity of opposites. ‘Big’ and ‘small’ are the same as far as the Unconscious is
concerned, because of the absence of negation (see below).

39
It has been pointed out (Sandler & Nagera, 1963) that the more organized part of the personality has to develop the
capacity to disbelieve in order for imaginative productions to be distinguished from real experiences.

35
 (5) Absence of negation. Because the attachment of a ‘not’ to an idea reflects a
formal thought process, acquired during the course of development, negation does not
exist in the Unconscious. Negation is added in the other systems and usually points to
the opposite in the Unconscious (e.g. ‘I remember being beaten by a man who was not
at all like my father’ may refer to a repressed memory of being beaten by father).
(6) ‘Words as things’. Whereas in the other two systems symbolic and abstract
representations (par excellence, through words) are extensively used, and the connexion
of the symbol with the class of events to which it refers is retained, this is not so in the
Unconscious. With repression, the symbol is treated as if it were a representation of a
concrete thing. It has no abstract quality at all. Thus the memory of something which
was abstract might appear in a concrete form in one or other derivative of the
Unconscious. This phenomenon is particularly evident in dreams and in some forms of
schizophrenic thought disorder. Abstract words or sayings may be treated absolutely
literally and concretely.
These ‘properties’ of the functioning of the Unconscious (not of unconscious
mental functioning in general) are reconstructions from Freud’s experiences in his
analytic work, from his experiences in searching for what lay beneath the surface
communications and behaviour of his patients. The analysis of dreams, in particular,
showed that in the formation of the dream primary-process functioning could be
discerned. In Freud’s work on dreams (1900, 1917), on the ‘psycho-pathology of
everyday life’ (1901), on jokes (1905b), and in many other works, the influence of the
modes of functioning attributed to the Unconscious on the ‘derivatives of the
Unconscious’ has been elaborated. Their effect can also be reconstructed in ‘normal’
phenomena other than dreams. It could be said that the very modes of functioning
characteristic of the Unconscious are of tremendous value to the instinctual wish in its
movement through the Preconscious in search of gratification. They provide means
whereby the original content of the wish can be changed (e.g. through displacement,
equality of opposites, etc.) in such a way that the censorship can be passed and the
derivative of the wish can find overt expression.
The characteristics of the Preconscious and Conscious systems stand in marked
contrast to those of the Unconscious, and will be discussed in the following paper in
this series (Sandler, Holder & Dare, 1973b).

Acknowledgements
This work was conducted at the Institute of Psychiatry, University of London, in
collaboration with the Index Project, The Hampstead Child-Therapy Clinic, London, and was
supported by a grant from the Foundation for Research in Psychoanalysis, Beverly Hills, California.
The Hampstead Child-Therapy Clinic is an organization which is at present maintained by the Field
Foundation Inc., New York; the Foundation for Research in Psychoanalysis, Beverly Hills,
California; the Freud Centenary Fund, London; the Anna Freud Foundation, New York; the Grant
Foundation, Inc., New York; the Andrew Mellon Foundation; the National Institute for Mental
Health, Bethesda; the New-Land Foundation, New York; and a number of private supporters.

References
Bibring, E. (1941). The development and problems of the theory of instincts. Int. J. Psycho-Anal.22,
102-131.
Freud, S. (1900). The interpretation of dreams. S.E. 4-5.
Freud, S. (1901). The psychopathology of everyday life. S.E. 6.
Freud, S. (1905a). Three essays on the theory of sexuality. S.E. 7.
Freud, S. (1905b). Jokes and their relation to the Unconscious. S.E. 8.
Freud, S. (1915). The Unconscious. S.E. 14.
Freud, S. (1917). A metapsychological .supplement to the theory of dreams. S.E. 14.
Freud, S. (1920). Beyond the pleasure principle. S.E. 18.
James, W. (1890). The Principles of Psychology. New York: Dover, 1950.
Sandler, J., Holder, A. & Dare, C. (1973a). Frames of reference in psychoanalytic psychology. V. The
topographical frame of reference: the organization of the mental apparatus. Br. J. med. Psychol. 46, 29-36.
Sandler, J., Holder, A. & Dare, C. (1973b). Frames of reference in psychoanalytic psychology. VII.
The topographical frame of reference: the Preconscious and the Conscious, Br. J. med. Psychol- 46 (in press).
Sandler, J. & Nagera, H. (1963). Aspects of the metapsychology of fantasy. Psychoanal, Study Child

36
VII. The topographical frame of reference: the Preconscious and the Conscious

A general outline of the topographical frame of reference has been given in an

earlier paper (Sandler et al., 1973a), and the system Unconscious, which forms part of
the frame of reference, has been discussed in the previous paper in this series (Sandler
et al., 1973b). There the origin of instinctual wishes and their primary-process
transformation within the Unconscious was considered, and it was pointed out that the
wishes in the Unconscious can be considered as thrusting forward ‘blindly’ towards
overt expression in consciousness and behaviour, i.e. towards the system Conscious.
The ‘seething cauldron’ of the Unconscious contains those sexual and aggressive wishes
which have been dominant in the first years of life and which have subsequently
become unacceptable to the more organized parts of the apparatus, i.e. the systems
Preconscious and Conscious. The instinctual wishes of the Unconscious are constantly
augmented through repression of experiential contents (so-called ‘ideational content’ as
well as feelings), including later derivatives of childhood instinctual wishes, consigned
to the Unconscious because they are also, for one reason or another, judged by the
mental apparatus to be unacceptable within the ‘higher’ systems.
In the topographical frame of reference the Preconscious lies between the
Unconscious and Conscious systems. While its major functions are to protect
consciousness from being overwhelmed by the forces of the Unconscious and to deal
with these forces in such a way that they can find expression so as to be acceptable to
the Conscious, it performs many other functions as well, and some of these will be
discussed later in this paper, as well as certain important attributes of the system.
It is worth recalling here that the three ‘systems’ in the topographical frame of
reference can be regarded as being separated by hypothetical boundaries which have
been compared to the contour lines on a map (Sandler et al., 1973a). Moreover, the
instinctual wish, which we regard as the basic unit in the Unconscious, is compounded
of hypothetical instinctual drive energy and images which include ideational content
representing the ‘wished-for’ situation. The latter includes some form of representation
(or ‘presentation’) of the person’s own self as well as another person (or persons) who
are the gratifying ‘objects’ of the wish. In addition, there is an ideational representation
of some act which would yield the type of instinctual gratification sought.
Before proceeding to a discussion of the systems Preconscious and Conscious
the notion of an ‘instinctual derivative’ should be considered. In general, a derivative of
an instinctual wish may be conscious or unconscious, depending on its topographical
location in the apparatus. It is not the original instinctual wish itself, but a substitute
for it, one which can indirectly provide some degree of satisfaction of the instinctual
wish from which it has been derived. Instinctual derivatives can take many forms,
including dreams, sublimatory activities, daydreams, neurotic symptoms,
hallucinations, parapraxes, forms of ‘acting out’, creative productions, play activities,
transference manifestations and the like.
All the types of derivative listed above are formed in the systems Preconscious
and Conscious and should be distinguished from primary-process derivatives occurring
within the system Unconscious (cf. Sandler et al., 1973b). In the previous paper we
considered the way in which contents of the Unconscious impinge on the Preconscious
in the course of their search for ‘discharge’, i.e. for surface expression. The primary-
process functioning characteristic of the Unconscious is seen as entirely governed by
the pleasure principle (or the pleasure-pain principle) without regard to the demands of
reality. The present paper is devoted to a description and examination of the
Preconscious and Conscious systems, including the way in which they function to
harness and yet allow certain expressions of the instinctual wishes. And, as has been
mentioned previously, derivatives created in the Preconscious and Conscious systems
can be relegated to the Unconscious by the process of repression. Once this has
occurred these derivatives enter into the content of the instinctual wishes in the

37
Unconscious and are subject to primary processes.

The system Preconscious

Within the topographical frame of reference the system Preconscious is thought
to develop gradually as a consequence of the psychological interaction between
instinctual wishes and impulses and the external world. Although the system only
comes into existence in the course of the child’s development, constitutional
maturational elements are thought to determine the mode of its evolution within a
single individual. Its functions and contents increase in number and complexity as this
development takes place and it can be considered to become increasingly differentiated
from the system Unconscious.
As we pointed out in the previous paper (1973b), the contents of the
Unconscious consist of inactive or quiescent elements as well as repressed unsatisfied
instinctual wishes and their derivatives which are active (i.e. ‘cathected’ by instinctual
drive energy). All these elements may at any moment be stimulated by the internal
pressures of drive demands or by the impingement of the external world. Thus, for
example, primitive sexual wishes may be aroused by sexual tension or by the sight of
an attractive sexual object in the external world. Even though wishes in the
Unconscious may be extremely active the subject is not aware of them unless they gain
access to consciousness. If the wishes do become conscious, this is usually in a
modified form. The area of the mental apparatus in which instinctual wishes are
examined, modified, permitted to proceed or are turned back is that of the
Preconscious, a system which, as we have previously pointed out, is, descriptively
speaking, unconscious (Sandler et al., 1973a).40
In contrast to the contents of the Unconscious, Preconscious contents include
many diverse elements. In the first place there are those primary-process derivatives of
the instictual wishes which are pressing forward for discharge, and by reason of their
primary-process transformation, have evaded the ‘censorship’ and have entered the
Preconscious. It will be remembered that primary processes in the Unconscious,
particularly displacement and condensation (Sandler et al., 1973b), allow constant and
fluid changes in the form of the instinctual wish, and if an appropriate primary-process
transformation of the original instinctual wish happens to occur, the wish, in its new
form, is allowed by the censor to enter the Preconscious, although it may later be
subjected to further modification or repression. Secondly, the contents of the
Preconscious include mental representations which come about as a result of present
and past interaction with the external world (as perceptually experienced via the
various sensory modalities). Thirdly, we must include the products of imaginative
(fantasy) and cognitive activity occurring in the Conscious and Preconscious systems.
In other words, the Preconscious and its contents arise as a consequence of
influences from two sides: from the depths of the mental apparatus (the Unconscious)
and from its surface.41 In addition, new ideational contents are constantly being formed
within the Preconscious itself. These include newly constructed thoughts, wishes and
unconscious wish-fulfilling daydreams. New derivatives of the instinctual drives, or
further modifications and elaborations of previous derivatives (not considered

40
It is remarkable how often, even when specifically utilizing the topographical model, psychoanalysts underestimate
or even ignore the major role of the Preconscious, and speak or write as if there were only two systems, i.e. the
Unconscious and the Conscious.
41
Although the Preconscious is regarded as being located, in this frame of reference, between the systems Unconscious
and Conscious, work on subliminal perception suggests that conscious awareness of a stimulus from the external world
is not a necessary precondition for mental registration in the deeper systems. Freud seems to have been aware of this
problem during the second phase, as can be judged by his indecision whether to postulate a perceptual system as
distinct from the system Conscious or whether to regard them as one and the same system (the Pcpt-Cs.). Problems of
this sort contributed to the growing need, towards the end of the second phase, to develop a different model of the
mental apparatus, i.e. the structural model (Freud, 1923). The structural frame of reference will be discussed in later
papers in this series.

38
acceptable to consciousness), are elaborated in the Preconscious. In the construction of
these ‘new products’ the mode of functioning and the ‘rules’ followed are vastly different
from those which can be regarded as operating in the system Unconscious. We shall
discuss these presently in reference to secondary-process functioning.42
In the work of the Preconscious, a great deal of integration and synthesis occurs.
There is a continuous interaction between the instinctual wishes and their derivatives,
on the one hand, and mental contents (in the form of present percepts and ideas and
memories of past experiences and thoughts) which are located in the Preconscious, on
the other. The ‘necessities’, ‘demands’ and ‘limitations’ imposed by the real external
world (as it is and has been perceived by the person) are taken into account. In doing
this, the Preconscious may make use of its capacity to delay and control the peremptory
instinctual wishes arising from the Unconscious which have penetrated into the
Preconscious. This implies that the Preconscious system has the capacity to examine
and scrutinize its own contents without these entering the system Conscious.
The capacity to delay, control and organize within the Preconscious is a function
of normal human development. The demandingness of the infant and the urgency with
which he clamours for satisfaction reflect his inability to accept (or for his mental
apparatus to impose) any delay in the gratification of instinctual wishes and in the
gaining of sensual and aggressive satisfactions. In contrast, most adults are able to
accept postponed satisfaction (or even, to some degree, the lack of satisfaction) of direct
instinctual wishes, or to accept such satisfaction in greatly disguised ways. This is a
consequence of Preconscious functioning, which is, by definition, descriptively
unconscious.
Much of the activity of the Preconscious can be subsumed under the heading of
thinking, and a substantial amount of problem-solving and decision-making is
accomplished within the system. Such decision-making can range from the ‘automatic’
adjustments while driving a motor-car (in response to traffic signals and to the
behaviour of other drivers) to highly sophisticated creative work.
“Most striking at first is this appearance of sudden illumination, a manifest sign of
long, unconscious prior work. The role of this unconscious work in mathematical invention
appears to me incontestable, and traces of it would be found in other cases... Often when
one works at a hard question, nothing good is accomplished at the first attack. Then one
takes a rest... it is more probable that this rest has been filled out with unconscious work
and that the result of this work has afterwards revealed itself...” [Poincaré, 1908].
The Preconscious can function as it does because it has available to it a mass of
memories of the real world which have remained relatively independent of the influence
of instinctual wishes and their derivatives. This is not to say that artistic or scientific
productions are always free of the influence of unconscious wishes; indeed, they may
themselves represent concealed satisfactions of such impulses.
It must be emphasized that even the most reality-orientated habits and skills,
normally functioning smoothly under the control of the Preconscious, can be disturbed
by the influence of drive derivatives. If, for one reason or another, they become
connected with instinctual wishes, become involved in the formation of a new
instinctual drive derivative in the Preconscious, they may in turn be defended against in
their role as drive representatives, with resulting pathological disturbance or inhibition
of an otherwise perfectly normal function. From being conflict-free they become drawn
into conflict through their connexion with unwanted or threatening instinctual wishes.
The Preconscious is eminently concerned with the elaboration of a great variety
of derivatives of instinctual wishes arising from the system Unconscious. Many of these
elaborations of relatively crude instinctual wishes are represented in the Preconscious

42
It should be understood that in referring to ‘mental content’, ‘ideas’, ‘images’, ‘memories’ and the ‘content of
imagination and perception’ we are referring to products of the activity of the nervous system and not to images which
have a separate and autonomous existence in themselves; and amongst ‘images’ we include forms of experiential
content arising from any of the sensory modalities.

39
by thoughts (regarded by Freud as ‘trial actions’), including both reality-orientated and
logical thoughts, and the special variety of wish-fulfilling thought-constructions referred
to as unconscious fantasies; and by combinations of the two. (In this connexion Freud
(1921) distinguished between ‘freely wandering fantastic thinking’ and ‘intentionally
directed reflexion’.) Like dreams, fantasies are considered to be attempts, at the level of
mental activity, to imagine situations which would indirectly fulfil the instinctual
wishes. Again, like dreams, these fantasies draw upon memories of real events and
knowledge of the external world to clothe and to elaborate the underlying instinctual
wish.43It is important to note that the Preconscious is regarded as being able to make
use of verbal symbolism. If the unconscious fantasy in the Preconscious is permitted to
reach the system Conscious (either directly or in a disguised form), the result may be a
conscious fantasy (daydream) or an expression of the unconscious fantasy-thought,
propelled by the instinctual wish to which it is related, or may take the form of other
derivative activities (artistic works, symptoms, delusions, sublimations, etc.). Even
when fantasies remain in the Preconscious they can influence perception, action and
attitudes profoundly.
Whereas the system Unconscious is regarded as following the pleasure principle,
the Preconscious is subject to what is known as the reality principle. This refers to the
taking into account the realities of the external world (as it is known to the person) in
assessing the consequences of his actions. Freud referred to the reality principle as a
‘modification’ of the pleasure principle (1911). Immediate gratification of instinctual
wishes or their derivatives is delayed or abandoned if this threatens the self-
preservative needs of the individual or his moral and ethical principles. 44 The reality
principle plays a major part in the operation of the ‘second censorship’ between the
Preconscious and the Conscious systems, but can be considered to be a dominant
‘principle’ in the functioning of the Preconscious as a whole, although the pleasure
principle (which is entirely dominant in the Unconscious) also enters into Preconscious
functioning, although in a relatively subordinate role. However, it should be emphasized
that although the Preconscious can be regarded, in one sense, as ‘set against’ the
Unconscious, it also functions to permit instinctual wishes to gain access to
consciousness and to motility whenever possible, provided that consciousness is
protected from too great a quantity of pain or unpleasure. Some instinctual wishes are
permitted to pass the censorship and to find ‘discharge’ without any hindrance, while
others are modified so that they are acceptable, i.e. as far as consciousness is
concerned, their gratification does not cause conflict with the individual’s self-
preservative interests, with his moral and ethical standards, or with his concern for the
important persons in his life (present or past). These modifications are often referred to
as compromise-formations.
Secondary-process functioning
We earlier characterized the mental processes occurring in the Unconscious as
being subject to the laws of primary process (cf. 1973b), in which the characteristics of
displacement and condensation of ideational contents and the instinctual energies
attached to them are pre-eminent. Ideas, memories, images and repressed fantasy
content are treated as if they were the same. Primary process was described as being a
consequence of the free mobility of instinctual energies and the absence, in the
Unconscious, of logic, notions of time, of opposites, of contradictions and negation;
furthermore there is a disregard of reality, and words are treated as ‘things’ (i.e. word-
images) rather than as symbols.
In contrast to this, the system Preconscious is said to function predominantly
43
The concept of unconscious fantasy is one with a long history in psychoanalytic thinking, in the course of which a
number of different meanings have accrued to the term (cf. Sandler & Nagera, 1963). The concept will be considered
later in this series.
44
The inadequacy of the reality principle as an explanatory concept for such a variety of functions constituted a severe
limitation on the topographical model. We will elaborate on this subject when we discuss the transition to the structural
model in a later paper.

40
according to the secondary process, which is, develop-mentally speaking, the outcome
of the influence of the external world on the mental apparatus. This impingement
brings about such Preconscious characteristics as the notion of causality, logic, a sense
of time and an intolerance of ambiguity and contradictory elements. Most important, in
the course of development, the system Preconscious becomes, together with the
Conscious system, that part of the mental apparatus in which language can be used as
an efficient tool for the manipulation of mental content. The acquisition of verbal
symbols for things and for abstract ideas goes parallel with the differentiation between
the Unconscious and Preconscious systems. Words can be used to harness and to
attenuate the force of instinctual wishes.
These processes are usually considered in terms of the hypothetical energies
involved. In the Unconscious, instinctual energy is regarded as ‘free’ and ‘mobile’, and
in primary-process functioning the whole quota of energy with which an ideational
element is cathected may be displaced to some other element. In the Preconscious,
however, the harnessing of the instinctual energy occurs by means of the binding of
energy, and secondary processes (such as logical and reasonable thinking) are
characterized by the displacement of only small quantities of energy from one mental
content to another, in a ‘formal’ fashion. As Freud put it (1900):
“I therefore postulate that for the sake of efficiency the second system succeeds in
retaining the major part of its cathexes of energy in a state of quiescence and in
employing only a small part on displacement... the activity of... [the system Unconscious]
is directed towards securing the free discharge of the quantities of excitation, while the...
[Preconscious] system, by means of the cathexes emanating from it, succeeds in inhibiting
this discharge and in transforming the cathexis into a quiescent one, no doubt with a
simultaneous raising of its level... When once the second system has concluded its
exploratory thought-activity, it releases the inhibition and damming-up of the excitations
and allows them to discharge themselves in movement.”
The system Preconscious, as conceptualized in the topographical frame of
reference, can be regarded as a coherent mental organization performing a number of
functions which simultaneously serve the purposes of adaptation to instinctual wishes
as well as adaptation to present and past demands of the external world. Some of these
functions and capacities can be summarized briefly as follows, not necessarily in order
of importance.
1. The scanning of ideational input and of feeling states. Such scanning is vital
for the process of ‘censorship’, and occurs in regard to mental content arising from any
source, be it the ideational content of instinctual wishes, revived memories of the past,
or current perceptual content, before it is allowed access to consciousness. 45
2. The censoring of instinctual wishes and their derivatives. While this was
described as occurring either at the hypothetical frontier between the Preconscious and
the Unconscious on the one hand, and the Preconscious and the Conscious on the
other, censorship should be regarded as a function of the Preconscious system as a
whole. Moreover, it would seem reasonable to take the view, in this frame of reference,
that it can occur at any point on the continuum from the depths to the surface of the
Preconscious system. Derivatives of the Unconscious may be censored (defended
against) at any point at which they produce conflict above a certain intensity in the
Preconscious.
It should be understood that ‘censoring’ is not only a process of blotting out,
debarring or deleting from the system Preconscious. From the point of view of this
system it may also involve the active modification of threatening content, so that it can
be given a new and more acceptable form. It involves ‘rewriting’ as well as ‘blue-
45
The latter point raises a difficult issue in this frame of reference. While, on the one hand, perceptual content can be
regarded as being directly aroused in the system Conscious, on the other there is no doubt that it is affected by the
Preconscious before conscious awareness occurs. Freud made several attempts to deal with this problem, which could
only be solved with the introduction of the structural theory, in which the concepts of unconscious ego functioning and
of consciousness as a ‘sense-organ of the ego’ are employed.

