Int J Psychoanal 2006;87:519–36

Constructing the truth

From ‘Confusion of tongues’ to ‘Constructions in analysis’1

JACQUES PRESS
62, Quai Gustave Ador, CH-1207 Genève, Switzerland — mjpress@vtxnet.ch
(Final version accepted 22 March 2005)

The author hypothesizes that the papers Freud wrote in the period 1934–9 constitute
a final turning point in his work resulting from an attempt to work through, by means
of self-analysis, early traumatic elements reactivated by the conditions of his life in
the 1930s. The author emphasizes that the ups and downs of Freud’s relationship
with Sándor Ferenczi and the mourning which followed his death in 1933 played an
important role in this traumatic situation. He suggests that through these last works,
Freud pursued a posthumous dialogue with Ferenczi. This working through led Freud,
in Moses and monotheism, to an ultimate revision of his theory of trauma, a revision
which the author examines in full, in the light of the works of the Egyptologist, Jan
Assmann. A new analytical paradigm emerges: that of constructions in analysis
developed in the article of the same name. The activity of construction appears as
an alternative to the mutual analysis proposed by Ferenczi and is closely bound up
with the notion of historical truth. In psychoanalysis, it would mean constructing a
historical truth whose anchoring in the material truth of the past is essential, though
it should not be confused with it.

Keywords: S. Freud, S. Ferenczi, J. Assmann, Moses, trauma, self-analysis,

construction, material and historical truth

Throughout his life, Freud was engaged in intense self-analytic activity, which was
the source of his theoretical reflection. If the irrigation by this source is clear in a
work such as The interpretation of dreams (Freud, 1900), it is no less present in a
more subterranean way throughout his work. This is particularly true of the works
of the years 1936–9 (1934–9 if one includes the first version, never published, of
Moses and monotheism).
This axis of reflection has been developed in particular by Grubrich-Simitis
(1997), who sees Moses and monotheism (Freud, 1939)—the central text of this
period—as an attempt at self-analysis, over 35 years after The interpretation of
dreams. She makes the point that anti-Semitic persecution, illness and aging drove
Freud during these years into a process of questioning that touched both on his
origins and his identity—a questioning which is reflected in his correspondence, in
particular with the writer Arnold Zweig (E. L. Freud, 1970). Freud thus undertook
the task of self-analysis with the support of Zweig in the guise of a second Fliess.
In the eyes of Grubrich-Simitis (1997), the repetitions and formal imperfections of

Translated by Andrew Weller.

1

©2006 Institute of Psychoanalysis

520 JACQUES PRESS

Freud (1939) stem from the fact that it was a day-dream (Freud, 1908), written up
under the psychological pressure of the final Vienna years, which allowed Freud to
elaborate in a veiled manner the difficulties that this pressure reactivated, i.e. the
early traumas of his personal history.
Grubrich-Simitis notes that it is in the course of the exchanges with Zweig
on anti-Semitism, on the question of the Jewish and/or German roots of the two
interlocutors, on emigration (Zweig had emigrated to Palestine), that Moses and
monotheism is mentioned for the first time. She also stresses the fact that Freud
appears to be possessed by his subject. Obsessive preoccupation and the convic-
tion of the historical truth of his construction, which forces him to grapple with
a major identificatory figure, are traits that seem characteristic of his struggle in
the face of a traumatic situation. I would add that the almost total halt in Freud’s
publication between May 1933, the date of Ferenczi’s death, and January 1936,
as well as the non-publication of the first version of Moses, also bear witness to
this crisis.
In this article, I pursue three lines of reflection. I first argue that one cannot
fully understand the importance of this traumatic situation and the significance of
the last writings that emerged from it without taking into account the central role
played by the ups and downs of Freud’s relationship with Sándor Ferenczi (Balint,
1968; Haynal, 1988, 2001; Bokanowski et al., 1995), and then the work of mourning
following the latter’s death. The effects of this mourning certainly reside in the
predominant position Ferenczi occupied for the founder of psychoanalysis, and in
the psychoanalytic movement. But the essential point lies in the fact that the disap-
pearance of his fellow traveller contributed powerfully to reactivating in Freud an
early traumatic constellation—a constellation that he tried to work through and to
express theoretically in his writings of this period.
The second approach is concerned with the way this effort led to what I
consider a final turning point in Freud’s work. By entering a dialogue more or
less openly before and after death with his friend, who was also a pupil and a
rebel, Freud was led to undertake a re-elaboration of the theories of trauma. My
hypothesis is that in the theses defended by Freud, particularly in Moses and
monotheism, one gets a glimpse of the outlines of a new version of trauma and
of its effects, which can be linked up in several ways with Ferenczi’s descrip-
tions. In the course of my reflection, I shall be referring to the works of the great
German Egyptologist Assmann (1997) with a view to showing their relevance for
this debate on trauma.
Thirdly, I show that Freud’s working through resulted in the development of
a new concept, constructions in analysis, which Freud developed into an article
(1937b) and elaborated in the final paragraphs of Freud Moses and monotheism.
In each of these texts, Freud emphasizes the importance of the core of historical
truth contained in religion as in delusion and, consequently, on the attention that the
analyst must give to this core. In so doing, he was trying, in my opinion, to elaborate
the impasses connected with Ferenczi’s attempts in the direction of mutual analysis,
and identified an alternative to this. But he also raised the question of the nature of
this historical truth, which I discuss in my conclusion.
 CONSTRUCTING THE TRUTH 521

