ABSTRACT
Theory has become an exercise in mystification rather than a way to increase our understanding of a problem of concern. Theories are tools designed for a specific purpose at a particular time and place. In the case of psychoanalysis, the construction of the first theoretical tools for understanding the human inner world as revealed by the analytic hour was dominated by a particular theorist, Sigmund Freud. In his early attempts at theory, Freud took as his starting point the idea that a quantity of neural excitation got detached from an original experience and went astray in the nervous system. As the first theorist of the analytic hour he, for complex reasons, found it more congenial to deal with repression rather than dissociated states. One possibility would be to try to synthesize the conflicting views about Freud's motivations in the period of his first theories, 1896–1900. Freud was an ambitious scientist with an exceptional interest in theory.