41
pencilling’.
3. The laying down of organised memory systems. ‘Memory’ in regard to the
system Unconscious can be regarded as being based on memory-traces which can be
cathected by instinctual energy, giving rise to the ideational content of instinctual
wishes. The ‘memories’ of the Unconscious are linked together by simple association
and have no formal organization. In contrast, the organized memory system of the
Preconscious is constructed in such a way that memories of the past can, within certain
limits, be sought for, recognized, retrieved and orientated. This would imply a sort of
‘filing system’ which allows for the recognition and recall of ‘appropriate’ memories for
such processes as thinking, problem-solving, fantasying, orientation of self in time and
space, etc.
4. The testing of reality. This capacity, developing under the dominance of the
‘reality principle’, enables a distinction to be made between what is ‘unreal’ (fantasies,
memories of the past, thoughts, etc.) and representations of ‘material’ or ‘actual’ reality,
i.e. mental representations which arise as a result of the perception of something real in
the external world. (The term ‘external world’ includes the person’s own body). The
capacity to distinguish between what is ‘real’ and what is ‘unreal’ (‘conjured up’ in
imagination, memory or thought, etc.) is a function of development and is thought to be
nonexistent early in life when real wish-fulfilment and hallucinated wish-fulfilment are
confused. The content of nocturnal dreams is not normally subjected to reality-testing
during dreaming, but daydreaming, on the other hand, carries with it the stamp of
unreality (Sandler & Nagera, 1963). Although all these activities are described as if they
involve consciousness, it is assumed that they can occur in the Preconscious system,
i.e. can be descriptively unconscious.
5. The binding of psychic energy. The binding of mental energy is regarded as a
precondition for secondary-process functioning in that the latter involves the
manipulation of small quantities of energy. It implies the capacity in the Preconscious
to inhibit and to control large quantities of instinctual energy and the pressure towards
their discharge. By means of such binding of energy, contents from the Unconscious
can be handled in the Preconscious, and the result of the energic binding processes in
the Preconscious is that the imperative quality of the wishes derived from the
instinctual drives is diminished. This diminution may be temporary, representing a
‘holding’ of the drive energy cathecting the instinctual wishes or their derivatives, while
the Preconscious attempts to find a solution to the conflict which the peremptory
instinctual wishes may arouse. This conflict-solving function involves the secondary
process, i.e. the manipulation of small ‘sample’ quantities of energy in thought or
fantasy. Of course, if no other solution can be found, repression of the instinctual wish
may be the outcome. Bound energy is also used in the construction of enduring
organizations (such as the memory and thinking organizations) within the
Preconscious.46
6. Control of access to consciousness and motility. Such access is dependent on
the assessment of and modification to any mental content pressing forward through the
Preconscious towards ‘discharge’ (in particular those contents which have come to
represent instinctual wishes or their derivatives). In this sense the Preconscious
functions to protect consciousness from being overwhelmed by unpleasant experiences
and to prevent the individual from acting in a way which is a potential source of danger
to his life, his reputation, his self-esteem, his moral value-system, etc. In the widest
sense, these self-preservative trends have been subsumed under the notion of the
reality principle.
7. Control over the development of affects. While the generation of affects is
regarded as a consequence of repression (the energy of the repressed instinctual wish

46
The psychoanalytic psychology of energic ‘binding’ is complicated, abstract and, in our view, theoretically relatively
unnecessary (cf. Holt, 1962; Gill, 1963). We have given what we believe to be the minimum account for this frame of
reference.

42
being capable of being transformed into an affect), the Preconscious can prevent its
development and access to consciousness by exercising control over the energy
cathecting the instinctual wishes as well as over the ideational content of such wishes.
By means of ‘successful’ repression, which includes the repression of the instinctual
energy in the wish, the Preconscious is thought to be able to prevent the generation of
affect, although its powers in this respect are less secure than in regard to the control of
access to motility. This is in part due to the assumption, in this frame of reference, that
instinctual drive energy connected with repressed ideas may be converted into anxiety. 47
8. The use of defence mechanisms. Apart from repression, the Preconscious may
make use of other defences (e.g. projection, rationalization) in order to deal with conflict
by modifying the content of the instinctual wish. In contrast to repression proper, which
relegates the instinctual wish or its derivative to the Unconscious, there are certain
other defence mechanisms which allow instinctual derivatives to proceed on their path
to consciousness in an altered form.48 Thus, for example, an unconscious aggressive
wish to attack someone may be transformed by projection into a belief or anxiety that
one will be attacked by another person.
9. The construction of imaginative products. The Preconscious may permit
otherwise unacceptable derivatives of the Unconscious to reach consciousness by
constructing wish-fulfilling fantasies in the form of ‘imaginative’ or ‘creative’
productions. When such products reach the Conscious system they have an
appropriate ‘label’ (e.g. of ‘daydream’) attached to them, so that they are not confused
with the perception of reality. Similarly, instinctual wish-fulfilments may be permitted
in the production of works of art, storytelling, etc., when they would not otherwise be
permitted access to motility or to consciousness.
10. Symptom-formation. If repression of an instinctual wish or its derivative
cannot successfully be carried out, and if it cannot be permitted expression in any other
form, the Preconscious may construct a compromise-formation in the form of a neurotic
symptom. Such symptoms are felt by the system Conscious to be alien intrusions, over
which the individual feels he has no control.

The system Conscious

In the topographical frame of reference the system Conscious is regarded as the
most superficial of the three systems which constitute the mental apparatus. Towards
the depth it is bounded by the Preconscious, with which it shares a great number of
characteristics (e.g. secondary process, reality-testing, etc.). For the purpose of this
presentation the perceptual apparatuses can be regarded as representing the surface
boundary of the Conscious, open to the reception of impressions arising from sources
external to the mental apparatus, i.e. from stimuli both from the external world and
one’s own body (kinaesthetic, proprioceptive, visceral, etc.)49
47
In the second phase affects were seen more or less entirely as drive derivatives. Freud’s well-known ‘first theory of
anxiety’ postulated that anxiety represented a transformation of the instinctual drive energy of repressed contents. The
second theory of anxiety was put forward in ‘Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety’ (1926) and is radically different in
nature. This ‘third phase’ theory introduced the concept of ‘signal’ anxiety, arising within the ego, and saw it as the
main motive for defensive action. Thus in the first theory the view was that defence leads to anxiety, while in the
second theory it was that anxiety leads to defence.
48
The role of rationalization as a Preconscious process has been underestimated in the psychoanalytic literature. While
rationalizations may be conscious attempts at self-justification (for a previous, current or contemplated act or attitude),
rationalization occurs actively in the Preconscious as a means of dealing with conflict by the formation of a further
derivative in which the individual feels righteous and justified. A striking example of the way in which this occurs is
when a subject is given a post-hypnotic suggestion to perform an irrational act, and creates a justification for the
performance of that act. That such rationalization occurs preconsciously is shown by his own conscious belief in the
validity of the rationalization he has constructed. To paraphrase Freud, it is as if the rider may believe that he is in
charge of the horse, but is actually being taken where the horse wants to go.
49
In a previous footnote reference was made to the difficulty inherent in this frame of reference in regard to ‘pre-
perception’. There can be little doubt that the process of ‘perception-work’ (Sandler, 1960) which precedes conscious
awareness must be allocated to the Preconscious. However, for purposes of exposition it will be assumed, except where

43
 We have previouslyattempted to make it clear that the system Unconscious and
Preconscious are descriptively unconscious. The system Conscious, on the other hand,
is that part of the mental apparatus, within which the quality of consciousness becomes
attached to mental contents. Descriptively speaking, all the contents (ideas, feelings,
etc.) are conscious. However, it is clear that at any one time only a very limited range of
contents can have this quality of consciousness. There are also different qualities of
consciousness ranging from that of vivid perception of external events to fleeting
daydream-thoughts ‘at the back of one’s mind’. Normally the greatest degree of
vividness is attached to perceptions arising from sources external to the mental
apparatus (i.e. at what is described at the most superficial part of the Conscious), but
this is not always the case, as for example in hallucinations and nocturnal dreams.
Similarly, contents arising from within the apparatus are thought of as entering the
Conscious system at its deeper boundary (e.g. daydream-thoughts and other ideas). It is
assumed that stimuli external to the apparatus have to overcome a certain threshold
(the stimulus barrier) before giving rise to conscious experience (see Fig. 1).
The notion of attention is a. very important one in considering the functioning of
this system. In brief, the system Conscious comprises those contents entering from the
side of the Preconscious or those experiences from the external world or the body which
are receiving some degree (however little) of attention at any one time. When conscious
attention is completely removed from such contents they can be regarded as becoming
preconscious, i.e. have become part of the contents of the system Preconscious. 50
The contents of the system Conscious have something of a ‘fleeting’ quality
about them, despite the considerable intensity with which they may be experienced. In
order to survive, the individual, whilst awake, has to pay constant attention to new
perceptual experiences, or to changes in perceptual input, although the quality and
intensity of the attention may vary. He may be carefully scrutinizing his environment, or
be ‘lost in thought’.
In describing the differences between conscious and unconscious processes
Freud (1925) described the nature of the processes involved by drawing the analogy
with a particular type of toy for children, known at that time as the ‘mystic writing-pad’.
This still exists in a similar form today. It is a pad covered with a clear celluloid or
plastic surface backed by a block of wax (or a piece of board coated with wax or similar
substance). Using a stylus the pad can be drawn or written upon. The drawing or
writing can be made to disappear by separating the clear surface from the underlying
wax, and the pad immediately becomes clear and ready to be used again. ‘But it is easy
to discover that the permanent trace of what was written is retained upon the wax slab
itself and is legible in suitable lights.’ The wax slab is likened to that part of the
apparatus which retains impressions outside consciousness, while the clear surface

otherwise indicated, that the most superficial surface of the mental apparatus and of the system Conscious is that which
receives perceptual content from the sense-organs. It should also be emphasized that in the topographical frame of
reference as described here the emphasis is on a mental apparatus which functions primarily to deal with the pressures
of the instinctual drives and their derivatives. For this reason the notion, held by Freud at one time during the second
phase, of the system Conscious as being separate from the perceptual system will not be pursued, nor will the
vicissitudes of the relationship between the two and their eventual amalgamation into one system (the ‘Perceptual-
Conscious’ or Pcpt.-Cs.) be taken into account.
50
Paradoxically, investment with attention is not the same as consciousness. Preconscious attention can be paid to
certain types of experience, without the person being aware of this at the time. In addition, the exercise of repression
may force conscious content out of consciousness even though attention has not been wholly withdrawn from the
content.
In line with the importance given to ideas of mental ‘energy’, attention is considered to be ‘an investment with attention
cathexis’, i.e. an investment of an experiential content with a charge of energy. This is not the freely mobile instinctual
energy of the Unconscious, nor the ‘bound’ energy described in regard to the Preconscious, but a special ‘mobile’ and
‘neutral’ energy, normally free from sexual and aggressive qualities, which is at the disposal of the systems
Preconscious and Conscious. As Freud put it (1900): “The system Pcs. not merely bars access to consciousness, it
controls access to the power of voluntary movement and has at its disposal for distribution a mobile cathectic energy, a
part of which is familiar to us in the form of attention."

44
corresponds to the system Conscious.

Fig. 1. Diagram illustrating the way in which contents arising from the external world
have to overcome the stimulus barrier to enter the most superficial layer of the apparatus, while
those contents arising from within the apparatus pass the censorship and enter the Conscious
from its ‘deeper’ end.

It is clear from so-called ‘automatic’ actions, slips of the tongue and other
parapraxes that there can be motor expression of instinctual wishes or their derivatives
which bypass the Conscious system. We have noted previously that many well-learnt
skills achieve a high degree of autonomy and can be performed without the need for
conscious attention, even though such attention is necessary while the skill is being
acquired. Normally, however, the system Conscious is directly involved in purposive
action, including the obtaining of direct or indirect instinctual drive satisfaction.
Access to the system Conscious from below is controlled by the censorship
operating within the Preconscious. Although there can be voluntary withdrawal of
conscious attention, the determining factors for this withdrawal are usually operating at
a preconscious level. For example, reality-testing, in the topographical frame of
reference, is largely a function performed by the system Preconscious. However,
imaginative contents can be fully conscious alongside a conscious knowledge that they
are not real. In this way, quite unbridled instinctual wish derivatives can enter the
system Conscious in the form of daydreams but because the reality principle also
operates within the system Conscious such derivatives are not permitted to find
discharge in motor action. The tendency of instinctual wish derivatives to be allowed
into the system Conscious as fantasies or daydreams is intensified by the prolonged
absence of actual gratification.
We have not dwelt on the system Conscious in detail because, apart from a few
qualities (notably the existence of consciousness), it shares many of the characteristics
of the Preconscious (but not all - for example, the mechanisms of defence function
preconsciously). As with the Preconscious we see the operation of the reality principle
and reality-testing, although these are more influential in the Conscious than in the
Preconscious. Similarly we find secondary-process functioning and occasional primary-
process manifestations.
In the topographical frame of reference we have presented the mental apparatus
as if it were composed of three separate compartments the systems Unconscious,
Precon-scious and Conscious. However, while this is useful for purposes of exposition
and presentation it is valuable to regard the topographical schema as being, to a certain
degree, a continuum. We can see the division between what is conscious and what is
unconscious as being a matter of degree. Further, the censor-ship can be regarded as
operating over the whole range of the Preconscious, more stringent at its superficies
and relatively lax at its depths. Similarly, there would appear to be a case for regarding

45
the relative dominance of secondary process over primary process functioning as being
greatest towards the surface of the apparatus, least in the deep stratum of the
Preconscious, and absent in the Unconscious.
It is evident that the topographical frame of referance has many limitations,
many of which promted the formulation of the stuctural model, from 1923 onwards. We
have previosly stressed the relation of the topographical model to the psychoanalytic
technique of the second phase, and it should be understood within that context.

Acknowledgements
This work was conducted at the Institute of Psychiatry, University of London, in
collaboration with the Index Project, The Hampstead Child-Therapy Clinic, London, and was
supported by a grant from the Foundation for Research in Psychoanalysis, Beverly Hills, California.
The Hampstead Child-Therapy Clinic is an organization which is at present maintained by the Field
Foundation Inc., New York; the Foundation for Research in Psychoanalysis, Beverly Hills,
California; the Freud Centenary Fund, London; the Anna Freud Foundation, New York; the Grant
Foundation, Inc., New York; the Andrew Mellon Foundation; the National Institute for Mental
Health, Bethesda; the New-Land Foundation, New York; and a number of private supporters.

References
Freud, S. (1900). The interpretation of dreams. S.E. 4-5
Freud, S. (1911). Formulations on the two principles of mental functioning. S.E. 12.
Freud, S. (1921) Introduction to J. Varendonck's The Psychology of Day-Dreams. S.E. 18.
Freud, S. (1923). The ego and the id. S.E. 19.
Freud, S. (1925). A note upon the ‘mystic writing-pad’ S.E. 19.
Freud, S. (1926). Inhibitions, symptoms and anxiety. S.E. 20.
Gill, M. (1963). Topography and Systems in Psychoanalytic Theory. New York: International
Universities Press.
Holt, R. R. (1962). A critical examination of Freud’s concept of bound vs. free cathexis. J. Am.
psychoanal. Ass. 10, 475-525.
Poincaré, H. (1908). Mathematical creation. In B. Ghiselin (ed.), The Creative Process. New York;
Mentor Books, 1955.
Sandler, J. (1960). The background of safety. Int. J. Psycho-Anal. 41, 352-356.
Sandler, J., Holder, A, & Dare, C. (1973a). Frames of reference in psychoanalytic psychology. V. The
topographical frame of reference: the organization of the mental apparatus. Br. J. med. Psychol 46, 29-36.
Sandler, J., Holder, A. & Dare, C. (1973b). Frames of reference in psychoanalytic psychology. VI. The
topographical frame of reference: the Unconscious. Br. J. med. Psychol. 46, 37-43.
Sandler, J. & Nagera, H. (1963). Aspects of the metapsychology of fantasy. Psychoanal. Study Child
18.

VIII. The topographical frame of reference: transference as an illustration of the

functioning of the mental apparatus

We have previously attempted to describe in some detail (Sandler, Holder &

Dare, 1973a,b,c) the way in which Freud’s theories during the second phase of
psychoanalysis can be organized into the topographical frame of reference. In view of
the complexity of this particular frame of reference we are supplementing the essentially
theoretical accounts in the three papers preceding this one by more detailed
descriptions of the functioning of the apparatus. This paper will consider some aspects
of the clinical phenomenon of transference as it can be understood within the
topographical frame of reference, and in psychoanalytic treatment as the ‘model’
situation.
Transference as a clinical psychoanalytic concept has been discussed in some
detail elsewhere (Sandler, Dare & Holder, 1970a, b, 1973). The concept was introduced
by Freud during the first phase, in ‘Studies on Hysteria’ (1895), but it received its most
extensive and coherent formulation in the second phase of psychoanalysis (1897-1923).
There is an intimate link between the important clinical concept of transference and the
topographical models as they were elaborated during this phase. 51 Transference is a
51
This also holds true for the theory of dreams, to be discussed in the next paper in this series.

46
concept whose range of use and span of meaning continues to represent a central
aspect of the psychoanalytic theory of the therapeutic process in particular, and of the
psychoanalytic psychology of interpersonal relationships in general.
While the notion of transference has in recent years become a complicated one,
it is useful to take as our starting point the relatively simple formulation put forward by
Freud early in the second phase:
“What are transferences? They are new editions or facsimiles of the impulses and
phantasies which are aroused during the progress of the analysis; but they have this
peculiarity, which is characteristic for their species, that they replace some earlier person
by the person of the physician. To put it another way: a whole series of psychological
experiences are revived, not as belonging to the past, but as applying to the person of the
physician at the present moment. Some of these transferences have a content which
differs from that of their model in no respect whatever except for the substitution. These
then - to keep to the same metaphor - are merely new impressions or reprints. Others are
more ingeniously constructed; their content has been subjected to a moderating
influence... by cleverly taking advantage of some real peculiarity in the physician’s
person or circumstances and attaching themselves to that. These, then, will no longer be
new impressions, but revised editions.” (1905).
Later, in the second phase, Freud came to view the analysis of the transference
as an indispensable technical tool rather than as an obstacle to the psychoanalytic
work.
In this paper the term will be taken to refer to the development of feelings,
attitudes, wishes and responses towards another person (in the treatment situation, the
therapist) which are derived, unbeknown to the subject, from his earlier (often infantile)
experiences and relationship with significant figures in his environment.
Characteristically, transference is a phenomenon most clearly seen in the
psychoanalytic treatment situation, in which the analyst reveals as little of his own
habits and interests as possible. His personality is, to a certain degree, hidden by a
‘professional’ stance towards the patient. Under such circumstances the patient
normally develops beliefs, attitudes, feelings and responses to the psychoanalyst, as
well as fantasies about him, all of which are regarded as being derived from the
patient’s own past experiences, impulses and wishes. Because the analytic situation for
a time allows the development of transferences in a form relatively ‘uncorrected’ by
reality, they are felt by the patient as being real and appropriate to the present.
Transference makes use of and incorporates elements of the patient's perceptions by (as
Freud pointed out in the quotation given earlier) ‘cleverly taking advantage of some real
peculiarity in the physician’s person or circumstances...'.
The topographical frame of reference can be utilized for an understanding of the
processes involved in transference in the following way. 52 Infantile instinctual wishes
directed towards the objects of childhood (parents, siblings and other emotionally
significant figures) are assumed to persist in the system Unconscious in a crude and
undisguised form. They may be relatively dormant, or may be revived by being invested
with further quantities of sexual and aggressive drive energies. The arousal of particular
instinctual wishes in these circumstances may come about from sources within the
individual, or as a result of specific stimulation from the external world.
The instinctual wish can be understood in this context as consisting of the
mental representation of a previously gratifying situation or situations, now invested
with drive energy. The latter provides the force impelling the wish towards expression
and gratification. The mental representations involved include a childhood image of the
person himself, of the gratifying object and of the object-directed aim, i.e. the

52
We should emphasize that the description of transference processes and phenomena given in this paper is rooted in a
phase in which the role of instinctual wishes and impulses was seen as dominant in mental functioning. Transference
was regarded as being exclusively a relatively ‘surface’ manifestation of deep instinctual wishes. In later phases the
views of transference held by psychoanalysts underwent some change (cf. Sandler, Dare & Holder, 1973).

47
interaction with the past object which would yield the wished-for instinctual
gratification. In addition to those childhood memories particularly significant to the
individual concerned, repressed memories of all kinds referring to later experiences may
enter into the content of instinctual wishes in the system Unconscious. This has been
described in some detail previously, as have the characteristic modes of functioning
(including the concept of primary process) and ‘properties’ of the Unconscious (Sandler,
Holder & Dare, 1973b).

