ABSTRACT
The aims of this work in which people try to evaluate Freud's basic psychoanalytic concepts in their historical context, is precisely to avoid such pitfalls and misrepresentations. This first draft is referred to as the 'personal draft' and is circulated among members some time before it is due for discussion. The group's method has been to assign to each of its members one pre-selected concept at a time. This member's task then is to extract all the relevant material from Freud's published papers, books, correspondence, Minutes of the Meetings of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society and to prepare a written summary of a given concept for discussion. Freud's hypotheses are interrelated in a systematic way: there is a hierarchy of hypothesis in their relevance, their closeness to observation, their degree of verification. Thus certain formulations become more meaningful, are suddenly understood in a new light, assume a different significance.
