ABSTRACT
The attempt at interpreting the origins of consciousness and the ego will therefore be done using a metapsychological metaphoric store that will avoid any reference to neurology. This chapter shows how the choice of metaphors during a theoretical task is of considerable importance. It explains how the content of the neurological metaphors used by Sigmund Freud in his early works was important, both for the scientific field and because of the risk of being reduced in the future to reductionist monism. Before dealing with the issue of cognitive monism and dualism, the chapter describes the value of a dualistic approach. It provides a detailed description of Freud's and Glover's hypotheses on the origins of the ego in an attempt to highlight some of their more salient characteristics. The analogy between the scaffolding and metapsychological theory has its limits-and these were limits that Freud never wanted to exceed.