The formation of transference derivatives in the preconscious

With the arousal, during the course of therapy, of earlier instinctual wishes
directed towards significant objects,53 these wishes enter the deeper layers of the
Preconscious system where, still outside consciousness, they are scrutinized and
‘censored’. If, at this point, they are not too threatening to the individual, i.e. do not
arouse too great a degree of conflict, they may be permitted to proceed some distance
into the Preconscious without modification. However, in the non-psychotic person,
those wishes which lie behind transference manifestations invariably arouse conflict
and are considered by the Preconscious as representing a threat to the individual if they
were to be permitted direct access to consciousness and action (i.e. access to the
system Conscious) in relatively unmodified form. Thus they tend to be rejected by the
Preconscious in the first instance and the repression barrier re-enforced. In discussing
the mode of functioning of the Preconscious (Sandler, Holder & Dare, 1973c) we have
described how instinctual wishes may having been turned back by the censorship,
undergo transformation within the Unconscious by such primary-process mechanism as
condensation and displacement. Following this, they may be permitted to enter the
Preconscious more readily than previously, inasmuch as they are now more removed in
their ideational content from the content of the direct instinctual wish. Alternatively, the
instinctual drive component of the wish may mount to such a degree that the
repression barrier between the Preconscious and the Unconscious fails, and the
instinctual wish, in its more direct form, enters the Preconscious. Once in the
Preconscious further modification by the secondary process will occur, with the
formation of preconscious derivatives of the original highly cathected wish.
Such preconscious derivatives may take many forms, one of these being the
transference wish. In the formation of transference derivatives the infantile wish is
modified and ‘up-dated’ in the Preconscious. The images representing the childhood aim
and object of the wish are replaced by or integrated with thoughts, observations and
other material relating to the person of the analyst, as well as being subjected to the
‘reality principle’. The content of the wish will be made more ‘rational’ its threatening
elements disguised, conflict reduced, and the energic investment of the original object-
representation transferred to the image of the analyst. In addition to what might be
called ‘preconscious rationalization’, defence mechanisms (such as projection) may be
employed in order to render the content of the transference wish more free from conflict
and acceptable to consciousness. In addition, the Preconscious may, as the wish in its
new form proceeds in the direction of the surface, elaborate tentative preconscious
fantasies which represent forms of disguised fulfilment of the instinctual wish. 54
Preconscious fantasies include the large class of preconscious transference-fantasies,
i.e. products of the imagination which involve a wish-fulfilling interaction with the
analyst. But not all preconscious wishes and fantasies have ‘transference’ content.
It follows that the preconscious transference-wish is quite different from the
unconscious infantile instinctual wish, although it is derived from and represents the
latter. Gratification of a preconscious derivative is thought, in this frame of reference, to
permit the ‘discharge’ of the instinctual energies with which the unconscious wish had

53
In the second phase transference processes were thought to develop only as treatment progressed, induced and
facilitated by the regression -inducing properties of the psychoanalytic situation.
54
The psychoanalytic concept of fantasy will be discussed in a later paper.

48
been cathected, these energies having been transferred or deflected to the preconscious
derivative.55
Preconscious transference derivatives may, at any point in their formation, be
turned back and repressed into the Unconscious, particularly if, for any reason, conflict
over them is intensified (as a consequence, for example, of some remark of the analyst
which is felt to be threatening, or as a result of some upsetting occurrence in the
external world). Moreover, the preconscious derivative may become in itself threatening
as it approaches conscious awareness. In such cases the derivatives may be tolerated
within the Preconscious, but kept back at the border between the Preconscious and the
Conscious, i.e. at what was been described as the ‘second censorship’. The dynamic to-
and-fro within the Preconscious, and between the Preconscious and the Unconscious,
should be stressed in connection with the whole process of derivative formation. 56

The formation of transference derivatives in the Conscious

It has been pointed out that the system Conscious is, in the topographical frame
of reference, that part of the mental apparatus within which consciousness becomes
attached to mental contents (Sandler, Holder & Dare, 1973c). It was also pointed out
that there are ‘different qualities of consciousness ranging from that of vivid perception
of external events to fleeting daydream thoughts <at the back of one’s mind>’. The
preconscious transference derivative described in the preceding section may proceed
directly into consciousness so that the patient is aware of its content. This awareness
may be dim and fleeting, or extremely intense. The patient may report it in his free
associations in analysis, or he may consciously withhold it. Commonly, the wish,
fantasy or thought may be suppressed so that the patient forgets it, although he may
recall it later, particularly if this is facilitated by the analytic process and the analyst’s
interventions.
When the preconscious transference derivative is allowed to become conscious it
is regarded as having gained the attention of the system Conscious, which is conceived
of as an investment of the relevant mental content with an additional form of energy,
non-instinctual in nature, and referred to as ‘attention-cathexis’.
We have considered the transference derivative formed and tolerated in the
Preconscious as if it were sufficiently disguised in order to be permitted to enter the
system Conscious if attention were paid to it. This is by no means always the case. The
preconscious transference impulse or thought may be turned back on the threshold of
consciousness, for reasons described earlier, and a secondary transference derivative
may have to be formed within the Preconscious. This often contains no direct
representation of the analyst, or is rendered innocuous in other ways, in order to
protect the patient from uncomfortable feelings of embarrassment, anxiety, guilt and
the like.

Illustrative examples

Example A. An illustration of what has been described may serve to illustrate the
processes involved. This will be given in a simplified and schematic form.
1. During the course of analysis a patient’s hostile, angry and murderous

55
In the second phase, thoughts about the analyst, and wishes towards him, were not regarded as being ‘transference’
unless the intensity of the preconscious wish towards the analyst approached that of the original wish towards the
childhood object. Wishes towards significant people in the patient’s earlier life, which become the basis for
transferences, could be derived from any stage of the individual’s psycho-sexual development. In later phases of
psychoanalysis the concept of transference underwent some change (Sandler, Dare & Holder, 1970a, 1973).
56
The interpretation of preconscious transference wishes, fantasies and thoughts is extremely important in clinical
psychoanalytic work. These transferences relate to the ‘here-and-now’ of the analytic situation. Being in the
Preconscious, they are outside consciousness, but are more easily made accessible through interpretation than wishes
(and associated memories) in the system Unconscious. The interpretation of preconscious transference derivatives
provides a route towards the later recall or reconstruction of repressed childhood wishes and memories.

49
feelings towards his father, deriving from his childhood, may be aroused in the system
Unconscious, resulting in an instinctual wish to attack his father.
2. A transference derivative may be formed in the Preconscious, consisting of a
wish to humiliate and harm the analyst. This can be regarded as a primary transference
derivative of the revived childhood wish, ‘up-dated’ as regards the object, and slightly
changed in aim. This derivative remained preconscious, as it could only be tolerated in
consciousness if it were further changed.
3. The patient becomes aware of and reports hostile feelings towards his
employer, and speaks of his wish to take revenge on him for some supposed (or actual
but ordinarily trifling) humiliation.
Naturally such material brought by a patient need not be a reflection of
transference, but if there is evidence from the context of other material and indications
that it relates to a preconscious transference wish, this will normally be interpreted to
the patient by indicating what feelings of a similar sort may be present towards the
analyst. This, if it is accepted by the patient, may, in turn, be linked in the subsequent
analytic work with the patient’s hostile wishes towards his father. From the point of
view of psychoanalytic technique the distinction between revived childhood impulses in
the Un-conscious, primary derivatives (including transference derivatives) in the
Preconscious, and secondary transference derivatives or allusions (which can be in the
Preconscious or the Conscious), is all-important. In order not to complicate matters, the
all-important clinical observations understood as representing transference-resistance
have not been commented on. Unacceptable preconscious transference wishes pressing
forward for expression may prompt the patient to struggle against them, to show
resistance to the analysis. Thus, he may, for example, substitute hostile attitudes in
order to disguise emergent loving feelings towards the analyst, or attempt to placate and
appease him because of his fear of a developing hostile transference. This type of
resistance has the quality that it both expresses, and reflects the struggle against,
infantile impulses which have emerged, in direct or modified form, in relation to the
person of the analyst. The analytic situation has reanimated, in the form of a current
distortion of reality, material which had been repressed or had been dealt with in some
other way (e.g. by its canalization into the neurotic symptom itself). This revival of the
past in the psychoanalytic relationship leads to the transference-resistance [which
includes] the conscious withholding by the patient of thoughts about the analyst, as
well as unconscious thoughts which are defended against (Sandler, Dare & Holder,
1973).

Example B. A male patient in his twenties attended for an analytic session

shortly before a holiday, the discussion of which had been part of the analytic work of
the previous few days. He was late for his session for no valid reason, and began by
speaking of a friend’s holiday plan to travel to a certain town abroad. He commented
that the friend had mentioned, in passing, that his (the friend’s) college tutor was also
planning to visit the same town. The analyst remarked that perhaps the patient had
had the thought of going to the place where he believed the analyst would be spending
his own holiday. The patient accepted this interpretation with relief, and proceeded to
talk of where, in his imagination, he thought the analyst might indeed be going for his
holiday. He went on to speak of yet another friend whose mother had a holiday cottage
in the place he imagined to be the analyst’s holiday location. There followed a reverie by
the patient about pleasurable sunbathing and swimming connected in turn with
childhood memories of holidays and long, sunny summers spent with his family.
Without going into details of the analytic work which ensued, it became clear to
the analyst that the mental events leading to the patient’s associations could be
described in the following way (using the topographical frame of reference):
1. In the system Unconscious there existed childhood memories of an intensely
satisfying relationship to his mother, including close bodily contact with her, reinforced
by the fact that he had spent many nights in bed with her until the age of five or six.

50
With the development of unconscious affectionate feelings towards the analyst, the
infantile memories were invested with sexual drive energy, so that the wish to have an
experience identical with that which was so satisfactory in childhood arose as an
impulse in the Unconscious. This included the revival of childhood wishes which had
aims which could only be understood as the desire of a four- or five-year-old child for
some form of sexual intercourse with his mother.
2. The wish, in its naked form, had been defended in childhood, but was
manifested, in disguised form, as a wish to cuddle the mother and to share her bed.
This was linked with memories of romping in bed with mother and with playing with her
on the beach, in which they jointly built sandcastles, tunneling in the sand. All of this
had been repressed into the Unconscious, but with the re-arousal of his sexual wishes
towards his mother in the analysis, a derivative in the Preconscious which contained
the non-sexual elements of his childhood memories and wishes was created in the form
of a trans-ference wish to be close to the analyst during the holidays, to spend time on
the beach with him, etc.57
However, even the preconscious wish, disguised as it was, was not permitted to
reach consciousness, and the patient brought secondary derivatives referring to his
friend who would visit the same town as his college tutor. His unconscious discomfort
about the preconscious transference wish had caused him to develop the resistance to
coming to the session, evidenced by his lateness. In this case the verbalization of the
preconscious transference wish or fantasy, and the patient’s awareness of its
acceptance by the analyst brought about a feeling of relief and allowed the patient to
elaborate on the previously preconscious thoughts. These were now in the system
Conscious, and led to the subsequent discovery of the childhood wishes which had been
revived in the analysis, and which had resulted in the transference manifestations. The
processes which have been considered, within the topographical frame of reference, are
illustrated diagrammatically in Fig. 1.

Fig.1. A simplified diagram of the development of free associations in the patient which relate to a
transference wish towards the analyst, as conceived within the topographical frame of reference.

(a) The memory of the sexual relationship with the mother. (b) Instinctual drive
energy. (c) The combination of (a) and (b) into the instinctual wish to re-experience the
close childhood relationship with the mother, with the re-gratification of childhood
sexual wishes (this is not yet transference). (d) The wish to cuddle the mother and to
share her bed, based on relatively non-sexual elements in the memory of the
relationship to the mother. (e) The transference wish to be close to the analyst during
the holidays and to spend time on the beach with him, derived from (d). (f) A secondary
derivative of the transference wish (and of the infantile sexual wish) which was

57
For schematic purposes there is a certain amount of over simplification here. It would seem likley that, within this
frame of reference, a direct sexual wish towards the analyst was also formed as a concurrent transference wish which
could only be tolerated in the deeper strata of the Preconscious. Moreover, the image of the analyst forming part of the
ideational content of the transference wish of the sort described in this example would certainly contain certain
attributes of the instincually charged memory of the mother, deriving from the system Unconscious.

51
permitted entry to the system Conscious, in the form of thoughts displaced away from
the analyst and relating to the patient’s friend visiting a holiday town at the same time
as his tutor.

Example C. A middle-aged male patient was in psychoanalytic treatment

because of his and his wife’s concern about the gradual ‘failure’ of their marriage. After
some preliminary analytic work he came to realize that he had withdrawn from
emotional contact with his wife over the years. The awareness of this helped him to
develop a heightened motivation for changing himself. In the session following one in
which he had felt that he had understood something of his difficulties, he began to
speak of his first love affair, which had occurred at the age of thirty, and of his fond
recollection of the girl ‘who understood him’. The patient then began to talk of rather
inconsequential business matters, and the analyst commented that the patient seemed
to have ‘switched off’ emotionally, and that it would seem that he had to do this in order
to push away the friendly and warm feelings towards the analyst which had arisen
during the previous session. The patient agreed that he felt ‘switched off’, but denied
any change in his feelings towards the analyst. He spoke of these as ‘friendly but
professional’. He went on to talk of a colleague who had, in his opinion, been too easily
influenced by his business partner’s suggestions which, he thought, might land his
friend ‘in deep water’. The analyst again pointed out that the patient seemed to be
afraid of the idea that he might be feeling warmth towards the analyst. The patient
denied this, but then hesitantly remarked that he had experienced a flash of pleasure
as he had entered the analyst’s house that day, and had then thought of the danger of
treatment becoming ‘a habit’. This latter thought had worried him. He then appeared to
change the subject and launched into a description of the analyst’s house. The analyst
pointed out that he had previously used almost exactly the same terms to describe his
mother’s house. The patient said that this was ‘interesting’, and proceeded to speak of
how well he managed to get on with his mother after his father had died (when the
patient was eleven), but he recalled that he had ‘had to keep his distance’ even when he
was with her. At this point the analyst interpreted that he, the patient, had ‘switched
off’ that day because of his fear of not being able to continue in the treatment if he
became aware of close and warm feelings for the analyst. The patient agreed with this
and said, as if in confirmation, that if he had given in to his mother’s emotional
demands on him he ‘would never have got out of her clutches’. The psychoanalyst then
interpreted that, as he saw it, was the upsurge of the patient’s own affectionate feelings
and wishes towards the analyst which had caused him to ‘switch off’. Further, this was
a repetition of what he had done to protect himself from similar feelings towards his
mother for much of his life. Likewise, he had increasingly ‘switched off’ emotionally in
his marriage as his fear of a close emotional relationship with his wife increased. At this
point the patient began to speak of those situations in which he withdrew from his wife,
displaying a great deal of emotion for the first time, in his analysis. His subsequent
material related to his fear of being ‘hurt’, ‘betrayed’ and ‘wounded’ if he exposed his
feelings too much.
The ramifications of this fragment of analysis are extensive. However, it
demonstrates how a patient brought a marital symptom, essentially of his own
construction, into the analytic process. In the topographical frame of reference the
essential steps in the development of this transference material can be reconstructed as
follows:
l. In the Unconscious, early memories of oedipal longings for the mother
(together with other memories of childhood experiences of, and adolescent wishes for,
closeness with the mother) had remained, capable of being activated by the
development of a close relationship with a person exciting fondness and affection. The
investment of these memories by instinctual drive excitation led to the revival of strong
instinctual wishes towards the mother.
2. As these wishes intensified, and could not be contained by repression, they

52
entered the deeper reaches of the system Preconscious, becoming attached to the figure
of the analyst, at the same time producing conflict and anxiety, for a variety of reasons,
including the expectation of physical hurt. The transference towards the analyst was
stimulated by the ‘good’ preceding analytic session, and in turn revived the earlier
conflict. This was dealt with in the Preconscious by modifying the transference
derivative of the incestuous wish. Thus the sexual feelings and feelings of affection
towards the analyst had been in turn altered in the Preconscious, by the use of habitual
defences, so that the patient remembered (i.e. permitted into the system Conscious) his
first love affair with the girl ‘who understood him’. Even though this was conscious and
reported by the patient, he was only able to bring this material in his analysis by
speaking in an abstracted, non-emotional way (‘switching off’). Here he used the same
defensive operation which he had used to deal with and contain his longings towards
his mother when he lived with her in the same house. His reference to his ‘friendly but
professional’ relationship to the analyst duplicated the relationship that he had evolved
with her.
3. After having been confronted by the analyst with his defensive ‘switching off’,
a further indication of his preconscious conflict and sources of anxiety emerged,
displaced on to the friend and colleague who might be too easily influenced by his
business partner’s suggestions. This reflected his own fear of being ‘in deep water’ if he
admitted his warm feelings towards the analyst into consciousness. Here one may say
the ‘second censorship’ (between the Preconscious and Conscious systems) intervened.
4. This fear was interpreted and, in spite of an initial rejection by the patient of
the analyst’s comment, the patient could permit into consciousness a recollection of
momentary pleasure at seeing the analyst. He was also able to be aware of, and to
describe, his awareness of the unease which was linked with this thought, in the shape
of his ‘worry that treatment might become a habit’.
5. Derivatives of the preconscious link between the transference derivative and
the original incestuous wish towards the mother (which had arisen in the Unconscious)
could now enter the system Conscious (the description of the analyst’s house in terms
which had previously been used to describe the mother’s and the thought that the
patient could get on well with his mother after his father’s death, but ‘had to keep his
distance from her’).
6. The analyst now interpreted that the patient was frightened of his affectionate
feelings towards the analyst, which the patient had dealt with by ‘switching off’. This
allowed the current preconscious fear of the analyst’s demands on him to emerge into
consciousness in the form of a memory of the patient’s fear of what he thought of as his
mother’s dangerous demandingness. He could also now verbalize (allow into the system
Conscious) the thought that emotional ‘switching off’ protected him from such
dangerous demands, by referring them to the past, i.e. to his relationship to his mother.
The knowledge that he had used this manoeuvre in relation to his transference feelings
to the analyst remained preconscious.
7. The analyst could now interpret, and successfully bring into the system
Conscious, the way in which the patient had dealt with his transference feelings, and
that he had used similar means to protect himself against exactly the same feelings
towards his wife in the more recent past, and towards his mother in childhood. This
allowed further material into consciousness, the patient’s thoughts being substantially
less separated from the feelings which accompanied them.
Transference phenomena have been used to illustrate aspects of the formation of
derivatives in the systems Preconscious and Conscious within the topographical frame
of reference. Similar processes can be ascribed to the formation of other ‘derivatives of
the Unconscious’, e.g. slips of the tongue, works of art and other forms of creativity,
jokes, fantasies, neurotic symptoms, nocturnal dreams, etc. The last-mentioned will be
considered in the next paper in this series, again with the aim of describing the
application of the topographical frame of reference.

53
 Acknowledgements
This work was conducted at the Institute of Psychiatry, University of London, in
collaboration with the Index Project, The Hampstead Child-Therapy Clinic, London, and was
supported by a grant from the Foundation for Research in Psychoanalysis, Beverly Hills, California.
The Hampstead Child-Therapy Clinic is an organization which is at present maintained by the Field
Foundation Inc., New York; the Foundation for Research in Psychoanalysis, Beverly Hills,
California; the Freud Centenary Fund, London; the Anna Freud Foundation, New York; the Grant
Foundation, Inc., New York; the Andrew Mellon Foundation; the National Institute for Mental
Health, Bethesda; the New-Land Foundation, New York; and a number of private supporters.

References
Freud, S.(1895) Studies on hysteria. S.E. 2.
Freud, S. (1905). Fragment of an analysis of a case of hysteria. S.E. 7.
Sandler, J., Dare, C. & Holder, A. (1970a). Basic psychoanalytic concepts: III. Transference. Br. J.
Psychiat. 116, 667-672.
Sandler, J., Dare, C. & Holder, A. (1970b). Basic psychoanalytic concepts: VIII. Special forms of
transference. Br. J. Psychiat. 117, 561-563.
Sandler, J., Dare, C. & Holder, A. (1973). The patient and the Analyst: the Basis of the Psychoanalytic
Process. London: Allen &. Unwin.
Sandler, J., Holder, A. & Dare, C, (1973a). Frames of reference in psychoanalytic psychology. V. The
topographical frame of reference: the organization of the mental apparatus. Br. J. med. Psychol. 46, 29-36.
Sandler, J., Holder, A. & Dare, C. (1973b). Frames of reference in psychoanalytic psychology. VI. The
topographical frame of reference: the Unconscious. Br. J. med. Psychol. 46, 37-43.
Sandler, J., Holder, A. & Dare, C. (1973c). Frames of reference in psychoanalytic psychology. VII. The
topographical frame of reference: the Preconscious and the Conscious. Br. J. med. Psychol. 46, 143-153.

