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A Phylogenetic Fantasy: Overview of the Transference Neuroses

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For greater details buy the book and see Ritvo's article listed below! This is a piece of writing that was discovered after his death.

This book contains a certain kind of profoudness that has always been rare -- the ability to create large sophisticated explanatory theories that view a domain as-a-whole.

Here, I make some general remarks ... . What most people seem to miss in this astonishing revelations of Freud's is his keen awareness of methodology and his capacity to theorize globally about some general features of our psyche as it emerged in interaction with pre-historic environment.

BUT, as it turns out, his knowledge of environmental history was false and incomplete -- he simply could not have had detailed access to that portion of scientific knowlege that we now seemingly possess.

The idea that these two large systems ( psycho-social system & the environmental system) could be related and his considering the nature of this mapping represents an innovative, competent piece of work consonat with modern Systems Theory.

From these mappings, he is able to draw a set of general conclusions: about the rewiring of the psycho as it passed through a significant (as he thought) environmental phase, and deep changes resultd intrapsychically and extrapsychically.in response to a challenge (specifically the Ice Age and the danger of group extinction). Some of the topics that find explanation under this aspect are: intrasychic reaction, repression, development of the patriachical system, dementia praecox, paranoia .... ).




RITVO, L. V. (1965). Darwin as the source of Freud's Neo-Lamarckianism. J. Amer. Psychoanal. Assn. 13:499-517.