PEP Web - Freud's Use of the Concept of Regression, Appendix A to Project for a Scientific Psychology 5/27/10 1:33 AM

Strachey, J. (1966). Freud's Use of the Concept of Regression, Appendix A to Project for a Scientific Psychology.

Strachey, J. (1966 ). Freud's Use of the Concept of Regression, Appendix A to Project for a Scientific Psychology. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological
Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume I ( 1886 -1899): Pre -Psycho-Analytic Publications and Unpublished Drafts , 344 -346

Freud's Use of the Concept of Regression, Appendix A to Project for a

Scientific Psychology

James Strachey
THE concept of regression, foreshadowed in the last two sections of Part I of the Project, was to play an increasingly
important part in Freud's theories.
In a footnote added in 1914 to Chapter VII (B) of The Interpretation of Dreams (Standard Ed., 5, 542), Freud
himself traced back the idea of regression to the thirteenth-century scholastic philosopher Albertus Magnus and to
Hobbes's Leviathan (1651). But he seems to have derived it more directly from Breuer's theoretical contribution to
Studies on Hysteria (Standard Ed., 2, 189), published only a few months before he himself wrote the present work.
Breuer there described the retrogressive movement of an excitation from an idea or mnemic image back to a perception
(or hallucination) in almost exactly the same way as Freud does here. Both writers used the same word rcklufig,
which is here translated retrogressive.
The actual German word Regression appeared first, so far as we know, (in a similar connection) some eighteen
months later than this in a draft sent to Fliess on May 2, 1897 (Draft L, p. 250 above). But its first publication was in The
Interpretation of Dreams (1900a), in the passage to which the footnote quoted at the beginning of this Appendix was
subsequently attached.
As time went on, the term came to be used in a variety of ways, which were at one point 1 classified by Freud as
topographical, temporal and formal.
Topographical regression is the kind introduced by Breuer and employed in the Project, and it forms the main topic
of Chapter VII (B) of The Interpretation of Dreams (1900a). It owes its name to the diagrammatic picture of the mind in
that Chapter (Standard Ed., 5, 537), which represents psychical processes as advancing from the perceptual to the
motor end of the psychical apparatus. In topographical regression, the excitation is conceived of as moving backwards
towards the perceptual end. The term is thus essentially a description of a psychological phenomenon.
Temporal regression has closer relations with clinical material. It emerges first, but without any explicit reference to
regression, in the Dora case history, which was written in

1 In a paragraph added to The Interpretation of Dreams, also in 1914: Standard Ed., 5, 548.

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1901, though only published four years later (1905e). It occurs there in connection with a discussion of perversions
(Standard Ed., 7, 50-1). What is suggested is that, if some accidental event in later life inhibits the normal development
of sexuality, the consequence may be the reappearance of the undifferentiated sexuality of childhood. 1 Freud went on
to produce for the first time a favourite analogy: A stream of water which meets with an obstacle in the river bed is
dammed up and flows back into old channels which had formerly seemed fated to run dry. The same hypothesis,
illustrated by the same analogy, appeared more than once in the Three Essays (e.g. Standard Ed., 7, 170), but again
without, in the first edition of the work, mentioning the term regression, though it occurs in several passages added in
later editions (e.g. Standard Ed., 240, added in 1915).2 This kind of regression was already recognized in the Three
Essays as playing a part not only in perversions but also in neuroses (Standard Ed., 172) and even in the normal choice
of an object at puberty (Standard Ed., 228).
It was not clearly realized at first that there are in fact two different kinds of mechanism involved in this temporal
regression. It might be a question simply of a return to an earlier libidinal object or it might be a question of a return of
the libido itself to earlier ways of functioning. Both these kinds are in fact already implicit in the discussion of the
perversions in the Three Essays, where it is plain that there may be a return both to an earlier sexual object and to an
earlier sexual aim. (This distinction is brought out most clearly in Lecture XXII of the Introductory Lectures (1916-17),
Standard Ed., 16, 341.) Just as the first of these types of temporal regression is particularly characteristic of hysteria, so
the second type is specially associated with obsessional neurosis. Examples of this connection were already given in the

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PEP Web - Freud's Use of the Concept of Regression, Appendix A to Project for a Scientific Psychology 5/27/10 1:33 AM

Rat Man case history (1909d), e.g. Standard Ed., 10, 244-5. But a full realization of its importance was arrived at only
with the establishment of the hypothesis of fixation-points3 and pregenital organizations in the development of the libido.
It was then possible to grasp the effect of frustration in causing a regression of the libido to some early fixation-point.
This was made especially clear in two papers-on Types of Onset of Neurosis (1912c), Standard Ed., 12, 232 and on
The Disposition to Obsessional Neurosis (1913i), Standard Ed., 12, 323-4. But it had already been suspected that

1This is, of course, an early hint at what was soon to be described as the polymorphously perverse disposition of children. (Cf.
Three Essays, 1905d, Standard Ed., 7, 191.)

2 Freud evidently felt some reluctance at first to extending the application of the term from its topographical to its temporal use.

3 Cf. the footnote on the term fixation, p. 125 above.

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a similar process must be in operation, too, in more severe disorders-in schizophrenia and paranoia-evidence for which
hypothesis was to be seen in the study of Schreber's autobiography (1911c), Standard Ed., 12, 62.
If we accept Freud's late definition of defence (in Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety, 1926d, Standard Ed. 20, 163)
as a general designation for all the techniques which the ego makes use of in conflicts which may lead to a neurosis,
we may perhaps regard all these examples of temporal regression as mechanisms of defence. This, however, can
scarcely be said, except in a very roundabout sense, of another clinical manifestation of regression-the transference-
which was discussed by Freud in his technical paper on The Dynamics of Transference (1912b), Standard Ed., 12,
102-3. This particular form of temporal regression was the subject of some further interesting remarks in the History of
the Psycho-Analytic Movement (1914d), Standard Ed. 14, 10-11.
Freud's third kind of regression-formal regression-described by him as occurring where primitive methods of
expression and representation take the place of the usual ones (The Interpretation of Dreams, Standard Ed. 5, 548)-has
been discussed by him mainly in Lectures X, XI and XIII of the Introductory Lectures, in connection with dreams,
symbolism and linguistics.
Freud's own classifications of these various kinds of regression were not uniform. In the earliest of them, in the Five
Lectures (1910a), Standard Ed., 11, 49, he described temporal and formal regression. In the paragraph included in
1914 in The Interpretation of Dreams, Standard Ed., 5, 548, he added topographical regression. In his
metapsychological paper on dreams (1917d), written in 1915, he spoke (Standard Ed., 14, 222-3) of two sorts of
temporal regression, one affecting the development of the ego and the other that of the libido;; and a few pages later
(Standard Ed., 227) he referred to a topographical regression and distinguished it from the previously mentioned
temporal or developmental regression. Lastly, in Lecture XIII of the Introductory Lectures (1916-1917), Standard Ed. 15,
211, he differentiated a formal from a material regression.
In considering these slight variations of terminology, it is as well to recall Freud's final comment in the 1914
paragraph in The Interpretation of Dreams (Standard Ed., 5, 548) which we have quoted more than once: All these
three kinds of regression are, however, one at bottom and occur together as a rule; for what is older in time is more
primitive in form and in psychical topography lies nearer to the perceptual end.

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Article Citation [Who Cited This?]

Strachey, J. (1966). Freud's Use of the Concept of Regression, Appendix A to Project for a Scientific Psychology. The Standard
Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume I ( 1886-1899): Pre-Psycho-Analytic Publications and
Unpublished Drafts, 344-346
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