ABSTRACT
Freud's birth in 1853 preceded the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species by three years. From our present standpoint it is sometimes difficult to appreciate how profoundly the acceptance of the idea that species are transformed through time (evolve) was to change Western thought. This change in our conceptualisation of ourselves, our history and our relationship to other animals set the stage for much of what was to come in modern psychology (Weiner 1972; Gilbert 1984). Like all major shifts in meaning-making this one had been building for some time by a gradual accumulation of threads of evidence from different directions.