IX. Dream processes in the topographical frame of reference

For Freud, analysis at the end of the 19th century was very different from
analysis as we understand it now. The aim of the analytic work was to make what was.
unconscious conscious, and the method of free association was used (Sandler, Dare &
Holder, 1972). However, in spite of the fact that the phenomenon of transference had
been noted previously (Freud, 1895), interpretation of the transference was not used as
a tool of psychoanalytic technique in the early part of the second phase of
psychoanalysis. Instead, the patient was encouraged to bring his thoughts, free
associations and particularly his dreams to the analysis. As far as dreams were
concerned, the patient was asked to associate to the various elements in the dream. The
meaning of the dream was then explained to him in the light of the analyst’s
understanding of the unconscious content behind the dream (Interpretations, Other
Interventions and Insight in Sandler, Dare & Holder, 1973). Emphasis was placed on the
retrieval and reconstruction of infantile experiences and fantasies, particularly those of
a sexual nature. It was believed that the neuroses were an outcome of conflict aroused
by the revival of childhood sexual wishes, whereas the influence of environmental
factors in the patient's current life was relatively understressed. The analyst was like
the scientist who peered through a microscope, reconstructing the childhood elements
in the current material brought by the patient. As a consequence, because derivatives of
primary process functioning and infantile sexual material were more apparent in the
dream than in waking thoughts and fantasies, the dream was regarded as the ‘royal
road to the Unconscious’. Later developments in psychoanalytic technique, particularly
the analysis of transference manifestations, opened up other roads to the Unconscious
The theory of dreams was put forward, together with the first version of the
topographical model, in The Interpretation of Dreams (1900). The theory as presented
there must be viewed in the context of Freud’s conception that the remembered
traumas of hysterical patients were frequently memories of childhood sexual fantasies
recalled as ‘facts’. There was a corresponding emphasis by the analyst on the effect of
the patient’s infantile sexual drives and wishes on his current life. Because of the bigger
role played by the analysis of dreams in analytic work at the beginning of this century,

54
several days could be spent on the analysis of a single dream or even on a single dream
fragment. Patients usually understood the methods and aims of the analytic work, and
collaborated with the analyst in his particular technique, accepting the emphasis on
their childhood past. Curiously, if a patient were to concentrate as much on dreams
and childhood memories nowadays this would be seen by the psychoanalyst as a
resistance to the expression of thoughts about the present. This view was taken by
Freud in later years.
The psychoanalytic theory of dreams is extremely rich and complicated, and in
this paper we cannot give a full account of the theory. We shall restrict ourselves to an
outline of the way in which dreams can be conceptualized in the topographical frame of
reference. We will concentrate only on giving enough detail in order to demonstrate the
application and use of this frame of reference, complementing the previous paper on
transference (Sandler, Dare & Holder, 1974), in which the clinical phenomena of
transference were considered in order to illustrate the application of the topographical
frame of reference. As in that paper, we shall be concerned with a ‘derivative of the
Unconscious’ which has special significance in the history of psychoanalysis in general
and for the second phase in particular (Sandler, Dare & Holder, 1972).
The Interpretation of Dreams (1900) is the first of Freud works to contain a
detailed and systematic account of the innovations in his thinking, and the
conceptualization which characterize the second phase. Freud’s book on dreams
contains the initial version of the topographical model, specifically elaborated in order
to explain dream processes, although the model was regarded as being of wider
application in the understanding of the whole variety of phenomena considered to be
derivatives of the Unconscious. The topographical model underwent significant changes
during the second phase, but the seventh chapter of The Interpretation of Dreams is still
considered as the most important exposition of the topographical model. 58 We have
pointed out previously that the study of Chapter 7 of Freud’s work on dreams presents
certain problems; ‘...it is not only difficult to comprehend, but includes a number of
propositions which are over complicated and superfluous, in the light of later
developments’ (Sandler, Holder & Dare, 1973a). However, dream analysis remains an
indispensable tool in psychoanalytic treatment, and what we have called the
topographical frame of reference in this series of papers is our version of the model
which has been most widely used for the psychoanalytic understanding of dreams. 59
(For an account of Freud’s statements about the psychoanalytic concepts of dream
formation see Nagera, 1969.)

The function of dreaming

Within the second (topographical) frame of reference the chief function of dreams
and dreaming is taken to be that of the preservation of sleep. 60 This aim is achieved by
presenting the system Conscious with a hallucinatory experience, containing an
amalgamation of elements deriving from the systems Preconscious and Unconscious,
58
The Interpretation of Dreams has been regarded as the first significant work on dreams in the history of psychology,
establishing the subject as an appropriate one for scientific inquiry. For more than a decade, work on sleep and
dreaming, using electroencephalographic techniques, has given a stimulus to further scientific investigation of dreams.
This has served, in part, to confirm clarify and modify psychoanalytic dream theory (see Fisher, 1965a, b, for a
comprehensive review).
59
It is of interest and significance that the topographical model has remained, for many psychoanalysts, the model of
choice in the consideration of dreams, although it was followed by the structural model of Freud’s third phase and by
the further innovations of the fourth phase of psychoanalysis.
60
The research into the psychophysiology of dreaming, mentioned previously, throws considerable light on the
functions of both sleep and dreaming. REM phase sleep, in which most dreaming occurs, appears to be necessary for
the maintenance of psychological health and well-being. Dreaming is more of a regular and necessary function of the
mental apparatus than Freud could know in 1900, when his knowledge of the frequency of dreams was based on
subjective reports. It could perhaps be said that REM sleep provides necessary opportunities for dreaming. It is possible
that internal forces are at work during REM sleep which, were it not for the production of the nocturnal hallucinations
which we call dreams, would otherwise rouse the sleeper.

55
and representing the disguised fulfilment of a repressed instinctual wish, Bodily
sensations and perceptual (mainly auditory and tactile) stimuli during sleep may
contribute to the formation of dreams and, in part, determine their content. However,
the contents (instinctual drive wishes) of the system Unconscious are regarded as the
chief motivating forces for the formation of dreams. Even during sleep these contents
have a peremptory quality (conceived of, in this frame of reference, as a consequence of
the pressure of psychic energy seeking discharge), and constitute a ‘demand for work’
on and within the mental apparatus. Processes within the Preconscious system modify
and disguise the instinctual wish derivatives arising from the Unconscious in such a
way that they may ultimately receive attention within the system Conscious as
hallucinatory wish-fulfilments, without sleep being disrupted. 61 In this sense, dreams
are comparable, in psychoanalytic theory, to certain neurotic symptoms, in that they
may be regarded as representing compromises between repressed wishes striving for
gratification on the one hand, and the opposing influence of the ‘censoring’ processes
on the other.

The process of dream formation

Dreams are considered to be instigated predominantly by the instinctual drive
wishes; however, it is not only instinctual wishes which provide material for the
formation of dreams, but other sources of dream content as well. All these ‘instigators’
are known as dream sources. Predominant among the non-instinctual sources are the
more recently formed mental contents which have reached preconscious or conscious
representation during waking life, and which can be considered to be contents of the
system Preconscious during the state of sleep. Conscious or preconscious ‘unsolved
problems’ arising during the day, representing major current preoccupations, as well as
memories belonging to the preceding day or two (day’s residues) may come into the
general category of non-instinctual sources. In addition, stimuli impinging on the
individual from somatic or external sources may also provide material for the dream, or
even play a part instigating it. Examples of the latter are feelings of bodily discomfort
arising during sleep and such external stimuli as the ringing of an alarm clock.
Day’s residues are preconscious contents which were active (possibly even as
previously conscious thoughts) during the days preceding a dream and which have, for
one reason or another, retained some investment of preconscious attention after the onset
of sleep. Impressions of the previous day or two, not directly involved in conflict, may be
drawn into the process of dream construction, functioning to disguise an instinctual wish
or its preconscious derivative, thus facilitating the evasion of the various censorships. In
summary, day’s residues include visual impressions, memories of thoughts, other
sensory impressions of one sort or another. Indeed, they include experiences of any kind
which occurred during the previous few days, experiences which may have seemed
relatively trivial at the time. In the analysis of a dream, elements which are undoubtedly
day’s residues may be recalled during free association as unimportant impressions. They
were incorporated into the dream in some form either because of a connexion between
such impressions and unconscious thoughts and wishes, or because their content
rendered them suitable for the purposes of symbolic representation. In addition, they are
accessible because they are recent. Even in those instances where the overt content of the
dream appears to be dominated by residues from the previous day, it is always
assumed, in this frame of reference, that the dream ultimately represents the fulfilment of
an unconscious instinctual wish. Freud remarked that the day’s residues are only
psychical material for the dream-work, just as sensory and somatic stimuli... constitute
the somatic material ‘for the dream-work... the essential factor in the construction of
61
Anxiety dreams which lead to waking are regarded as examples of a failure on the part of the Preconscious to create
sufficient distortion of the drive derivatives. The anxiety is a manifestation of the breakthrough of the insufficiently
censored instinctual wish derivative. The affect of anxiety was regarded as being derived from a transformation of the
instinctual ‘energy’ with which the wish was ‘charged’. This conception of anxiety (the so-called ‘first theory of
anxiety’) was totally modified in the third phase.

56
dreams is an unconscious wish - as a rule an infantile wish, now repressed - which can
come to expression in this somatic or psychical material. The dream is in every case a
fulfilment of this unconscious wish, whatever else it may contain. (Freud, 1913b) 62
We should distinguish, as always in the topographical frame of reference, the
repressed instinctual wish in the system Unconscious from the broader category of
‘unconscious wish’ in which the term ‘unconscious’ is used in its descriptive sense, i.e.
to include contents of the Preconscious system as well as of the Unconscious. It should
also be noted that the instinctual wish in the Unconscious is not simply the same as
instinctual drive energy, but has ideational content. In another paper we pointed out:
This instinctual wish can be understood... as consisting of the mental
representation of a previously gratifying situation or situations, now invested with drive
energy. The latter provides the force impelling the wish towards expression and
gratification. The mental representation involved include a childhood image of the
person himself, of the gratifying object and of the object-directed aim, i.e. the
interaction with the past object which would yield the wished-for instinctual
gratification. In addition to those childhood memories particularly significant to the
individual concerned, repressed memories of all kinds referring to later experiences may
enter into the content of instinctual wishes in the system Unconscious (Sandler, Dare &
Holder, 1974).
The instinctual wishes may have been pressing towards gratification for some
time, or may have been relatively dormant until aroused by the influence of recent
experiences, particularly those which occurred during the day or two preceding the
dream. Any increase in the pressure of an instinctual wish in the Unconscious is
regarded, in the present framework, as a heightened investment of particular mental
contents by instinctual drive energies. The heightened investment (cathexis) of the
contents of the wish increases its peremptory quality and impels it more strongly
towards ‘discharge’ (or ‘satisfaction’) in relevant physical activity. However, motor
activity is considerably restricted by the state of sleep, being limited to such phenomena
as groaning, grinding of teeth, slight body movements (‘restless sleep’), talking or
mumbling, and occasionally sleep-walking. On the other hand, the activation of
perceptual representations is not inhibited throughout sleep in the same way as motor
discharge.63 Because the censorship between the Unconscious and Preconscious
systems is relatively diminished in sleep the wish passes more readily into the
Preconscious, where it undergoes a number of transformations. This mean that, in spite
of the partial relaxation of the censoring function, the instinctual wish may be rejected
in its crude form by the censorship. None the less, the wish is able to obtain access to

62
On the whole more importance is ascribed for the understanding of the psychology of dreams to internal
psychological sources than to stimuli arising from the body or the external world. Only in exceptional circumstances
are the latter considered to be instigators (or ‘prime movers’) of a dream on their own as in so-colled ‘dreams of
convenience’. Freud gives an example of such a dream (1900). He wrote: ‘Having made it a practice as far back as I
can remember to work late into the night, I always found it difficult to wake early. I used then to have a dream of being
out of bed and standing by the washing-stand; after a while I was no longer able to disguise from myself the fact that I
was really still in bed, but in the meantime I had a little more sleep’ Here the external instigator is the perception during
the awakening phase of sleep of physical weariness (as opposed to an infantile instinctual wish) which it was thought
could, in these circumstances, lead to the production of a dream.
63
In The Interpretation of Dreams Freud considered the activation of the perceptual apparatus during sleep to be the
result of a reversal of the direction of a normal, waking process. He said: ‘The only way in which we can describe what
happens in hallucinatory dreams is by saying that the excitation moves in a backward direction. Instead of being
transmitted towards the motor end of the apparatus it moves towards the sensory end and finally reaches the perceptual
system. If we describe as ‘progressive’ the direction taken by psychical processes arising from the Unconscious during
waking life, then we may speak of dreams as having a ‘regressive’ character’ (1900). It should be noted that this
concept is more appropriate to the first version of the topographical model, which was heavily influenced by the
neurological notion of the ‘reflex arc’. It should be noted that the use of the term ‘regression’ in this context is quite
different from Freud’s other uses of the term. This is extremely confusing, all the more because the term ‘regression’ is
also used in regard to dreams, i.e. in reference to the re-emergence of infantile wishes and memories, and the
reappearance of developmentally earlier modes of functioning and expression.

57
the Preconscious relatively easily, particularly when modified by such primary
processes as condensation, displacement and symbolization, as described previously
(Sandler, Holder & Dare; 1973b,c; Sandler, Dare &. Holder, 1974). All the
transformations of the instinctual wish in its passage from the Unconscious to its final
representation in consciousness in the form of a dream are known as the dream-work.
This includes the formation of representations of relatively organized wish-fulfilments,
largely visual and auditory in form, which are propelled by their instinctual drive
cathexis further to-wards the boundary between the Preconscious and the Conscious
systems.
The two most essential aspects of the dream-work are the formation of a
modified dream-wish and the representation of the fulfilment or gratification of this
wish in such a way that it is capable of becoming conscious as a sense-perception, i.e.
as a hallucination of a disguised fulfilment of the dream-wish. In order to achieve this
end, the dream-work makes use of displacement and condensation (characteristic of
primary process functioning in the system Unconscious), processes which are further
governed by considerations of visual and auditory representability. It is important that
since the dream is a hallucinatory experience, the modification of abstract dream-
thought, dream-wishes and wish-fulfilments, into some pictorial form is thought to be
one of the main functions of the dream-work: Freud put it:
“A thing which is pictorial is, from the point of view of a dream, a thing that is
capable of being represented: it can be produced into a situation in which abstract
expressions offer the same kind of difficulties to representation in dreams as a political
leading article in a newspaper would offer to an illustrator.” (Freud, 1900). 64
Dream-work is necessitated by the continuing activity of the censorship during
sleep. As we have said in another context (Sandler, Holder &Dare, 1973 a):
“Essentially, the censorship is seen as functioning to protect consciousness from
the awareness of those instinctual wishes which, in direct or indirect form, would
represent a threat if they were permitted surface expression.... The scanning and
scrutiny of instinctual wishes and their derivatives involved in the censorship presumes
the existence of a form of ‘unconscious awareness’ in the Preconscious.”
The functioning of the censor during sleep is known as dream-censorship. It is
assumed that the dream-censorship is less strict than the censorship which operates
during waking life. This accounts for the common occurrence of quite flagrant
expressions of instinctual drive wishes during sleep in the form of a dream. None the
less, even though the apparent nature of a dream about, for instance, a homosexual act
may seem to represent an undisguised instinctual wish, analysis of the dream will
reveal the censoring function in certain crucial modifications of the original wish.
As we pointed out in our general discussion of the organization of the mental
apparatus within the topographical frame of reference, the censorship is considered to
function at two levels, i.e. between the Unconscious and Preconscious on the one hand
and between the Preconscious and Conscious systems on the other. The activity of the
first censorship so modifies the original instinctual drive wish that it results in what is
known as the latent dream content. As we have stressed, this first effort at forming a

64
It is of historical interest that in the consideration of the dream-work during the first part of the second phase, most
emphasis was given to the primary process elements contained in it, and unconscious secondary processes were
relatively neglected. This reflected Freud’s particular interest in the mode of working of the system Unconscious, and
in the clinical work which he actually did with his patients when analysing their dreams, i.e. looking behind the
secondary process phenomena for the manifestations of primary processes. It should also be remembered that the
notion of the ‘second censorship’ (discussed in a previous paper) was only fully introduced in 1915. In 1900 Freud
remarked: ‘The dream-work is not simply more careless, more irrational, more forgetful and more incomplete than
waking thought; it is completely different from it qualitatively and for that reason not immediately comparable with it.
It does not think, calculate or judge in any way at all; it restricts itself to giving things a new form’ However, in our
view the concept of the dream-work has to include secondary process functioning, outside consciousness, in the system
Preconscious. In this frame of reference, therefore, we will include the preconscious processes by which the dream is
transformed and ‘prepared’ for consciousness, within the concept of the dream-work.

58
modified representation of the original dream-wish is unlikely to be permitted to pass
the second censorship and attain conscious representation as a dream. Further
modifications and the production of more derivatives become necessary and the
resultant contents present themselves to the second censorship, the demands of which
result in secondary revision in the course of producing the manifest dream.
The term ‘latent dream content’ is an important one for the understanding of the
formation of dreams within the topographical frame of reference. It refers to all the
unconscious contents which have contributed to the formation of the dream, in contrast
to those which have reached consciousness. The latent dream content comprises all the
contents used in the process of dream-formation up to the production of the manifest,
i.e. consciously recalled, dream. The latent dream content therefore includes the
instinctual wish in the Unconscious, the derivatives of that wish in the Preconscious,
the day’s residues and the dream-thoughts which are within the system Preconscious.
The latent dream content thus includes preliminary or trial efforts, representing
attempts to provide hallucinatory fulfilment of unconscious urges which have not been
able to pass the second censorship to become a manifest dream. The term ‘latent’
applies to ideational content but not to processes. It therefore includes images from all
the sensory modalities, as well as feeling representations and other sensory
experiences. It does not refer to memory traces, energies, stimulus sources, censorship,
etc., which have no ideational content in themselves. The dream thoughts or latent
dream-thoughts, mentioned above, are contents in the Preconscious which are drawn
into the dream during the course of the dream-work. Such thoughts may be rational
and logical and are organized according to secondary process functioning. They may
relate to unsolved problems (including reality-based preoccupations), but may also
include other thoughts and conclusions reached prior to the onset of sleep. They are
drawn into the process of dream-formation because of their associative link with other
dream elements, more directly connected with the latent dream-wish. If the latent
dream-thoughts are in the form of verbal representations, they may be given a pictorial
character during the dream-work. As Freud put it (1905), the process of dream-
formation leads ‘from thoughts to perceptual images, ...from the region of thought-
structures to that of sensory perceptions. On this path... the dream-thoughts are given
a pictorial character.’ The latent dream which impinges on the second censorship is a
mental content with many similarities to the preconscious transference derivatives
which we described in our previous paper. It differs from transference derivatives in
that the first censorship is more lax during sleep in comparison with its activity in
waking life. Moreover, it moves in a different form towards consciousness because the
functions of the second censorship also differ in sleep, and because of the
inaccessibility of the motor functions to the mental apparatus during sleep. In a
psychoanalysis, dreams reported during the course of treatment are, of course, likely to
contain elements of transference wishes and attitudes. However, dream processes occur
outside treatment as well and therefore may not contain much that is directly
analogous to transference material.
It must be emphasized that the formation of a dream is not considered to be the
result of a smooth flow of mental contents through the mental apparatus from the
depths to the surface. As modifications and transformations of the instinctual drive
wishes occur, these derivatives may, in fact, be subject to considerable censoring and
become once more contents of relatively deep layers of the apparatus, until they have
been further modified and disguised sufficiently to approach the second censorship.
The process of dream-formation is therefore considered to be one in which there is a
prolonged dynamic movement to and fro across the layers of the Unconscious and
Preconscious systems. Freud’s notion of these processes was originally derived from the
famous hydrodynamic analogies, in which the idea of a fluid energy under pressure
seeking outlets and meeting obstructions, emphasized this notion of a to-and-fro
process. An important factor which facilitates the representation of instinctual drive
derivatives through evasion of the censorship is that of symbolization. Symbolization

