Chapter Brief Summary of Papers on Metapsychology - Study Guide by Sigmund Freud

Brief Summary

Freud himself describes the intention of Papers on Metapsychology as being to provide a stable theoretical foundation for psychoanalysis. The first three of these papers (on Instincts and their Vicissitudes, Repression and The Unconscious) were published in 1915 and the last two (the Supplement to the Theory of Dreams and Mourning and Melancholia) in 1917, but all were in fact written in a period of seven weeks between March 15th and May 4th 1915. It is also important to note that seven more papers were added to the series during the following three months, but were later destroyed by Freud. In these papers, therefore Freud uses his 25 years of psychoanalytic experience to base his theoretical constructions and explore each of the above topics in more detail.