ABSTRACT
For S. Freud, the mental processes at the heart of the way the mind functions provide information about the state of the mental material—in the physicalist meaning of the word. When referring to mental processes, Freud uses the word “process” whenever he wishes to refer to movements, or to the dynamics at work within a function or its expression. The chapter considers all of Freud’s practice and what he passed on to the early generations of psychoanalysts, which see that the implicit paradigm of the analytic process is the analysis of transference neurosis and the deferred examination of how it proceeds within the transference arena. It emphasises the conflict between the drives and the ego, insisting on the economic perspective, which is that the conflicts arise from the force of the drives in comparison to the force of the ego.