The relation with Ferenczi

Shadow of the object and object of the shadow: The weight of early traumas
From both the correspondence between Freud and Ferenczi during the ‘painful
years’ (Falzeder and Brabant, 2000) and the Clinical diary kept by Ferenczi from
January to October 1932 (Dupont, 1988), there emerges a tragic dimension bearing
witness to the struggle of both interlocutors with their destiny: on the one hand,
Ferenczi and his insatiable need for love and, on the other, Freud and his vain quest
for a man—a younger brother, a son—in whom he could trust totally. When, on
22 May 1933, Ferenczi died from the consequences of pernicious anaemia, Freud
wrote an obituary that is deeply moving due to its understated character. It begins,
however, with an anecdote which, in this context sounds somewhat surprising, and
almost shocking, revealing in fact an internal movement which could be expressed
a little crudely by: ‘whew, once again, it’s I who has survived’:
The Sultan had his horoscope cast by two wise men. ‘Thy lot is happy, master!’ said one
of them. ‘It is written in the stars that thou shalt see all thy kinsmen die before thee.’ This
prophet was executed. ‘Thy lot is happy!’ said the other too, ‘for I read in the stars that thou
shalt outlive all thy kinsmen.’ This one was richly rewarded. Both had given expression to
the fulfilment of the same wish. (1933, p. 227)

Between these two seers, the difference is at once minute and infinite. The first
emphasizes mourning yet to come. But, in doing so, he reveals crudely the essence
of a way of thinking which could be expressed by the phrase: ‘if you are to live, the
others—and particularly those who are closest to you—must die’. Unfortunate is the
one through whom this movement returns, through whom the scandal occurs! The
other seer, for his part, exalts the survivor, while saying nothing about the precondi-
tion of his survival. It is due to this exaltation—and the silence which underlies
it—that he is ‘richly rewarded’. In other words, between the second seer and the
Sultan there is established a common set of identifications through denial (Fain,
1982; Kaës et al., 1993) which is the basis of the quality of the survivor and marks
the presence of something unspoken of transgenerational value.
I would like to dwell briefly on this quality of survivor and on the effect of elation
that it exerted on Freud at this moment of mourning. This seems to me to have been
a constant feature of his mind, but one that was not recognized as such by him and
which formed the core of what may, without exaggeration, be called his neurosis of
destiny. It is written in the stars that his closest companions must abandon him or
die before him: Ferenczi, the ‘great vizier and secret paladin’, Abraham, and before
them Rank, Jung and Fliess, just to mention the main ones.
There is thus reason to think that something much more fundamental is
at play here, something much more primal than the fulfilment of an oedipal
wish, something that adds to the latter a traumatic charge and gives it the form
of destiny: destiny escapes us by definition, it ‘happens to us’, we cannot do
anything about it. Now it is a striking feature that can be found throughout
Freud’s correspondence. Whether it is the conflict with Jung, the ‘on again–off
again’ relationship with Rank, or the correspondence of the painful years with
Ferenczi, one theme returns in an obsessive way: ‘it’s not my fault’.
522 JACQUES PRESS