59
constitutes a disguise of the instinctual wish, one which is relatively strongly influenced
by primary processes. The simplest form of symbolic representation usually involves the
representation of a part of the body or a body function by means of an image which is
closely related to it in form, but sufficiently modified to evade the censorship. For
example, the well-known ‘phallic symbol’ may succeed in reaching the Conscious
system because its representation of the unacceptable image of an erect penis is not
immediately apparent to the dreamer. We may also find symbols which owe their
selection for representing unacceptable instinctual content to a whole set of complicated
connexions. These have to be traced during the course of the analysis of the dream and
are often difficult to reconstruct. Although there are some recurrent symbolizations of a
general kind, common to the dreams of most people in our culture, it must be stressed
that, however generally used, a symbol appearing in a dream will always have an
intensely personal idiosyncratic meaning. A dream can only be understood to a
significant degree if that personal aspect of the symbol is investigated fully by means of
free association.
Symbols are particularly useful in the course of dream-formation on account of
their ambiguity and their multiplicity of possible meanings. Concrete visual
symbolizations are especially suitable because of their pictorial character, which
facilitates perceptual representation. Considerations of representability are generally
important in determining the final stages in the transformation of the latent into the
manifest dream. The final version of the dream must be capable not only of passing the
second censorship but also of being representable as a hallucination in the form of
verbal and visual images. Therefore one important aspect of the final stages of dream
formation consists in the unconscious choice of appropriate imagery for the
representation of the underlying latent dream content.
During sleep, at times when dreaming is not taking place, the system Conscious
is said to be ‘emptied’ of attention cathexis. Conscious awareness is more or less
absent. However, during periods of dreaming, the perceptual vividness of certain dream
elements is sufficiently intense to succeed in arousing and attracting attention cathexis
in the Conscious. By this means the dream attains the quality of a ‘real’ conscious
experience and is experienced as a hallucination. The hallucinatory quality of the dream
is reflected in the familiar phenomenon of momentary uncertainty, at the time of
waking, as to whether the events in the dream have actually happened or not.
During and after the process of dreaming, further modifications of dream
contents occur which are referred to as secondary revision or secondary elaboration.
This process is a sort of further ‘editing’ of the dream under the influence of the second
censorship and in the interests of rationality and intelligibility. Secondary revision
makes use of secondary process functioning and provides the manifest content of the
dream with a façade of logic, causality, coherence and temporal sequentially. In the
analytic situation, this process occurs up to and during the recounting of the dream.
Much of secondary revision occurs unconsciously and can be considered to be an
aspect of the dream-work. Hence the dream-work has to be regarded as a process which
occurs in all three systems of the mental apparatus. Secondary revision, being the last
stage of the dream-work, takes place at the point at which the dream enters the system
Conscious as a hallucinatory sense-perception. Freud (1917) maintained that the
‘completion of the dream-process consists in the thought-content - ... transformed and
worked over into a wishful phantasy -becoming conscious as a sense-perception; while
this is happening it undergoes secondary revision, to which every perceptual concept is
subject.’ Secondary revision, however, not only achieves intelligibility but also amounts
to a further distortion of the unconscious meaning and significance of a dream. Freud
(1913 a) wrote that the purpose of secondary revision is “to get rid of the
disconnectedness and unintelligibility produced by the dream-work and replace it by a
new ‘meaning’. But this new meaning arrived at by secondary revision is no longer the
meaning of the dream-thoughts”.
The end product of dream formation - the dream as it is consciously remembered

60
after waking up - known as the manifest content of the dream, whether this is in the
form of a coherent whole (‘dream façade’) or as something relatively disconnected,
confused and apparently meaningless. In the clinical interpretation of dreams the
manifest content serves as a starting point for the understanding and interpretation of
the thoughts, fantasies and wishes which lie hidden behind it. The analysis of the
manifest content may lead to the reconstruction or recall of latent dream-thoughts
which may contain a clue to the underlying meaning of the dream, that is to say to the
infantile wish represented as fulfilled in a disguised way in the dream. What is
consciously remembered as a dream is a substitute for this wish, one which is
acceptable to the censorship.65 In clinical practice the emotional content of dreams is of
great importance. Within the topographical frame of reference it is assumed that affects
which are experienced in dreams represent feelings present in the dreamer at the time
of the construction of the dream. Furthermore, they are regarded as being the dreamer’s
affects, irrespective of whether they are attributed to someone else in the manifest
content or not. It should be emphasized that feeling states have to be regarded as
contents of the system Preconscious and that we do not conceive of affects in the
system Unconscious.
Affects are considered to be changed least by the dream-work. However, the
manifest content of dreams often reveals the operation of defence mechanisms such as
negation. For example, if a patient comments, in relation to a dream, ‘it is strange, but I
felt no anxiety whatsoever’, it is likely that anxiety represents an important ingredient of
the latent dream-content.
In summary, the dream represents a conscious experience during sleep, one in
which an instinctual wish-fulfilment is represented, so that ‘discharge’ via hallucinatory
gratification is achieved. The wish-fulfilment is experienced in disguised form, so that
the dreamer is normally unaware of the meaning of his dream. It is only this lack of
conscious awareness of the significance of the wish involved that permits the dream to
occur at all - it has passed the censorships and no uncomfortable secrets have been
revealed to the dreamer’s consciousness. The dream can be considered to be an end-
product of a process of transformation - the dream-work - applied to the infantile
instinctual wish. In the passage of the dream from its origins in the Unconscious
through the Preconscious to the relatively superficial Conscious system, a number of
processes occur. These include:
1. Primary process transformation of the ideational content of the original
instinctual wish, as described previously (Sandler, Holder & Dare, 1973 b, c).
2. A derivative of the instinctual wish is elaborated in the system Preconscious.
This derivative amalgamates current and past preoccupations, thoughts and memories.
Present conscious or preconscious concerns and day’s residues play an especially
important role. At the same time, an attempt is made, in the Preconscious, to construct
a fulfilment of the instinctual wish derivative, but this tentative wish-fulfilment may not
yet be acceptable to the ‘second censorship’ between the Preconscious and Conscious
systems. Several ‘trials’ may have to be made before a suitably disguised wish-fulfilment
is constructed. In the elaboration of the wish-fulfilment ‘considerations of
representability’ apply, i.e. the ideational content involved needs to find a suitable
perceptual representation.66

65
There are some exceptions to this. For ex-ample, in some children’s dreams and in ‘dreams of convenience’ in adults,
manifest and latent dream-contents may coincide. There may be fairly straight-forward instances of relatively
undisguised wish-fulfilment of hunger and thirst in dreams. Children’s dreams may be very explicit fulfilments of
wishes which are immediately apparent to adults even though the child may not be as conscious as the adult of the
wishful nature of the dream. In the few special cases where the manifest and latent dream-contents seem to be largely
identical it can be assumed that the underlying wish is non-conflictual.
66
Thus, for example, relatively abstract preconscious thoughts, which have become connected with an infantile
instinctual wish, may find perceptual representation in their literal or concrete rather than in their abstract forms. An
instance of this is the thought ‘he is a pain in the neck’ finding experiential representation in a dream experience of ‘my
neck hurts’. This also illustrates, within the topographical frame of reference, the similarity between the process of

61
 3. The process of secondary revision or secondary elaboration occurs at the point
of transition of the developing dream from the system Preconscious to the Conscious,
and is continued after the dream has been consciously experienced.
Despite the fact that present-day clinical psychoanalytic work makes use of
many of the concepts of later phases, the topographical frame of reference remains
useful for many purposes. This is true in regard to the clinical utilization of dreams
despite the fact that many psychoanalysts are now more concerned than in the past
with the use of dreams as a way of understanding what is currently happening in the
patient. In particular, emphasis is put on the way in which unconscious transference
thoughts show them-selves in dreams. It can be said that today the dream is used at
least as much for its value as a ‘royal road’ to the Preconscious as to the Unconscious.
Two examples will be given to illustrate the formation of dreams, using the
topographical frame of reference. In the first, the process of dream formation is
described, commencing with the ‘instigating’ drive impulses arising within the system
Unconscious, tracing the modifications brought about by the dream-work, and ending
with the remembered dream.
The second example starts with a description of a manifest dream, of the sort
recounted in clinical practice, which is then traced back to its latent sources and
contents. It should be stressed that alternative formulations are possible, and that the
examples are given only for the purpose of illustrating the application of the frame of
reference to the understanding of dream formation. It should also be noted that it is
highly likely that the same wishes in the Unconscious which find expression in the
dream at night may have been active during the preceding day, leading to the formation
of preconscious (or even conscious) ideas, thoughts or fantasies (including transference
thoughts). However, these may not have been able to provide a sufficient degree of drive
discharge during the day. The daytime derivatives may then be drawn into the dream.
The hallucinatory experience of the dream provides a much greater degree of concealed
wish-fulfilment, and therefore of instinctual drive discharge, than is possible in
preconscious or conscious fantasies. Finally, attention is drawn again to the central role
attributed to the drive-cathected wish in the Unconscious in this frame of reference.
This emphasis dominated the whole of the second phase of psychoanalysis (Sandler,
Dare & Holder, 1972).
Example A
1. At a certain point in the analysis of a young man, repressed incestuous
wishes towards his mother were mobilized in the system Unconscious. In theoretical
terms, these wishes can be considered to have received an increased cathexis of
instinctual drive energy. This heightened energic investment gave the wish momentum
towards surface expression and gratification (discharge). In this case the sexual wish
towards the mother was revived by increasing unconscious tender and sexual feelings
towards the analyst.
2. The passage of the unmodified incestuous wish through the mental apparatus
was impeded by the first censorship, i.e. that between the system Unconscious and
Preconscious. As a consequence of this a first derivative of the original drive wish was
formed in a primary process fashion, involving the displacement of instinctual cathexis
on to memories which were associatively linked with the repressed sexual impulse. In
this example, the revived wish for sexual intercourse with the mother was transformed
by displacement on to memories of a past activity in which the patient and a friend of
his had ‘wrestled’ with the patient’s older adolescent sister for the possession of a ‘pin-
up’ magazine.
3. The wish now took the form of a desire to re-experience the sexually exciting
wrestling with the sister, and was permitted entry into the Preconscious. It would be
unlikely that a wish for such scarcely disguised physical activity, so close to the
incestuous instinctual wish in the Unconscious, would have been allowed to pass

dream formation and the unconscious construction of certain neurotic symptoms, such as a hysterical pain in the neck.

62
readily through the first censorship during waking life. However, during sleep the
censoring activity is considered to be relatively diminished. In this patient the wish
towards the sister immediately became amalgamated with preconscious transference
thoughts and feelings about the analyst.
4. Further passage of this particular derivative through the mental apparatus
was opposed by the second censorship between the Preconscious and Conscious
systems. This led to a great deal of mental activity within the Preconscious, in which a
wide variety of cathected mental contents (e.g. day’s residues, distant memories, recent
thoughts and daydreams) were drawn upon by the dream-work in the attempt to form a
derivative which would pass the second censorship, while some elements which
represented the original instinctual wish, as well as transference elements, were
included. In the formation of this patient’s dream, the dream-work made use of the
associative link with a memory of a discussion which the patient had recently had with
his sister. This had been about a suggestion made by his sister that she and the patient
take a holiday together, and included some talk of the difficulties in obtaining two single
rooms, and the possibility that they might have to share a bedroom. The memory now
became incorporated into the latent dream-wish, together with a thought which the
patient had had about going on holiday with the analyst.
5. In order to safeguard sleep and yet to achieve a disguised hallucinatory
satisfaction of the instinctual wish, further dream-work occurred. Its task was to modify
the latent dream-content in the Preconscious, to disguise it sufficiently, and to give it
pictorial quality so that it could pass the second censorship and arouse the attention of
the system Conscious. As a consequence, the representations of the sister and the
analyst were condensed and replaced by that of a girl known to the patient, whom he
did not find attractive. With this change in object the feeling of sexual desire and
attraction (first to the mother, then to the sister and currently to the analyst) was
replaced by its opposite, a feeling of revulsion.
6. The modified dream-wish and dream-thoughts were now essentially
concerned with the patient’s mixed feelings about spending a holiday with an ugly girl
by whom he felt repelled. In this form, the latent dream-content was sufficiently
disguised to be allowed to proceed past the second censorship, to gain the attention of
the system Conscious, and to find hallucinatory expression there as a dream. The
nature of the transformation of latent into manifest content is such that the manifest
dream always contains at least a partial, albeit hidden, representation of satisfaction of
the underlying instinctual wish.67
7. The outcome of the dream-work was, in this example, a series of images of
sufficient sensory vividness to be able to attract attention cathexis from the system
Conscious and, in the absence of opposing preconscious censoring processes, to be
experienced as a dream. These images included the perception of an ugly and
unattractive girl and of looking at brochures in a travel agency. This was accompanied
by a sense of repugnance coloured by slight feelings of tension.
8. During the process of this content becoming conscious, and continuing after
it, was the next stage in the formation of the dream, i.e. that of secondary revision or
elaboration, which begins in the most superficial strata of the Preconscious. Through
this process the separate hallucinatory images and feeling states were joined together
into a coherent sequence in keeping with the requirements of reality and of secondary
process functioning. The dream reported by the young man in his psychoanalytic
session was as follows: ‘I was at a travel agency, looking at brightly coloured brochures.
I knew I was talking to the girl who was with me, and I was excited about the prospect
67
We are giving a simplified account of the modifications brought about through the agency of the dream-work. The
work represents a mental activity which we could call the ‘dream struggle’, in which both primary and secondary
processes are involved. The modification of the latent dream wish is brought about by rapid back and forth movements
across the first censorship, not only in order to achieve a greater degree of disguise but also to draw upon images which
lend themselves to pictorial representation in a hallucination. These involved and complicated processes have
necessarily been understressed in our account.

63
of going on holiday with her. When I turned to her I was filled with a feeling of surprise
and repugnance, for she suddenly struck me as so unattractive. She was fat and ugly
and her face was full of pimples.
9. In the special conditions of the partial disinhibition that develops in the
psychoanalytic treatment situation, some of the preconscious material involved in the
formation of the dream could be recovered in consciousness through the process of free
association. In this way certain day’s residues were recalled. After his previous session
the patient had noticed a travel agency and had experienced a momentary wish to go on
holiday (this was later seen to be connected with wishes to escape from the analysis of
his sexual wishes towards his analyst). Someone at the patient’s office had been talking
about his holiday plans. This led the patient to recall that, a few days previously, he
had had a discussion with his sister about their spending a holiday together. In
reporting this discussion, he also added that they had joked about the possibility of
their having to share a room at one stop-over point on the journey. As he paused and
mused over this discussion with his sister he reported a memory from adolescence of
the tussle and teasing between his sister and himself, in the presence of his friend. He
had previously spoken of an occasion when he had seen his sister’s growing breasts,
and had thought that her nipples looked like pimples. The patient went on to comment
that the girl in the dream could not be his sister, for she looked so different (an example
of the defence mechanism of negation). In the dream, the pin-up magazine over which
he had wrestled with his sister had been transformed into the more neutral holiday
brochure. When it was pointed out that there might be some thoughts about the
analyst involved in the patient’s dream, the patient was able to confirm that he had
wondered about the analyst’s holiday, and had indeed had the fleeting thought that
they might choose the same place for their holidays and meet accidentally. Later
material in the same session confirmed the existence of the patient’s wish to have a very
close sexual relationship with the analyst, and this was in turn understood by both
analyst and patient as a transference on to the analyst of feelings towards the sister
and the mother.
Example B
A young married man was in analysis because of worries about his potency and
occasional panic attacks when travelling on crowded underground trains. After a few
months of treatment, on the day after the analyst had presented him with the monthly
bill, he began the session by reporting a dream in which he saw two men fighting. He
said that he remembered nothing else about the dream except a sense of pity for the
man who seemed to be losing. He pondered on the dream, saying that perhaps it had
something to do with a boxing-match which he had seen on television the previous
evening. He had felt sorry for the man who had lost the bout. He then talked of the only
time in his life when he had actually gone to watch a boxing-match. This was in his
childhood, when he had been taken by his father. He recalled enjoying the occasion very
much, but wondered how he could have been so callous as a child to watch something
brutal. At this point the analyst realized that his usually punctilious patient had, for
the first time, failed to bring the cheque for his fees the day after the bill had been
presented. The patient, mean-while, had moved on to talk about aggression in a rather
intellectual way which appeared to the analyst as an attempt to get away from the
dream and its significance. However, the patient then spoke of an angry dispute
between two colleagues which, once more, reminded him of the dream. At this point the
analyst interpolated the comment that the patient had looked rather annoyed when
presented with the bill the day before, and that this, together with the fact that he had
not brought the cheque as he usually did, might indicate that the sort of anger which
his quarrelling colleagues showed paralleled feelings of his own towards the analyst for
giving him the bill. The patient acknowledged that he had thought the day before that
the analyst was undoubtedly richer he, and he recalled that he had felt ‘unreasonably’
irritable at the time. He now realized that he had indeed felt angry with the analyst, and
still did.

64
 From his knowledge of the patient, and from the material brought in that
session, the analyst was able to arrive at a partial understanding of the dream, which
appeared to have been occasioned by the patient’s need to ward off the feelings of anger
and resentment about the bill he had been given. This appeared, in turn, to be related
to much earlier feelings of anger which the patient had felt towards his father, feelings
which accompanied fantasies of fighting and beating father, fostered and stimulated by
attendance at the boxing-match as a child. At the same time the patient had strong
affectionate feelings towards his father (as he now did towards the analyst) and this had
caused him conflict. The existence of these conflicting feelings, together with the fear of
father’s retaliatory capacity, had led to the repression of the wish to attack and
triumph over father. The wish was stimulated by the resentment of the wealthier
analyst, but the dream-work must have involved the replacement of the aggressive wish
by the pleasurable memory of watching the boxing-match with father, a memory in
which the patient’s aggressive wish towards his father was displaced. The feelings of
triumph which would accompany the fulfilment of the wish to overcome father were
replaced by pity for the loser. It is, of course, highly likely that the patient’s actual
dream experience contained far more content than was reported in the session, for the
after-repression which accompanies the ongoing secondary revision frequently causes a
forgetting of all or parts of a dream.
Using the topographical frame of reference, the dream can be understood
schematically, as follows:
1. In the system Unconscious the infantile wishes to attack and beat father, to
remove him from his position as possessor of the mother, remained repressed, but were
still cathected and sought some form of representation, discharge and gratification.
Alongside these hostile and even murderous wishes were longings for closeness with
father. We can conjecture that, earlier in the life of the patient (for example, at the time
of the visit to the boxing-match with father), fantasies representing the fulfilment of
both types of wish would have been permitted representation in some form within the
Preconscious or in the Conscious. These fantasies would have been subsequently firmly
repressed as they came into conflict with the developing social and moral values of the
child. We can assume within this frame of reference that the patient’s anger with the
analyst over the bill heightened the level of instinctual drive cathexis of the aggressive
wishes.
2. During the dream phase of sleep the lowered censorship between the systems
Unconscious and Preconscious allowed the repressed wishes to impinge on
preconscious contents with which they could be associatively linked and interwoven. In
our example these included day’s residues as well as childhood memories. Significant
among the day’s residues were the boxing-match seen on television the previous
evening, the recollection of the analyst’s presentation of the bill and the accompanying
but unexpressed emotional reaction to the bill. The significant childhood thoughts were
of the acceptable pleasure and excitement associated with the visit to the prize-fight.
3. The amalgam of contents from the Unconscious and Preconscious, cathected
by instinctual drive energy, had an impetus to move through the mental apparatus
towards consciousness. In general, the contents of the wish-derivatives have the
potential for perceptual representation. There are three possible vicissitudes which such
latent dream-contents can undergo during sleep. Firstly, they may be sufficiently vivid
and adequately disguised so that they can pass the second censorship and arouse the
attention of the system Conscious, so that a dream is experienced. (It would be unusual
in an adult for a first wish-derivative to find direct expression in a dream.) Secondly, the
contents may not yet be sufficiently disguised, and thus be rejected by the second
censorship. Thirdly, the disguise may be sufficient but the contents do not have enough
sensory vividness to be able to be experienced as a hallucination in the Conscious. In
the case of the second and third alternatives the dream-work continues to operate on
the latent dream-content in order to achieve a sufficiently disguised wish-fulfilment and
to increase the degree of its representability. This involves a continuous movement of

65
amalgamated and transformed contents, back and forth across the boundary between
the Unconscious and Preconscious, the censorship being diminished during sleep. Thus
both primary and secondary process functioning are involved. Ultimately this leads to
the production of images, representative of the original instinctual wish, that can gain
access to conscious registration while carrying sufficient of the original drive cathexis to
provide hallucinatory gratification.
In the present example, the dream, prior to its secondary elaboration, seemed to
have consisted of the sight of two men (other than the dreamer) fighting, with one man
losing, i.e. being knocked down. The dream images seem to have been accompanied by
a number of feelings, of which the patient could only report pity for the loser.
4. The hallucinated dream images are affected by secondary revision, involving
secondary process thinking, both during the experiencing of the dream and afterwards,
as well as before and during the process of recall. The defensive processes which enter
into secondary revision show themselves as resistances in the treatment session, in this
case the patient’s resistance to full awareness of his own anger and hostility. Some of
the feelings and ideas entering into the dream could be recovered in the analytic
session, with the aid of appropriate interpretations, even though a rather fragmentary
manifest dream had been reported.

Acknowledgements
This work was conducted at the Institute of Psychiatry, University of London, in
collaboration with the Index Project, The Hampstead Child-Therapy Clinic, London, and was
supported by a grant from the Foundation for Research in Psychoanalysis, Beverly Hills, California.
The Hampstead Child-Therapy Clinic is an organization which is at present maintained by the Field
Foundation Inc., New York; the Foundation for Research in Psychoanalysis, Beverly Hills,
California; the Freud Centenary Fund, London; the Anna Freud Foundation, New York; the Grant
Foundation, Inc., New York; the Andrew Mellon Foundation; the National Institute for Mental
Health, Bethesda; the New-Land Foundation, New York; and a number of private supporters.

