ABSTRACT
The history of psychoanalysis has been discussed by Sigmund Freud, by his main biographer, Ernest Jones, and by a variety of authors from one point of view or another. Rapaport, in discussing what has come to be known as psychoanalytic "ego psychology", divides its development into a number of phases, and people have found it useful to adapt his phases to the consideration of Freud's theory. Clinical experience certainly shaped the theories that 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. Freud became convinced that the division between conscious and unconscious parts of the mind occurred in everyone, not only in neurotic patients. Freud also suggested that certain disturbances were a consequence of specific sexual frustrations and an abnormal sexual life. By analogy, Freud formulated his psychological views in terms of energy: its conservation, displacement, and discharge.