To quote just one example, on 18 September 1931, Freud wrote to Ferenczi,

There is no doubt that … you are distancing yourself from me more and more. I say, and hope
not: alienating. I accept it as fate—like so many other things; I know that I am not personally
to blame for it; in recent times I also preferred no one else to you. (Falzeder and Brabant,
2000, p. 418, my italics)

What is it then? Clearly something which, as it were, is simultaneously put into play
and out of play, and refers to a zone that is split off from the rest of psychic function-
ing. As is usually the case, trauma, splitting, acted and desubjectivized repetition
combine in order to realize a scenario that the individual repeats over and over again
without being able to constitute himself as an actor. We now know enough about
Freud’s early history to be able to put forward some hypotheses on this subject
(Schur, 1972; Robert, 1980; Rodrigué, 2000, pp. 65–83). Two elements emerge from
these studies. First, the death of Freud’s paternal grandfather two months before his
birth, and the fact that Sigmund had received his grandfather’s name as a second
forename. The second point of importance was the death of his brother Julius, who
was 18 months his junior, when only 6 months old. Now, Amalia Freud had lost a
brother, also named Julius, one month before the death of her youngest son.
That is to say, death and mourning very quickly played a significant role in Freud’s
life (Schur, 1972, pp. 199–222), and the fratricidal wishes that Freud underlines
only account for part of the picture. Equally significant is what may be reconstructed
of the mother’s lack of availability engendered by this spate of mournings. The
object hides within its shadow another object which monopolizes it completely, an
object whose shadow is ungraspable and yet active, not as a preform of the third, but
because it manifests itself by an unexplained disinvestment (Green, 1986).
What was played out repeatedly in Freud’s male relationships, without his being
able to constitute himself as a subject, should thus be related to this series of events
in his early childhood, events that he was unable to analyse or, a fortiori, to integrate
during his own efforts in self-analysis. From this point of view, one would thus
be justified in considering that, if writing the book of dreams translated the effort
of working through undertaken by Freud following his father’s death, this same
effort was an attempt to patch up the early traumas, and the reflection on Moses
constituted a renewed self-analysis under the pressure of external circumstances, a
sort of Traumadeutung [interpretation of trauma].
This context makes Freud’s reaction to his mother’s death on 12 September
1930 even more striking. On the 16th, he wrote to Ferenczi,
It had a strange effect on me, this great event. No pain, no mourning … . At the same time a
feeling of liberation, of being set free, that I also think I understand. I was not permitted to
die as long as she was alive, and now I may. Somehow, in deeper layers, the values of life will
have been markedly changed. (Falzeder and Brabant, 2000, p. 399)

And Freud went on to say that he was not at the funeral and was represented by
Anna. Is there not in this passage, as in Freud’s opinion that only the mother–son
relationship is devoid of all ambivalence, a reversal full of a denial? It is not
the mother who is indispensable for her son’s survival—and may sometimes fail
 CONSTRUCTING THE TRUTH 523

him—but rather the son who is indispensable for the mother’s survival. Early
passiveness, without remedy, is reversed into an activity that nonetheless contains
its core of historical truth: was not Freud, in fact, obliged to be the indispensable
narcissistic complement to the young Amalia Freud, plunged into mourning for
both her second son and her brother?
Another facet of the absence of mourning is Freud’s reaction to the death of his
daughter Sophie. Anton von Freund died on 20 January 1920. On the 25th, it was
Sophie who died, ‘Wafted away! Nothing to say. … I think: La séance continue [The
show goes on]. But it was a bit much for one week’ (Falzeder and Brabant, 2000,
p. 6). And on 4 February he wrote, ‘Very deep within I perceive the feeling of a
deep, insurmountable narcissistic insult. My wife and Annerl are severely shaken in
a more human sense’ (p. 7). ‘In a more human sense’: is there not here an observation
of very great clinical acuity—and of quite general value—of the effects of trauma,
in that Freud’s relative ‘inhumanity’ is precisely the sign that it was the foundations
of his narcissism that were shattered and that would never recover?
Be that as it may, in one case as in the other, it is the narcissistic aspect of the tie
with the object which in one case regards its death as a relief and in the other renders
it so inadmissible that a narcissistic shell is formed that can only patch up after a
fashion the ‘deep, insurmountable breach’. These narcissistic aspects are related
in turn to the history of the earliest modes of relating and the traumatic events that
influenced them, at a time when the maternal object is, so to speak, still without a
shadow, and when any disclosure on its part is bound to be experienced as a harsh
loss that has no meaning.