References
Fisher, C. (1965a). Psychoanalytic implications of recent research on sleep and dreaming. I.
Empirical findings. J. Am. psychoanal. Ass. 13, 197-270.
Fisher, C. (1965b). Psychoanalytic implications of recent research on sleep and dreaming. II.
Implications for psychoanalytic theory. J. Am. psychoanal. Ass. 13,271-303.
Freud, S. (1895). Studies on hysteria. S.E. 2.
Freud, S. (1900). The interpretation of dreams. S.E. 4-5.
Freud, S. (1905). Jokes and their relation to the Unconscious.. S.E. 8.
Freud, S. (1913a). Totem and taboo. S.E. 13.
Freud, S. (1913b). An evidential dream. S.E. 12.
Freud, S. (1917). A metapsychological supplement to the theory of dreams. S.E. 14.
Nagera, H. (ed.) (1969). Basic Psychoanalytic Concepts on the Theory of Dreams. London: Allen &
Unwin.
Sandler, J., Dare, C. & Holder, A. (1972). Frames of reference in psychoanalytic psychology. II. The
historical context and phases in the development of psychoanalysis. Br. J. med. Psychol. 45, 133-142.
Sandler, J., Dare, C. & Holder, A. (1973). The Patient and the Analyst: the Basis of the Psychoanalytic
Process. London: Allen & Unwin.
Sandler, J., Dare, C. & Holder, A. (1974). Frames of reference in psychoanalytic psychology. VIII The
topographical frame of reference: transference as an illustration of the functioning of the mental apparatus. Br.
J. med. Psychol. 47, 43-51
Sandler, J., Holder, A. & Dare, C. (1973a). Frames of reference in psychoanalytic psychology. V. The
topographical frame of reference: the organization of the mental apparatus. Br. J. med. Psychol. 46, 29-36.
Sandler, J., Holder, A. & Dare, C. (1973b) Frames of reference in psychoanalytic psychology VI. The
topographical frame of reference: the Unconscious. Br. J. med. Psychol. 46, 37-43.
Sandler, J., Holder, A. &Dare, C. (1973c). Frames of reference in psychoanalytic psychology. VII. The
topographical frame of reference: the Preconscious and the Conscious. Br. J. med. Psychol. 46,143—153.

X. Narcissism and object-love in the second phase of psychoanalysis

The second phase of psychoanalysis lasted from 1897 to the publication of The
Ego and the Id (Freud, 1923; see Sandler, Dare & Holder, 1972). The topographical

66
model of the mental apparatus was first put forward by Freud in The Interpretation of
Dreams (1900) but underwent considerable modification during the second phase.
These modifications were forced on Freud by his clinical experience, and a radical
change in his theoretical model became inevitable. The factors prompting the change to
the structural model in 1923 will be discussed in the next paper in this series.
In previous papers (Sandler, Dare & Holder, 1974; Sandler, Holder & Dare, 1973
a, b, c, 1975) we have amalgamated the salient points of the various versions of the
topographical model within what we have called the topographical frame of reference.
Certain significant psychoanalytic concepts were introduced during the course of the
second phase and these were not adequately encompassed by the different forms of the
topographical model as presented by Freud, nor have they been appropiately taken into
account in the composite topographical frame of reference as presented in this series of
papers. Perhaps the most important of these are the concepts of narcissism and object-
love. This paper gives a schematic account of narcissism and object-love in the second
phase of psychoanalysis only. It is important to note that after the second phase the
concept of narcissism was more fully incorporated into Freud’s model of mental
functioning, although it also became infinitely more complex. In recent years there has
been a resurgence of interest in the topic of narcissism, both from the point of view of
psychopathology and treatment (see Joffe & Sandler, 1967; Kohut, 1971; Kernberg,
1975). However, we believe that it is of value to distinguish clearly the relevant
formulations of the second phase from those which came later.
During the second phase Freud developed the theory of the instinctual drives,
first seen as the pressure of a sexual (libidinal) energy which sought ‘discharge’ in some
form of physical or mental activity. The concepts of drive energic source, aim, object and
pressure put forward in the second phase have been discussed previously, as has the
concept of energic investment or cathexis (Sandler et al. 1973b). To love someone was
conceived of theoretically as to cathect the ‘object’ with libidinal energy. In this context
the term ‘object’ included the perceptual ‘presentation’ (or ‘representation’) which arose
from the real external object (perception was regarded as normally being, after a certain
age, a much more veridical reflection of ‘external reality than it would be regarded
today). Even though Freud spoke of the cathexis of the object (e.g. the mother) he
always took the view that the investment of energy was in the percept, image or in the
memories of the object. In what follows, it should be assumed that the idea of cathexis
of an object implies the cathexis of some form of mental representation of the object.
Althoug the idea of the energic cathexis of the object with libido had existed from
the beginning of the second phase, the idea of the subject himself being similarly
cathected with libido was not put forward explicitly as ‘narcissism’ until Freud’s famous
paper On narcissism: an introduction (1914), although it was adumbrated as early as
1910 in a footnote added to a later edition of Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality
(1905) and elsewhere (Freud, 1911, 1913). While the ‘Narcissism’ paper is rich and
rewarding to read, we shall only make use of certain aspects of it for our purposes, as
well as drawing on other writings of Freud, and again we shall attempt to simplify
matters as much as possible.
Early in the second phase the instinctual drives were regarded as entirely sexual
in nature, being composed of drive components which were developmentally linked with
different erotogenic areas of the body (so-called part instincts, partial drives, component
instincts, etc.). Aggression was seen as an ego-drive (‘ego instinct’) functioning in the
service of self-preservation. It is of particular interest the term ‘ego’ was not used in the
sense in which it was to be employed in the structural model of the third phase, but
had a variety of meanings, including consciousness, as well as being a reference to the
subject himself. In this paper we shall use the term self rather than ego in those
contests where Freud used the term ‘ego’ to contrast the subject on the one hand with
the object on the other.
At this point we can put forward the following simple formulation. Libidinal
cathexis of the object is object-love and libidinal cathexis of the self is narcissism. Here

67
the self is regarded as paralleling the object in the individual’s mind. To put it another
way: love of another is object-love, while love of oneself is narcissism (according to the
formulations of the second phase).
Freud often appeared to make the assumption that the individual had a fixed
quantity of libido at his disposal. The more libido invested in the object, the less in the
self, and vice versa. Libidinal cathexis could be transferred from self to object and from
object to self. ‘The more the one is employed, the more the other becomes depleted’
(Freud, 1914). This is seen in its most extreme form in the state of being in love, in
which it is postulated that there is an almost complete investment of libido in the
object, with a corresponding depletion of libidinal cathexis of the self. 68 In contrast,
certain pathological states (e.g. melancholia and paranoia) were regarded as involving a
far-reaching withdrawal of libido from (decathexis of) objects and a heightened
investment (hypercathexis) of the self. In sleep or illness an increased libidinal cathexis
of the self and withdrawal of libido from objects is postulated. The distinction implied in
the contrast between object-cathexis and self-cathexis (or ‘narcissistic’ cathexis) in the
second phase did not imply that the libido involved was qualitatively different but rather
that its location differed.69
Freud distinguished between primary and secondary narcissism, and an
understanding of this distinction is important. In our view the delineation of the
differences between primary and secondary narcissism, and between narcissism and
object-love can best be understood from a developmental point of view.

The earliest state: primary narcissism

For the purpose of this theoretical outline we can assume that narcissism exists
from the moment that the infant has a rudimentary subject awareness of himself, even
though he may not have differentiated the primitive perception of the object from
himself. This state of self-object undifferentiatedness is the state of primary
identification (perhaps better called ‘primary confusion’). In our view it would be
legitimate to assume that the confusion of perceptual aspects of the self and the object
in the state of primary identification represents a primitive undifferentiated experiential
self, and that the libidinal investment of the pleasurable aspects of this primitive self-
experience can be regarded as the beginnings of primary narcissism.70

68
Being loved by the object was thought to restore the individual’s narcissism. However, the contradiction between this
formulation and the idea of the distribution of a fixed quantity of libido between self and object was never satisfactorily
resolved (Joffe & Sandler, 1967).
69
However, even in 1914 Freud was moving towards the idea that the transformation of object-libido into
narcissistic libido was normally accompanied by a change in the aim of the drive, a change in the direction
of desexualization.
70
This state exists well before object-love comes into existence. The gaining of sensual pleasure through
instinctual activity is first regarded as occurring via auto-erotic activities (by which Freud did not mean
self-stimulation, but rather all direct gratification via the erotogenic zones - in the beginning, predominantly
the mouth and lips). He remarked (1915): ‘Originally, at the very beginning of mental life, the ego [self] is
cathected with instincts and is to some extent capable of satisfying them on itself. We call this condition
‘narcissism’ and this way of obtaining satisfaction ‘auto-erotic’. At this time the external world is not
cathected with interest (in a general sense) and is indifferent for purposes of satisfaction. During this
period, therefore, the ego-subject [self] coincides with what is pleasurable and the external world with what
is indifferent (or possibly unpleasurable)...’. However, it is clear that Freud was often confused about the
relation between narcissism and auto-erotism, having also postulated a ‘phase’ of auto-erotism preceding
that of primary narcissism (1914). This latter statement has occupied psychoanalytic scholars for many
years, but in our view the problem is academic and of no clinical relevance.

68
 Fig. 1. The ‘primary undifferentiated pleasure-self’ or undifferentiated self/object. The
dotted lines indicate the beginnings of a self-boundary in the mind of the infant. The shading
represents libidinal cathexis. This is the state of ‘primary narcissism’.

With the child’s development, ‘boundaries’ between ‘self’ and ‘non-self’ begin to
be constructed (so-called ‘ego boundaries’), but even when this process is well advanced
the infant, according to Freud, attempts to maintain all that is pleasurable as part of
the self (or, more precisley, the representation of the self), and to allocate all that is
unpleasurable or painful to the ‘non-self’ or ‘not-me’. During the phase of primary
narcissism the object is delineated as part of the ‘non-self’ and distinguished from the
self. But at first the object is not cathected with libido, all libidinal energy being
invested in the self (the ‘purified pleasure-self’).
Fig. 1. represents the state of affairs when the boundary between ‘self’ and ‘non-
self’ has not yet been firmly constructed, and the state of ‘primary identification’
obtains. Fig. 2 indicates the continuation of the state of primary narcissism after the
boundary between self and object has been constructed. In this state the self can be
viewed as the first ‘love-object’, but the object as such is regarded as having little or no
libidinal cathexis.

Object love and residual narcissism

Object love is conceived of as the investment of the object with libido. The
libidinal cathexis of the object is regarded as coming about as a consequence of a
displacement of some of the libidinal investment of the self, now extended to include the
object. Freud linked this process to an extension of a pseudopodium by an amoeba. He
put it (1914): ‘...we form the idea of there being an original libidinal cathexis of the ego
[self], from which some is later given off to objects, but which fundamentally persists
and is related to the object-cathexis much as the body of an amoeba is related to the
pseudopodia which it puts out’.

69
Fig.2. The boundary between the mental representations of ‘self’ and ‘not-self’ has been
established. The ‘not-self’ includes the object, but only the ‘self’ is cathected with libido (shaded
area). The object is only of interest in its function as a vehicle for need-satisfaction.

Fig. 3. The extension of libidinal investment from self to object. The arrow indicates the movement
of libido from self to object. A state of libidinal cathexis of the object now coexists with the
residual narcissistic cathexis of the self.

With the development of object-love, a state of residual narcissistic cathexis of

the self persists and coexists with object-love. This is seen as the normal state of affairs,
in which a ‘hydraulic balance’ between residual narcissism and object-love occurs. In
certain states (such as falling in love) the object is hypercathected with libido and the
self depleted. In other conditions (e.g. paranoia) the greater part of the libido is
withdrawn from the objects and reinvested in the self. 71 Object-love is seen as gradually
following on the discovery by the child that the object is found to be a source of
pleasure and that the infant is dependent on the object for the satisfaction of its needs.
The ‘cupboard-love’ which creates the path to object-love is referred to as the anaclictic
or ‘attachment’ type of relationship. Freud (1940) summed up his view of the processes
71
It is recognized by many nowadays that the situation described here, involving a relatively simple notion of the
distribution of libido between self and object, is grossly inadequate and clinically misleading. For example, the
schizophrenic may give the impression to the observer that he has withdrawn libido from the objects in the external
world, but they may in fact be intensely cathected in his fantasy life. Similarly, the theory, as presented here, does not
answer the question of why it is that when one is in love, and feels loved in return, the self does not at all appear to be
depleted of libidinal cathexis.

70
involved as follows:
A child’s first erotic object is the mother’s breast that nourishes it; love has its
origin in attachment to the satisfied need for nourishment. There is no doubt that, to
begin with, the child does not distinguish between the breast and its own body; when
the breast has to be separated from the body and shifted to the ‘outside’ because the
child so often finds it absent, it carries with it as an ‘object’ a part of the original
narcissistic libidinal cathexis. This first object is later completed into the person of the
child’s mother, who not only nourishes it, but also looks after it and thus arouses in it a
number of other physical sensations, pleasurable and unpleasurable. By her care of the
child’s body she becomes its first seducer. In this two relations lies the root of a
mother’s importance, unique, without parallel, established unalterably for a whole
lifetime as the first and strongest love-object and as the prototype of all later love-
relations - for both sexes.

Fig. 4. Secondary narcissism deriving from withdrawal of libido from the object, augmenting the
residual narcissistic cathexis of the self. The arrow shows the hypothetical direction of flow of
libido.

Secondary narcissism and residual object-love

Secondary narcissism refers to that quantity of libidinal cathexis of the self
which results from the withdrawal of a certain amount of libido from the object. It is
secondary only in that it is a reinvestment of libido in the self, as opposed to primary
narcissism and the residual narcissism that accompanies object-love. It augments the
existing residual libidinal cathexis of the self, just as further deposits into a bank
account increase the total balance in the account. It should be noted that libido
invested in an object is never completely withdrawn; some libidinal object-cathexis
always remains.72
Freud saw secondary narcissism as occurring:

72
This applies after so-called ‘libidinal object-constancy’ has been reached (Burgner & Edgcumbe, 1972). In the very
young infant the image of the object may be cathected only when the appropriate instinctual drive (associated with a
bodily need) is aroused.

71
 (a) In certain pathological conditions, in which there is a withdrawal of love from
the objects (Fig. 4).
(b) In certain normal states such as sleep, physical illness, etc. (Fig. 4).
(c) In states of disappointment with the object, as a consequence of mourning for
a ‘lost’ object, etc. (Fig.4).

Fig. 5. An illustration of the means by which the individual’s narcissism (self-cathexis) is

increased by the mechanism of secondary identification. An admired, valued or esteemed aspect
of the representation of the object is intensely cathected with libido, but this libido can be
transferred to the self-representation by copying the ‘valued’ attribute of the object via
identification. As a consequence, a part of the self is then regarded as being identical with the
‘valued’ aspect of the object, and the libidinal cathexis of the self is increased, while the cathexis
of the object is lessened. This is a common method of obtaining secondary narcissism. It should
be noted that there is no ‘loss’ of the image of the object (or an aspect of it) in this case but rather
a withdrawal of libido from object to self because the self has been altered by identification so
that it is now admired and valued as the object was.

(d) As a normal developmental process, occurring via secondary identification

with an object (Fig. 5). In contrast to the state of primary identification, where there is
no clear subjective boundary between self and object, in secondary identification there
is a definite boundary or subjective distinction between the self and the object, and the
identification occurs as a consequence of the modification of the self so that it
resembles the object in some important characteristic. Some of the libidinal cathexis of
the admired or loved characteristic of the object is then transferred to the self as a
consequence of this identification; and
(e) When the person lives up to his ideals (as embodied in his ‘ego ideal’ or ideal
self – see below).

A NOTE ON THE EGO IDEAL

The concept of the ego ideal (a precursor of the superego concept of the
structural model of the later third phase) put forward by Freud in his ‘Narcissism’ paper
(1914). It should perhaps more properly be called the ‘self ideal’ or ‘ideal self’ (Sandler,
Holder & Meers, 1963). The development of the individual’s ideal was seen to be
connected with the disruption of his early primary narcissistic state. Freud remarked
(1914) that: ‘The development of the ego consists in a departure from primary narcissism
and gives rise to a vigorous attempt to recover that state. This departure is brought about
by means of the displacement of libido on to an ego ideal imposed from without; and
satisfaction is brought about from fulfilling this ideal.’
He also commented (1914): ‘The subject’s narcissism makes its appearance
displaced on to this ideal ego, which, like the infantile ego, finds itself possessed of every
perfection there is of value... what he projects before him as his ideal is the substitute for

72
the lost narcissism of his childhood in which he was his own ideal.’
In 1914 Freud distinguished between the ideal and the conscience, the ‘self-
criticizing faculty’, although the two concepts were later to be amalgamated (Freud,
1923). The model created by the child for its ideal is based, in the first instance, on the
parents and their values and expectations.
It is clear that although Freud first contrasted narcissism with object-love, he
also conceived of libido as being capable of being invested in an ‘ideal self’ (‘ego ideal’) as
opposed to the child’s own current self-representation. Presumably the cathexis of the
ideal was thought to follow a path of development somewhat similar to that followed by
object-love. Living up to a libidinally cathected ideal would then produce the same
replenishment of narcissism as identifying with an admired or loved object.

TYPES OF OBJECT CHOICE

Based on his formulations on narcissism and object-love, Freud put forward the
idea of two main paths towards the ultimate choice of an object, paths which also
influence the type of object-relationship reached by the individual (1914).
(1) The narcissistic path. One may love according to (a) the image of oneself, (b)
the image of what one was, (c) the image of what one would like to be, or (d) the image
of someone who was once part of oneself (e.g. one’s child).
(2) The anaclictic (attachment) path. One may love (a) the woman who has fed one
or (b) the man who has protected one.
Freud has pointed out that these pathways also apply to the ‘succession of
substitutes’ who take the place of the original objects, and also indicated that
narcissistic object-choice is important in the development of such conditions as
homosexuality. Naturally, ‘mixed’ types would be more frequently found than the ‘pure’
types listed above.
The theory of narcissism and object-love formulated during the second phase
was later to undergo profound changes, but subsequent formulations have their
essential roots in the relatively simplistic energic concepts of the second phase as
described in this paper. In our view, later work on the concept of narcissism and on
such conditions as ‘narcissistic character disorder’ cannot be fully understood without
taking Freud’s first exposition of narcissism and object-love into account.

Acknowledgements
This work was conducted at the Institute of Psychiatry, University of London, in
collaboration with the Index Project, The Hampstead Child-Therapy Clinic, London, and was
supported by a grant from the Foundation for Research in Psychoanalysis, Beverly Hills,
California. The Hampstead Child-Therapy Clinic is an organization which is at present
maintained by the Field Foundation Inc., New York; the Foundation for Research in
Psychoanalysis, Beverly Hills, California; the Freud Centenary Fund, London; the Anna Freud
Foundation, New York; the Grant Foundation, Inc., New York; the Andrew Mellon Foundation; the
National Institute for Mental Health, Bethesda; the New-Land Foundation, New York; and a
number of private supporters.

References
Burgner, M. & Edgcumbe, R. (1972). Some problems in the conceptualization of early object
relationships: the concept of object constancy. Psychoanal. Study Child 27, 315-333,
Freud, S. (1900). The interpretation of dreams. S. E. 4-5
Freud, S. (1905). Three essays on the theory of sexuality. S.E. 7.
Freud, S. (1911). Psycho-analytic notes on an auto-biographical account of a case of paranoia
(dementia paranoides). S.E. 12.
Freud, S. (1913).Totem and taboo. S.E. 13.
Freud, S. (1914). On narcissism: an introduction. S.E.14
Freud, S. (1915). Instincts and their vicissitudes. S.E. 14
Freud, S. (1923). The ego and the id. S.E. 19.
Freud, S. (1940). An outline of psycho-analysis. S.E. 23
Joffe, W. G. & Sandler, J. (1967). Some conceptual problems involved in the consideration of disorders
of narcissism. J. Child Psychother. 2, 56-66

73
 Kernberg, O. (1975). Borderline Conditions and Pathological Narcissism. New York: Jason Aronson.
Kohut, H. (1971). The Analysis of the Self. London: Hogarth.
Sandler, J., Dare, C. & Holder A. (1972). Frames of reference in psychoanalytic psychology. II, The
historical context and phases in the development of psychoanalysis. Br. J. med. Psychol. 43, 133-142.
Sandler, J., Dare, C. & Holder, A. (1974). Frames of reference in psychoanalytic psychology. VIII. The
topographical frame of reference: transference as an illustration of the functioning of the mental apparatus . Br.
J. med. Psychol. 47, 43-51.
Sandler, J., Holder, A. & Dare, C. (1973a). Frames of reference in psychoanalytic psychology. V. The
topographical frame of reference: the organization of the mental apparatus. Br. J. med. Psychol. 46, 29-36.
Sandler, J., Holder, A. & Dare, C. (1973b). Frames of reference in psychoanalytic psychology. VI. The
topographical frame of reference: the Unconscious. Br. J. med. Psychol. 46, 37-43.
Sandler, J., Holder, A. &Dare, C. (1973c). Frames of reference in psychoanalytic psychology. VII. The
topographical frame of reference: the Preconscious and the Conscious. Br. J. med. Psychol. 46,143—153.
Sandler, J., Holder, A. &Dare, C. (1973c). Frames of reference in psychoanalytic psychology. IX.
Dream processes in the topographical frame of reference. Br. J. med. Psychol. 48,161—174.
Sandler, J., Holder, A. & Meers, D. (1963). The ego ideal and the ideal self. Psychoanal. Study Child
18, 139-158

XI. Limitations of the topographical model

We remarked in an earlier paper (Sandler, Dare & Holder, 1972) that ‘Towards
the end of the second phase certain inconsistencies began to be apparent in Freud’s
view of the mental apparatus and its functioning’ These inconsistencies, which rendered
the use of the topographical model difficult and limited its clinical application, will be
discussed below under several different headings They have been devised with the
advantages of the hindsight afforded by the development of psychoanalysis over more
than half a century since the structural model was introduced (Freud, 1923). While
limitations of the topographical model are pointed out in this paper, we would like to
underline the fact that the model was not completely replaced by the structural model
of the third phase of psychoanalysis. It has continued to be applied where appropriate
or convenient.

