ABSTRACT
The lengthy phase in the development of psychoanalysis that followed the publication of The Interpretation of Dreams was dominated by the idea that unconscious childhood sexual wishes, which aroused conflict and were, as a result, defended against, found surface expression in a variety of disguises. If the sexual drives involved had been allowed to find direct surface expression, then the outcome would have been sexual activity that was regarded as perverse. The work of interpretation was largely a work of translation, and in this translation both individual and social behaviour and attitudes tended to be seen as the expression of instinctual drive forces that had become involved in unconscious conflict. The id, in contrast, represented the intrinsically unconscious life and death instinctual drives that press forward for gratification and for the discharge of their energies according to the pleasure principle and through appropriate action on their objects.