The dialogue with Ferenczi and the turning point of the last years
It is therefore interesting that, in the letter of 16 September 1930, in which Freud
replies to Ferenczi’s condolences concerning his mother’s death, he reacts to
Ferenczi’s latest developments on traumatic fragmentation.
It is worth recalling that Ferenczi, the specialist of ‘impossible cases’, was
continually searching for new ways of treating difficult patients. He thus used his
so-called ‘active’ technique (Ferenczi, 1920) in an attempt to facilitate the expres-
sion of split-off parts of the psyche that could not be made conscious by means of
the usual analytic technique. Faced with these failures, he subsequently resorted
to techniques of relaxation (Ferenczi, 1930), by virtue of which he hoped that the
analysand might be able to get in touch with early traumatic experiences. Finally,
the last years of his life (1930–3) were dominated by his efforts at mutual analysis,
the first attempt to take full account of the analysis of the countertransference.
The conviction that it was possible to get in touch with the most primitive zones
of psychic functioning formed the background of all these researches and contrasted
strongly with Freud’s growing pessimism with regard to the therapeutic effects of
psychoanalysis. It is in this context that the correspondence of September 1930
between the two men needs to be understood. Can the trauma only be deduced
from the ‘reactive scar formation’ linked with the synthetic activity of the ego,
as described in the 16 September letter (Falzeder and Brabant, 2000, p. 399)? Or
524 JACQUES PRESS

should one consider, as in Ferenczi’s response of 21 September, that ‘the mental

pathological products are not so rigid and incapable of regeneration as are the scars
of bodily tissues’ (p. 400)?
This debate is one of the paths of access to the controversy between the two men.
There is clearly no simple answer to it, but the very fact that it is raised is significant
and accounts for both Freud’s and Ferenczi’s developments during these years.
Ferenczi tried desperately to give new life and form to something that concerned
not only the negative transference, unanalysed by Freud, but much more a zone of
functioning involving the bases of his narcissism and the early relationship with his
mother. He threw himself desperately into the attempt to understand and to handle
in the transference the reactivation of early traumas at the risk of losing sight of their
connection with the overall drive organization. And he did so with his characteristic
impulsiveness and enthusiasm, with not only the errings but also the flashes of
genius which pervade the articles of his last years.
The emphasis placed on the reality of sexual seduction certainly seems exagger-
ated. There is no difficulty in understanding how Freud must have felt as he heard
Ferenczi reading to him ‘Confusion of tongues’ (1949) in September 1932, that
is, a sense of being carried back 35 years, of seeing his life’s work attacked at its
foundations. One can equally understand the sharpness of his reaction to Ferenczi’s
innovations in his terrible letter of 13 December 1931 concerning ‘the kissing tech-
nique’ (Falzeder and Brabant, 2000, pp. 421–4).
And yet! Ferenczi’s description of traumatogenesis remains unequalled, as
much on the clinical as on the metapsychological levels. Traumatic splitting of the
ego into an ‘omniscient’ and intellectually hyperactive part, on the one hand, and a
traumatized part, on the other; affective anaesthesia and the setting up in the trau-
matic faultline of an identification with the aggressor; disavowal by the adult both
of his own instinctuality and his own traumatic experience, the child being used as a
narcissistic complement to patch up a faultline in the parent: this sequence takes into
account clinical work, which, even today, has lost none of its currency.
Freud, for his part, took up his theorization again and persisted in placing into
an organizing superstructure which allowed him immediately not to let himself be
overwhelmed by the reactivation during the 1930s of early traumas and to defend
theoretically the central, structuring value of oedipal conflictuality, particularly,
here, in its parricidal aspect.
My hypothesis is that Freud’s reaction to Ferenczi’s attempts was all the more
violent in that he himself was involved in a personal struggle to deal with the situation
to which he was exposed helplessly during these years, and that he was himself engaged
in a self-analytic task to overcome the reactivation of early traumas engendered by this
situation. This effort, which was to culminate in the works of the years 1936–9, meant
that he was in no condition to hear what Ferenczi had to say to him—among other
reasons because it was precisely what he himself was confronted with at that time. And,
when Freud concluded his obituary with: ‘It is impossible to believe that the history of
our science will ever forget him’ (1933, p. 229), was he not making the dead man the
depositary of that part of himself to which he did not have access—a part that he would
try and take up again and work through in Moses and monotheism?
 CONSTRUCTING THE TRUTH 525