Difficulties in the use and meaning of the term ‘unconscious’

During the second phase the different meanings attached to the term
‘unconscious’ had become an increasing source of confusion and imprecision. In a
descriptive sense the term referred to a quality of a mental state or a mental content,
indicating nothing more than that a particular mental ‘event’ or process existed or
occurred outside conscious awareness. Used in the sense of a system, the ‘Unconscious’
indicated a specific topographical location within the hypothetical mental apparatus,
with events, contents and processes being assigned to it. The term was also used in a
dynamic sense to refer to mental contents which were being forcefully prevented from
reaching consciousness or motor expression, i.e. which were actively held in check by
counterforces. Initially, the contents of the system Unconscious could be taken to
include everything which was dynamically unconscious, the active ‘censorship’ being
located only between the Preconscious and Unconscious systems. However, with the
introduction of the concept of a ‘second censorship’ (Freud, 1915a) between the
Preconscious and Conscious systems, it became evident that many preconscious
derivatives of the Unconscious could also be regarded as being dynamically
unconscious, while not being located in the system Unconscious.
The dynamic quality of contents of the Preconscious is evident in the examples
quoted in previous papers on transference and dreams (Sandler, Dare & Holder, 1974;
Sandler, Holder & Dare, 1975).
Freud’s clinical experience had led him inevitably to the notion of the second
censorship, and to the attribution of dynamically unconscious properties to some of the
contents of the Preconscious. But this was not consistent with the view that the chief
characteristic of the contents of the Preconscious was that, although descriptively
unconscious, they were ‘latent’ and capable of reaching consciousness by the process of

74
turning attention towards them (investing with ‘attention cathexis’).
Freud became increasingly aware that the criteria of consciousness and
unconsciousness were unsatisfactory as a basis for a psychoanalytic theory of mental
functioning, for the differentiation of distinct systems and organizations within the
mental apparatus and for differentiating pathological states. The systems of the
topographical model were originally formulated in accordance with their hypothetical
relation to consciousness, with the Preconscious being closer to consciousness than the
Unconscious. The distinction between the Unconscious and the Preconscious was
regarded as corresponding to differences in their organization and modes of functioning,
the Unconscious being characterized by primary process functioning, the Preconscious
by secondary process. In the latter part of the second phase Freud was moving towards
a greater degree of ‘structuralization’ of mental systems and processes. Certain
functional aspects of the mental apparatus which would previously have been
attributed to the Unconscious system were coming to be regarded as being ‘deeply
unconscious’, and this played havoc with the idea of the orderly layering of the mental
systems according to their relation to consciousness. Thus, with the introduction of the
structural model in the third phase, Freud commented (1923) that ‘...we land in endless
obscurities and difficulties if we keep to our habitual forms of expression and try, for
instance, to derive neuroses from a conflict between the conscious and the
unconscious’.

The problem of locating the repressive forces

From a clinical and technical point of view the phenomenon of resistance as an
expression of repressive and defensive forces operating within the mental apparatus
became increasingly important during the second phase. Surface manifestations of
psychological processes were understood as compromise formations between instinctual
forces (in the form of drive-cathected wishes) originating within the system Unconscious
on one side, and opposing forces on the other. It was clear that these opposing forces
operated outside conscious knowledge, and had thus to be included in the general
category of dynamically unconscious contents. But such forces were clearly very
different in nature from, and operating in a direction opposite to the instinctual forces
in the system Unconscious. There seemed to be no alternative but to allocate the
repressive forces to the Preconscious system, but this led to the paradox that
preconscious content included forces which were not simply ‘latent’ and accessible to
consciousness if attention were to be directed to them.
An attempt to solve this difficulty is evident in Freud’s introduction of the
concept of the ‘second censorship’, and we have included this concept in our exposition
of the ‘topographical frame of reference’ in previous papers in this series. But although
we have included the second censorship as well as the first as functions of the system
Preconscious in our construction of the topographical frame of reference, the issue of
the precise location of the two censorships was never properly clarified by Freud. What
is clear is that, as the second phase progressed, the problem of seeing the Preconscious
as a highly organized system, with some contents inaccessible to consciousness, while
using the term ‘preconscious’ to refer to contents which were capable of entering
consciousness freely, led to major theoretical difficulties. As the range, complexity and
specificity of the repressive and defensive forces increased during the second phase, the
need to change the way in which they were understood became urgent.

The problem of moral values, conscience and ideals

Freud’s clinical experiences during the second phase led him to realize the need
for the recognition of what he said could only be described as an ‘unconscious sense of
guilt’ (1923). This was especially manifest in the context of the forceful operation of the
individual’s ideals, values and conscience. There was no place within the topographical
model to accommodate such phenomena in a satisfactory way. Ideals, values and
conscience always bear the mark of the person’s development in relation to external

75
reality and are organized under the influence of secondary process. However, aspects of
these phenomena are often deeply unconscious in a dynamic sense, whereas other
aspects are readily available to consciousness. Thus they have qualities of organization,
have power to harness instinctual drive impulses, are only partly related to instinctual
drives and cannot be assigned to any of the topographical systems. It became clear that
they had to be regarded as an expression of a way of functioning which could not be
accommodated within the topographical theory.

The problem of internalization

During the second phase of psychoanalysis the main clinical and theoretical
emphasis was on the vicissitudes of instinctual drive wishes and their derivatives. It
was, of course, recognized that some of the contents of the system Preconscious and
Conscious reflected the interaction of the developing individual with the real (‘external’)
world, but the influence of the external world was not explored in a systematic way.
Freud did, in fact, examine these issues in a number of papers in the second phase, in
particular in his discussion of the reality principle (1911), i. e. the need to take reality
into account in order to modify the pleasure principle, to avoid danger, and to postpone
instinctual gratification in the light of the real possibilities of gratification (as known to
the individual). Further, he explored the role of the child’s ideals (1914), which he saw
as being profoundly influenced by parental and moral standards. The way in which the
external world was ‘taken into’ the mind (‘internalization’) was discussed with particular
reference to the processes of (and following) bereavement, normal mourning and
pathological depression (1917). He pointed out that, in the process of mourning, the
bereaved person may deal with the loss of a libidinally cathected love object by a
process of internalization, taking on some of the characteristics of the dead love object
by the process of identification. Further, in the state of melancholia, the bereaved
person may cope with his coexisting ambivalent feelings of love and (unconscious)hate
towards the lost object by identifying with the object and consequently directing the
reproaches (unconsciously felt towards the object) towards himself in the form of
pathological self-reproaches. Even earlier in the second phase Freud had described the
process of identification and had shown that the use of this mechanism could cause a
‘taking over’ of aspects of important people in the individual’s life, and that this was of
substantial clinical significance.
It is clear that the cathected image of the (present or past) love object can be
regarded as being active in one or more of all three of the ‘systems’ of the topographical
model. The ‘internalization’ of the object by means of identification was, however, a
process which could not be accounted for or adequately understood by means of the
concept of memory traces.

The problem of narcissism and the self

When Freud came to attempt to formulate his understanding of psychotic
phenomena (partly following the clinical interests of Abraham, Bleuler and Jung) he
leaned heavily on his second phase formulations of the libido theory. As described
previously {Sandler, Holder & Dare, 1976) he made use of the idea of a ‘hydraulic’
balance of libidinal investment between the ego (self) and object (other) in postulating
that, in ‘autistic’ states which develop in the course of a psychosis, there is a complete
withdrawal of any libidinal investment in other people. (Bleuler used the term ‘autistic’
in order to describe the withdrawn state of some adult psychotic patients. It is not used
here to refer to the condition described as ‘infantile autism’.) The libido withdrawn from
the (representations of) objects was considered to be reinvested in the representation of
the person himself or, as Freud put it, in the person’s own ego. As we have shown in the
previous paper in this series (Sandler et al. 1976), this was conceptualized as self-love
or narcissism (hence Freud’s description of psychoses as ‘narcissistic neuroses’).
Phenomena such as megalomania and delusions of grandeur were seen as a
consequence of an excessive narcissistic libidinal investment. Conversely, the

76
selflessness and self-depreciation of some lovers was thought to be due to the bulk of
the person’s libido being invested in the representation of the loved person. (This view of
the libidinal basis of the unhappy feeling of unrequited love seems to have been based
on a highly simplified and peculiarly Victorian version of romantic love.)
When Freud first formulated these ideas in a relatively systematic way (1914) he
did not deal with the problems of accommodating such phenomena within the second
phase topographical model of the mind. The fact that the integration of his views on
narcissism and object-love greatly strained the topographic theory contributed to the
need to formulate a revised model of the mind. In retrospect it seems inevitable that
Freud was forced to move to a theory which allowed for an organized structure within
the mental apparatus which could contain a ‘reservoir of libido’ together with
representations of the person himself and of his objects.

The problem of anxiety

During the first two phases of psychoanalysis, anxiety was conceptualized as a
‘derivative’ of repressed libido, represented, particularly in the case of neurotic anxiety,
the way in which the repressed libidinal energy became manifest. It was thought that
this energy underwent a ‘transformation’ so that it was experienced not as a sexual
wish but as the unpleasant feeling of anxiety, often without any ideational content
being attached to it (‘free-floating anxiety’). This so-called ‘first theory’ of anxiety was
developed during the first phase of psychoanalysis and was originally put in terms of
the transformation of affects rather than of libidinal energy. In the first phase it was
possible to contrast neurotic anxiety with ‘realistic’ anxiety (fear). Fear was seen as a
response to ‘external’ danger situations (especially of being overwhelmed or attacked),
whereas neurotic anxiety was seen as a response to a high level of internal affective
excitation connected with unacceptable sexual emotions which threatened to overwhelm
the individual. The first phase theory of anxiety was retained during the second phase
of psychoanalysis, with the difference that it was repressed libidinal energy which was
regarded as being transformed into anxiety rather than quantities of affect.
The first theory of anxiety gave rise to problems about the topographical location
of and conditions for such transformation and its relation to the topographical systems.
In particular, it is difficult to conceive of why such transformed libido should be
experienced in ways which are so similar to the perception of external danger. Towards
the end of the second phase it became clear that the idea of anxiety as the affective
transformation of a libidinal drive impulse fitted very uneasily into the topographical
model.
With the introduction of the structural theory (1923) it became possible to
conceive of an agency which could respond with anxiety to both external and internal
danger situations (1926). These responses might or might not reach consciousness.
Just as unconscious guilt was difficult to conceive of in terms of the topographical
model, so was the phenomenon of unconscious anxiety. Freud’s ‘second theory of
anxiety’, in which anxiety was regarded as having the function of a signal, will be
discussed in a later paper, and it is sufficient to point out here that the problem of
conceptualizing anxiety was one of the factors which contributed to the increasing
unwieldiness of the topographical model.

The problem of aggression and the self-preservative drives

In the first part of the second phase Freud regarded the drive components of the
system Unconscious as sexual in nature. Although he recognized the existence of
aggressive impulses, these were thought to be essentially part of the sexual drive,
manifested, for example, in sadism. Indeed, sexuality in general was thought to contain
elements of aggressiveness. Slightly later Freud postulated the existence of ‘self-
preservative drives’ which could be in conflict with libidinal wishes. The self-
preservative drives were also referred to as ‘ego drives’ [the term ‘ego’ referred to
‘consciousness’ and ‘self’ (in contrast to ‘object’), and should not be confused with the

77
‘ego’ of the structural model of the third phase], and represented the repressive forces
which protected consciousness from being overwhelmed.
By 1915 Freud’s difficulties with the concept of aggression prompted him to
allocate it to the self-preservative or ‘ego’ drives, and to see it as being non-libidinal in
nature (1915b). The problem of the degree to which aggression could be considered as
‘reactive’ to frustration or irritation on the one hand, and as a ‘drive’ on the other,
together with further difficulties posed by the drive theory, then led Freud to give
aggression equal status with libido. In 1920 he placed the sexual and self-preservative
drives under the heading of ‘life instinct’ and aggression (now no longer regarded as
stemming from the self-preservative drives) as the externally directed ‘death instinct’
(Freud, 1920). (While most psychoanalysts accepted the ‘dual drive’ theory, fewer were
convinced of the value of Freud’s ‘speculative excursion’ into the theory of the death
instinct. Freud himself held the view that the notion of an aggressive drive was
sufficient for clinical purposes, and it is probable that his changes of view about the
nature of aggression were to some degree a consequence of his experience of the First
World War.) Clearly the role of aggression in mental life was never satisfactorily dealt
with within the topographical model. Nor could the part played by the self-preservative
drives be comfortably placed within it. All of this added to the problems faced by Freud
in regard to his model of the mental apparatus, culminating in its drastic revision in
1923.

Acknowledgements
This work was conducted at the Institute of Psychiatry, University of London, in
collaboration with the Index Project, The Hampstead Child-Therapy Clinic, London, and
was supported by a grant from the Foundation for Research in Psychoanalysis, Beverly
Hills, California. The Hampstead Child-Therapy Clinic is an organization which is at
present maintained by the Field Foundation Inc., New York; the Foundation for
Research in Psychoanalysis, Beverly Hills, California; the Freud Centenary Fund,
London; the Anna Freud Foundation, New York; the Grant Foundation, Inc., New York;
the Andrew Mellon Foundation; the National Institute for Mental Health, Bethesda; the
New-Land Foundation, New York; and a number of private supporters.

References
Freud, S. (1911). Formulations on the two principles of mental functioning. S.E. 12.
Freud, S. (1914). On narcissism: an introduction. S.E. 14
Freud, S. (1915a). The unconscious. S.E. 14.
Freud, S. (1915b). Instincts and their vicissitudes. S.E. 14
Freud, S. (1917). Mourning and melancholia. S.E. 14
Freud, S. (1920). Beyond the pleasure principle. S.E. 18
Freud,S. (1923). The ego and the id. S.E. 19.
Freud, S. (1926). Inhibitions, symptoms and anxiety. S.E. 20
Sandler, J., Dare, C. & Holder, A. (1972). Frame of reference in psychoanalytic Psychology. II The
historical context and phases in the development of psychoanalysis. Br. J. med. Psychol. 45, 133-142.
Sandler, J., Dare, C. & Holder, A. (1974). Frames of reference in psychoanalytic psychology. VIII. The
topographical frame of reference: transference as an illustration of the functioning of the mental apparatus . Br.
J. med. Psychol. 47, 43-51.
Sandler, J, Holder, A. & Dare, C. (1975). Frames of reference in psychoanalytic psychology. IX.
Dream processes in the topographical frame of reference. Br. J. med. Psychol. 48, 161-174.
Sandler, J., Holder. A. & Dare. C. (1976). Frames of reference in psychoanalytic psychology. X.
Narcissism and object-love in the second phase of psychoanalysis. Br. J. med. Psvchol. 49, 267-274.

XII. The characteristic of the structural frame of reference 73

73
A group of 11 papers under the general title ‘Frames of reference in psychoanalytic psychology’ appeared in this Journal between
1972 and 1978. The roman XII in the title indicates that this present article forms a coherent whole with the earlier series. At the same

78
 The influence of clinical psychoanalytic findings on Freud’s thinking during the
second phase (1897-1923) was profound, and the need to make appropriate theoretical
adjustment, particularly during the latter half of the phase, placed an increasing degree
of strain on the topographical model. In previous papers in this series (Sandler et al.,
1972, 1978) we described some of the problems which led Freud, in The Ego and the Id
(1923), to propose the structural theory with its division of the mind into id, ego and
superego. The present paper introduces the structural frame of reference by way of a
discussion of the changes embodied in Freud’s structural model. Subsequent papers
will deal with each of the major third-phase ‘structures’ and with the interaction
between them. One of the most important changes embodied in the structural theory
was a shift of emphasis away from the ‘movement from the depths to the surface’
perspective characteristic of the second phase. Although Freud was always very much
aware of the importance of current and past adaptation to external reality (increasingly
so after the introduction of the reality principle in Formulations on the two principles of
mental functioning in 1911), psychoanalysis in the second phase saw behaviour and
subjective experience as being predominantly surface derivatives of instinctual wishes
arising from the system Unconscious, forcing their way towards overt expression. In the
second phase, partly as a response to Freud’s discovery that the traumatic memories of
his hysterical patients were frequently none other than wish-fulfilling sexual daydreams
(see Sandler et al., 1972), psychoanalysis placed much greater emphasis on adaptation
to impulses arising from within the individual than to stimuli impinging from the
external world, and the mental apparatus tended to be seen as an instrument which
had developed primarily to harness the drives. This perspective was amended in the
third phase, and the relative weight given to external reality was much increased.
Moreover, while the structural model of the mind was equally concerned with the
vicissitudes of sexual and aggressive drives, it placed more emphasis than before on the
functions and structures that delay and alter drive expression. In spite of the major
changes introduced by the structural model, the basic psychoanalytic assumptions
remained unchanged (Sandler et al., 1972). Freud was again concerned with the
organization of a mental apparatus, although its new structural entities were not
primarily based upon the relationship of mental processes and contents to the quality of
consciousness or unconsciousness, as had been the case with the Unconscious,
Preconscious and Conscious systems of the topographical model. The assumption of
unconscious mental functioning remained basic to psychoanalytic thinking, and the
distinction between conscious and unconscious processes was as crucial as ever. The
same held true of the assumptions of psychological determinism, psychological
adaptation and of psychoanalysis as a general psychology.74
Although the third phase, initiated by the formal introduction of the structural
theory, dates from 1923, it is clear that the idea of the structural organization of the
mental apparatus was implicit in Freud’s previous writings. The concept of ‘ego’ in spite
of several changes of meaning, had always implied some sort of organization, and in the
last part of the second phase Freud had begun to speak of ‘the structure of the ego’
(1914, 1916-17, 1919), while in the two monographs, Beyond the Pleasure Principle
(1920) and Group Psychology (1921), Freud certainly perceived the ego as a complicated
structure within the mental apparatus. The superego is adumbrated in the description
of that part of the ego ‘which rages against itself’ in melancholia (1917), and the id
concept follows naturally from some of the radical revisions which Freud was making in
time, this and each of the other papers is also complete in itself.
74
Freud probably intended the structural model to replace the topographical, but in later years often formulated his thought in term of
the topographical theory. Gill (1963) states ‘that in their basic conception these two sets of system are not as different as is sometimes
assumed’, although Arlow & Brenner (1964) maintain that ‘the topographical and the structural theories are neither compatible nor
interchangeable’. They go on to say that ‘it is actually disadvantageous to use the terms of the two theories interchangeably and to
speak of the id, the ego and the superego in one breath and of the unconscious, the preconscious. and the conscious in the next’. It is
our view that the topographical and the structural models overlap in many respects, and that one cannot entirely replace the other. In
the present state of knowledge and theory formation, there is no single all-embracing psychoanalytic model of the mind.

79
instinctual drive theory, particularly in relation to aggression (see 1917, 1920). But
although the theory of aggression presented problems throughout the second phase,
until finally it was given parity with the sexual drives in the so-called ‘dual instinct
theory’ (Freud, 1920), the structural model is described by Freud in such a way that the
particular content of the drives is not of central importance. The structural theory did
not need the new drive theory for its coherence and descriptive value to be maintained.
After The Ego and the Id, further additions to the theory were- made, particularly in
Inhibitions Symptoms and Anxiety (1926) in which a completely revised theory of anxiety
was proposed. In what follows we present a schematized and simplified account of the
structural model of the third phase of psychoanalysis in the form of a structural frame
of reference, as was done for the affect-trauma theory of the first phase (Sandler et al.,
1972) and the various versions of the topographical model of the second phase (Sandler
et al., 1973a,b,c). In the structural frame of reference inconsistencies and variations will
be eliminated in order to present a ‘rounded-out’ picture which can be used in order to
comprehend the writings and contributions of the third phase. It should be noted that
the removal of certain contradictions and ambiguities may eliminate some of the
subtleties and complexities of the structural model as used by Freud at various points
between 1923 and the end of his life in 1939.

The structural frame of reference

The mental apparatus is regarded as being entirely composed of the three
structures id, ego and superego, each having very special properties and functions.
‘Structures’ in this context refers to large-scale enduring (but to some extent modifiable)
organizations, to what Gill (1963) has called macrostructures. For our present purposes
we can take a view of the relation between the structural and topographical frames of
reference as given in Fig. 1.

Figure 1. A representation of the relation between the topographical and structural frames of reference.

The relationship between id, ego, superego and the external world is shown
schematically in Fig. 2, and some of the characteristics of the structural frame of

80
reference are listed as follows.
(1) The id is regarded as the reservoir of the instinctual drives and wishes
(particularly childhood, sexual and aggressive wishes) as well as of repressed contents
held back by the ego by the application of counter-forces. Id contents are entirely
unconscious, and are only knowable through their derivatives (dreams, slips of the
tongue, transference, etc.).
(2) The superego is the organized psychic representative of the parental authority
figures of childhood, distorted in particular by the projection of the child's aggression. It
functions as the individual’s conscience and is also the vehicle for ideals derived from
the parents and, through them, from society. The superego is regarded as a mental
agency equal in status to the other two psychic institutions, and is responsible for the
unconscious sense of guilt which is regarded as playing an extremely important role in
both normal and pathological mental functioning. While a great part of the superego is
profoundly unconscious, aspects of it are in the form of conscious standards and ideals.
(3) The ego is seen as a structure which develops largely to cope with the
demands and restrictions of external reality and to mediate between the drives, reality
and, later, the superego. Faced with conflicting demands from the id, external world
and superego, the ego makes use of its problem-solving and synthetic capacities, as well
as of the mechanisms of defence to deal with these demands and conflicts. As Freud
(1933) put it:
“We are warned by a proverb against serving two masters at the same time. The
poor ego has things even worse: it serves three masters and does what it can to bring
their claims and demands into harmony with one another... Its three tyrannical masters
are the external world, the superego and the id.”
(4) The ego has control of the organs of motility and perception, and
consciousness is no longer regarded as the property of a surface system as in the
topographical model, but rather as a sense-organ of the ego. The id and superego thus
have access to consciousness via the ego. The adjective ‘unconscious’ is now used
entirely descriptively, and ‘preconscious’ refers, as it had originally done, to contents
which are unconscious but which can gain access to consciousness without hindrance
if attention is directed towards them.75
(5) The external world is given greater status than before. It can be considered to
be one of the ‘agencies’ of the structural model, with the same status as the superego
and the id, and which makes ‘demands’ on the ego.
(6) Conflict is seen as occurring between id and ego, id and superego, id and
external world, superego and ego, and superego and external world, rather than
between the systems Unconscious and Preconscious, or between the Preconscious and
the Conscious.
(7) The ego is ‘powered’ by energies largely derived from-Freud says (1933)
‘borrowed from’-the id, from which it has been differentiated during the course of the
person’s development.
(8) ‘Censorship’ is no longer seen as the erection of a barrier on the border
between two systems, but as a function of the ego which evaluates mental contents,
especially unconscious wishes and their derivatives, in terms of criteria of acceptability,
or in terms of the threats of danger they arouse. It employs the mechanisms of defence
to repress or modify unacceptable unconscious impulses or demands from any source
(including the external world).

75
The concept ‘the unconscious’ is not part of the structural model. However, the term has continued to be used either in the sense of
the system Unconscious of the topographical model (i.e. with more or less the same meaning as the id of the structural model) or,
more commonly, to refer to everything which is, in the descriptive sense, unconscious (i.e. to include preconscious contents and
mental mechanisms such as defences). Freud added to the confusion by such statements as (1923): ‘We recognize that the Ucs. does
not coincide with the repressed: it is still true that all that is repressed is Ucs., but not all that is Ucs. is repressed. A part of the ego, too
- and Heaven knows how important a part - may be Ucs., undoubtedly is Ucs. And this Ucs. belonging to the ego is not latent like the
Pcs.: for if it were, it could not be activated without becoming Cs.t and the process of making it conscious would not encounter such
great difficulties’.

81
 Figure 2. The relationship between the ego and the three ‘agencies’ with which it has to deal
(consciousness is regarded as a sense-organ of the ego).

(9) The parts played by anxiety, guilt and the pain of loss gain very much more
emphasis in this new frame of reference. The revised theory of anxiety no longer treats
anxiety as a transformation of undischarged libidinal drive energy, but sees it rather as
a signal of danger arising within the ego. The anxiety signal is an indication to the ego
that the unconscious instinctual drive impulse heralds a threat, in particular the threat
of castration or of loss of love, but ultimately the threat to the ego of being traumatically
overwhelmed, of being helpless in the face of overpowering and uncontrollable
excitation.76 It is appropriate to end this introduction to the structural frame of
reference with one of Freud’s comments in the New Introductory Lectures (1933);
“And here is another warning... In thinking of this division of the personality into
an ego, a super-ego and an id, you will not, of course, have pictured sharp frontiers like
the artificial ones drawn in political geography. We cannot do justice to the
characteristics of the mind by linear outlines like those in a drawing or in primitive
painting, but rather by areas of colour melting into one another as they are presented
by modern artists. After making the separation we must allow what we have separated
to merge together once more. You must not judge too harshly a first attempt at giving a
pictorial representation of something so intangible as psychical processes.”

References
Arlow, J. A. & Brenner, C. (1964). Psychoanalytic Concepts and the Structural Theory. New York:International
Universities Press.
Freud, S. (1911). Formulations on the two principles of mental functioning. S.E., vol. XII. London: Hogarth
Press.
Freud, S. (1914). On narcissism: An introduction. S.E., vol. XIV. London: Hogarth Press. Freud, S. (1915).
Instincts and their vicissitudes. S.E., vol. XIV. London: Hogarth Press. Freud, S. (1916-17). Introductory
lectures on psychoanalysis. S.E., vols XV-XVI. London: Hogarth Press.
Freud, S. (1917). Mourning and melancholia. S.E., vol. XIV. London: Hogarth Press. Freud. S. (1919). A child is
being beaten. S.E., vol. XVII. London: Hogarth Press.
Freud, S. (1920). Beyond the pleasure principle. S.E., vol. XVIII. London: Hogarth Press. Freud, S. (1921).
Group psychology and the analysis of the ego. S.E., vol. XVIII. London: Hogarth Press.
Freud, S. (1923). The ego and the id. S.E., vol. XIX. London: Hogarth Press.
Freud, S. (1926). Inhibitions, symptoms and anxiety. S.E., vol. XX, London: Hogarth Press.
Freud, S. (1933). New introductory lectures on psychoanalysis. S.E.. vol. XXII. London: Hogarth Press.

76
It is interesting to note that affect, which had been so important in the first phase, again became of importance in the third phase,
although the roles of affect are vastly different in the affect-trauma and structural models. It is also of interest that although Freud and
subsequent psychoanalytic authors have had much difficulty with the notion of unconscious affect, Freud’s introduction of the idea of
an unconscious sense of guilt (1923) and of anxiety as a signal to the ego (1926) opened the way for psychoanalysis to accept the
concept of unconscious feelings.

82
Gill, M. M. (1963). Topography and Systems in Psychoanalytic Theory. New York: International Universities
Press.
Sandler, J., Dare, C. & Holder, A. (1972). Frames of reference in psychoanalytic psychology: II. The historical
context and phases in the development of psychoanalysis. British Journal of Medical Psychology, 45, 133-142.
Sandler, J., Dare, C. & Holder, A. (1978). Frames of reference in psychoanalytic psychology: XI Limitations of
the topographical model. British Journal of Medical Psychology, 51, 61-65.
Sandler, J., Holder, A. & Dare, C. (1972). Frames of reference in psychoanalytic psychology: IV. The affect-
trauma frame of reference. British Journal of Medical Psychology, 45, 265-272.
Sandler, J., Holder, A. & Dare, C. (1973a). Frames of reference in psychoanalytic psychology: V. The
topographical frame of reference: The organization of the mental apparatus. British Journal of Medical
Psychology, 46, 29-36.
Sandler, J., Holder, A. & Dare, C. (1973b). Frames of reference in psychoanalytic psychology: VI. The
topographical frame of reference: The Unconscious. British Journal of Medical Psychology, 46, 37-43.
Sandler, J., Holder, A. & Dare, C. (1973c). Frames of reference in psychoanalytic psychology: VII. The
topographical frame of reference: The Preconscious and the Conscious. British Journal of Medical Psychology,
46, 143-153.

XIII. The structural frame of reference: the Id

The Id is a consequence of the introduction of Ego and Superego. The Id is (more

or less) the same as the Unconscious: contents and internal characteristics are
identical. The Id is in a dynamic interaction with Ego and Superego.

Definition of the Id: The structure which is immediately responsive to

somatically derived instinctual drive demands and it functions to give the physiological
drives psychological representation.

Contents of the Id:

- Psychological representations of physiological drives (as they are initially
created by the mental apparatus).
- Mental contents that have been repressed (have lost their compatabi1ity with
Ego and Superego demands).
- The wishes are derived from sexual and aggressive impulses. The way the
impulses are expressed change with development (component drives).

Processes in the Id:

Characterized by:
- Displacements.
- Condensations.
- Timelessness.
- Disregard of reality.
- Absence of contradiction.
- Absence of negation.
- Pleasure-unpleasure principle.

Functions of the Id:

- The production of a great number of drive derivatives which are capable of
giving expression to the multiplicity of instinctual drive needs.
- Any one impulse can give rise to a large number of derivatives and conversely,
a number of different drive demands may be represented by one and the same Id-
content.
- So comes a vast repertoire of drive expressions into existence: in behaviour, in
personal relationships, creative and recreational activities, scientific work, forms of
societies.
- The gaining of satisfaction of instinctual drive demands.
- Ego and Superego scan or inspect every drive derivative (trial action in
thought) to assess the possible effect of allowing the impulse to impinge on the other

83
structures of the mind.
- The signal of the outcome is thought to occur in the form of an affect: anxiety
is thought to have a special place in signalling the likelihood of an unacceptable
conflict.

Development:
- The Id as a structure is considered to be least subject to maturational and
developmental change.
Its contents are seen to undergo constant modifications throughout life.
- In the progression from orality to adult genitality, the Id has to respond to a
variety of specific drive demands by the elaboration of differing mental contents.
- On the other hand, the variety of experiences in the course of life introduces
ever changing objects and means of satisfaction of the drive impulses into the Id.
- As development proceeds, the Id therefore has an increasing capability of
responding to new external situations by presentation to the Ego and Superego of an
infinitely variable number of potentially suitable derivatives.
- The infantile mental apparatus is conceptualized as consisting of un
‘undifferentiated Ego-Id’.
- As development proceeds the Ego becomes increasingly capable of controlling
and delaying instinctual drive demands.
- The ego acquires a vast range of functions (perceptual, conceptual, cognitive,
symbolic, defensive, somatic) which it can use in its endeavor to integrate the Id-
demands with those of reality and the Superego.

XIV. The structural frame of reference: the Ego

The Ego had a lot of meanings by Freud:

- The idea of the self.
- The idea of a class of instincts.
- The idea of a controlling/observing part of the personality.
Now it means:
 a structure (in analytic theoretical thinking);
 self-esteem (in colloquial speech).

Definition of the Ego:

- The Ego has to be defined by its functions and by the processes that operate within it,
not by its contents.
- The contents are derived from the Id and from the external world.
- The ego is capable of changing instinctual drive energy by processes of neutralization
and sublimation.

Contents of the Ego:

- Derivatives of instinctual wishes.
- Representations derived from experience (memories).
- The products of its own activity on the contents derived from either the Id or the
external world: imaginative thinking, phantasying, problem solving).

Processes in the Ego:

Integration of the demands made upon the Ego from the side of the Id with the
demands of the external world as represented within the Ego. I.e. producing something
of a synthesis between the various contents or demands.

Functions of the Ego:

The overall function,
- can be regarded as being the preservation of the self, both biologically and

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psychologically;
- by integrating Id-impulses, Superego demands, and external stimuli
(adaptation to the world), - using a range of functions.
- Language and thinking.
- Secondary process.
- Trial action in thought.
- i.e. affects as signals as guides in the choise of action (signal anxiety).
- Reality testing.
- Via the Ego external reality finds psychological representation.
- Reality testing enables the Ego to make differentiations between psychic
reality and material reality.
- Attention.
- The Ego is carrying out a number of tasks simultaneously both at a
conscious and descriptively unconscious level.
- Attention can concern itself with contents which are descriptively
unconscious - i.e. preconscious problem solving.
- The function of attention is to raise certain contents to the level of
conscious awareness.
- Synthesis.
- Stimuli from Id, Superego, and external world.
- Relate the present to the past experiences.
- For example: compromise formation/symptom formation .
- Affects.
- The Ego has the function of producing and observing affects.
- The Ego has an anticipatory function and is capable of giving signals of
warning that a particular course of action might lead to unpleasant
consequences. These warning signals are in the form of affect.
Freud first draws attention to the affect of anxiety as a signal. However the Ego
is capable of using a whole range of affects for signal purposes. For example guilt when
a line of action gives rise to Superego disapproval. Shame when there is a conf1ict with
ideals.
- Affects fulfill a fundamental regulating function within the Ego.
- Defense.
- Defenses are processes which help in bringing about harmonization
and synthesis.
- Defenses are not pathological, but absolutely essential for the
maintenance of normality and they serve adaptation.
- A whole range of modifications of an unacceptable demand is possible:
excluding from processing (repression/reaction formation); reversal of aspects
(negation/turning passive into active); ascribing to the outside world
(projection/externalization); separating aspects
(isolation/splitting/displacement).
- Symptom formation .
- Symptom formation is a possible resolution of psychological conflict is
fundamenta1 to psychoanalytic psychology.
- The necessity for the formation of symptoms is a sign that there is a
relative weakness of the Ego in relation to a particular combination of drive
pressure, Superego injunctions and external demands•
- Dreaming.
- The task of preserving sleep is seen as a function of the Ego: dream
processes are a help.
- The whole process of dreamwork, i.e. of secondary elaboration and
disguise is to be seen as an ego function.
- Control of apparatuses.
- Control of motility (including sexual activities).

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 - Utilisation of conscious thinking. - Integration of all percentual inputs.
- The creation of psychological structures.
- Aspects of Ego functioning are discernable from the very beginning of
neonatal life.
- The utilization of these ego functions gradually leads to the building up
of psychological structures which serve important adaptive purposes; perceptual
habits (discerning figure from ground, developing a scanning order) and memory
traces.
- In the course of development these structures become increasingly
more elaborate, complex and persisting.
- Psychoanalytic psychology has been mainly concerned with
hypothesizing macro-structures such as the self, identity, the internal
representation of persons, ideals.
- All of these structures within the Ego have been referred to as forming
part of the representational world.
- A very important macro-structure which is thought of as being
created by the Ego is the Superego.
- Conflicts can occur between the major structures (intersystemic
conflicts) but also between smaller scale structures (intrasystemic
conflicts), i.e. clash of differing ideals, confusion between alternative
identities, conflict aroused by archaic and contemporary representations
of real people.
- This has led the way towards conceptualisation of
microstructures and microconf1icts in the understanding and
interpretation of clinical material. Memory traces which are
microstructures par excellence are the building blocks of larger
structures.
- The sense of space, time and causality.
- As part of secondary process functioning reality testing and the
building up of a representational world, the Ego develops first a sense of
space, later of time and eventually of causality.
- Autonomy, sublimation, work and creativity.
- Aspects of ego functioning capable of being relatively free from
instinctual drive pressure have primary autonomy: from the beginning of
live.
- In the course of development many Ego activities are thought to
be capable to achieve a high degree of freedom from Id-derived qualities
and can therefore be regarded as autonomous (secondary autonomy).
- Work and sublimation are considered to be possible because to
the relative autonomy of the Ego functions involved in them from the
underlying id-impulses [dentistry (oral sadism),
gynecology/psychoanalysis (sexual curiosity)].
- The capacity of the Ego to utilise a range of drive derivatives,
without danger of immediate enactment is important for creative
activities. Kris has drawn attention to the Egos ability to tolerate
‘regressed’ elements as being necessary for creativity and originality.
- Self preservation.
- A superordinate function of the Ego: all other Ego functions are in the
service of self-preservation. Intake of food, processes of elimination, anticipation
of dangers, avoiding of pain, preserving bodily integrity, competence and
mastery of the externa1 world.

Development of the Ego:

- In order to fulfill its adaptive, self preservative function the Ego must be
responsive to change and be capable of developing.

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 - In treatment Ego changes are the most easily monitored, as well as
being the most likely to occur.
- Constitutional factors determine the rate, direction and sequence of Ego
development, but are inf1uenced by the particular environment.
- The Ego's capacity to inhibit, delay, deflect or change the direction of
id-impulses becomes organised into the defense mechanisms.
- There are more primitive and more sophisticated types of defence
mechanisms. Primitive are denia1, projection, repression: all attempts to
eliminate conscious awareness of unpleasureable content. More sophisticated
are: reaction formation, displacement, identification: they allow for the tolerance
of unpleausurable contents as part of the self.
- Individual differences in personality can be understood in Ego terms
rather than in terms of the Id.
- The Ego is assumed in the course of development to achieve a relative
autonomy from both drive demands and demands from the external world:
habits.

The role of the parents in Ego development.

- During infancy the mother functions with respect to the baby as the
adult Ego functions in relation to the Self.
- The mother remains an auxiliary Ego for a long time.
- The role of the externa1 person as an auxiliary Ego is increasingly
replaced by internalized representations of aspects of people.

XV. The structural frame of reference: the Superego

Introduction:
Introduction of Ego-ideal and conscience in 1914: i.e. precursors of
Superego. Term represents persisting influence of past object related experience
on present mental functioning and behavior. These ‘structures’ do not possess
the hallmarks of drive-derived functioning.
- Introduction of superego means a growing interests in objects (of
instinctual drives) and in the person as a whole.
- Paper on narcissism (1914). Term used in two different contexts:
balance of libido distribution between the self and objects and self-esteem
regulation (superego system makes this more understandable).
- The structura1 frame links the evolving drive organization with the
development of the systems of the mental apparatus.
- The Superego can be understood as an adaptive structure enabling
some resolution of the oedipal phase of libidina1 development (socializing).
Definition:
- The Superego is thought to have precursors in the Ego-functioning of
the preoedipal child and therefore is, by definition initially part of the Ego.
- The Superego cannot be defined in term of processes that occur within
it, for no interaction between its contents is postulated.
Modification of the Superego and its contents is possible only through
the psychological work of the Ego (Id and Ego are thought to have a high level of
spontaneous activity operating upon their contents).
- The Superego is defined, as a structure which monitors processes
occurring outside itself it acts as a filter in sorting out mental contents (moral
values, ideals, codes of behavior, attitudes).
- The Superego functions along the whole continuum from profoundly
unconscious to readily conscious awareness (like the Ego).

Contents of the Superego:

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 - Its contents are not thought to be abstract codes, but are envisaged as
representations of aspects of the interaction between self and others
(internalized object relations); thus memory traces of other people making
demands, requirements or imposing prohibitions.

Origin of the contents:

- The little child has to learn to obey rules and injunctions.
- Gradually internalization finds place.
- Formation of the Superego as a structure is thought to occur at a time
when the child is attempting to master the conflicts and anxieties of the
Oedipus-complex (previously internalized ideals and prohibitions are brought
together and enmeshed with contents specific to the triangular relationship).
- No longer the fear of punishment or retaliation determines the behavior,
now the love for the parents causes identification with their interna1ized
representations.
- Rules and regulations which emanate from an external source with
which there is no positive affective link are internalized within the Ego and do
not become part of Superego contents.
- Superego contents can arise from all stages of live.
- The contents of the Superego will be coloured by distortions: perception
of the external world will be distorted in accordance with phase-specific
instinctual urges and phantasies.

Functions of the Superego:

- It functions to preserve the individuals socialized self without the need
for constant external constraints and restrictions.
- It functions to preserve cultural and social values and rules, primarily
insofar as they were understood, interpreted and accepted by the parents.
- In experiencing discrepancies between its own aims and the demands
made by the Superego, the Ego generate affects which are associated with the
working of conscience. These are principally the affects of guilt and remorse.
- The superego requirements are often more severe than the parents
overt demands.

Development of the Superego:

- The essential prerequisite for the possible deve1opment of a Superego is
the individuals Ego's capacity to built up representations of rea1ity which can
influence the functioning of the mental apparatus. This capacity is a function of
Ego maturation and development, leading to the phenomena of, firstly,
perceptua1 and, later, emotional object constancy.
- It is useful to conceptualise early factors as having long-term
consequences, including effects on Superego-development severa1 years later,
without these factors themselves being laid down as structura1 superego
precursors. The balance between frustration and gratification affects the level of
basic trust or pessimism and optimism: this feeling state will mould the quality
of subsequent superego development.
- We assume that, initially, such drive inhibitions are in the service of
avoidance of frustration: they lay down patterns of activity within the Ego which
form nuclei which may be utilized in the building of the Superego. The content
of these patterns is essentially determined by internal and external factors.
- The other major psychic mechanism which contributes to the formation
of superego precursors, i.e. the gradual building up of mental representations of
objects and experiences of interactions of objects and experiences of interactions
with them and processes of identification with aspects of these internal
representations.

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 - Many of these identifications are based on verbal instructions rather
than on the model of the objects behavior: i. e. the child learns to do what the
parents say rather than what they do.
Superego Formation and the resolution of the Oedipus-complex:
- The child’s general outlook on the world is shaped by both
constitutional and experiential factors and these will determine the more general
quality of the Superego, for example the extent to which it is persecutory or
approving.
- The specific qualities and the most characteristic contents of the
Superego are thought to derive from the vicissitudes of the relationship with the
parents during the phalic-oedipal phase (part realistic, part phantasy; aggressive
and libidinal).
- The Superego functions to integrate and control the multiplicity of
apparently incompatible strivings of the oedipa1 phase.
Modifications can come about in interaction with external objects which
are internalized.

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