The works of the last years of Freud can thus be considered as the continuation
of a dialogue with the departed friend, a dialogue that went hand in hand with his
efforts at self-analysis. ‘A disturbance of memory on the Acropolis’ (1936) gives an
example of ego-splitting in Freud himself; ‘Analysis terminable and interminable’
(1937a), evoking, among other things, with regard to the ‘case of Ferenczi’, the
limits of what can be analysed, can also be read as a reworking of the controversies
with him, as an elaboration of the mourning following his loss and a dialogue with
‘The problem of the termination of the analysis’ (Ferenczi, 1927) and ‘The elasticity
of psycho-analytic technique’ (1928). ‘Constructions in analysis’ (Freud, 1937b)
elaborates a few of the reflections initiated under the angle of collective psychology
in Moses and monotheism (1939); ‘Splitting of the ego in the process of defence’
(Freud, 1938a) takes up the observations concerning fetishism and attempts to give
them a more general formulation; finally, ‘Some elementary lessons in psycho-
analysis’ (1938b) and An outline of psycho-analysis (1940) constitute a last attempt
to integrate the recent discoveries into the Freudian theoretical corpus.

Moses and monotheism: The construction of the trauma

But the common theme uniting these texts starts from the reflection on Moses and is
related to the heroic identification of the founder of psychoanalysis with this person-
age. By virtue of its aim and its scope, as well as the uncertainty of its historical
bases, Freud (1939) constitutes in itself an imposing construction. There is thus a
remarkable homology, contributing no doubt to the fascination that the work has for
us, between the form of the text and its object.
In constructing the truth about the history of Moses, Freud was at the same time
constructing the successive traumas that resulted in its alteration. In so doing, he
was carrying out a final working over of his theoretical edifice on trauma. Moreover,
through the question of historical truth, which I come to later, one can see, at the
end of Moses and monotheism, the outline of the premises of the very paradigm that
gives the book on Moses its specific form, i.e. that of a construction.
In order to explore the foundations of Moses and monotheism, I would like at
this point to follow Freud’s example and draw on historical works from a psycho-
analytic perspective. In this respect, I am particularly indebted to the Egyptologist
Assmann (1997). This author displaces the question of trauma. He does not ask
himself, ‘Which trauma gave rise to the advent of monotheism?’ nor ‘Who was
Moses really?’ (Was he Jewish? Was he Egyptian? And, in this case, to which social
grouping did he belong?), questions that are the object—manifest, at least—of
Freud’s Moses and monotheism. The question he asks is rather: ‘Which trauma led
to the persistence of the memory of an Egyptian Moses across the ages, and what are
the modalities of memory—appearing in antiquity and continuing up until Schiller
and Freud—that are specific to it?’ It is thus closely bound up with Freud’s question:
from its position, as it were, in the background, it calls into question the bases of
Freud’s enquiry.
Assmann points out, moreover, that the monotheism of Akhenaton constitutes
the first known monotheistic religion in the history of humanity. Now, he writes,
526 JACQUES PRESS

monotheisms are ‘counterreligions’, that is to say, unlike polytheistic religions, they

do not function as ‘a medium of intercultural translatability’ but, on the contrary,
‘function as a medium of intercultural estrangement’ (1997, p. 3, my italics). In
other words, polytheistic religions are transposed from one culture to another.
Monotheistic religions, on the contrary, define a culture as possessing the truth
in relation to the others which are excluded from it. In this same movement, they
contrast the worship of the ‘true’ god with the veneration of idols.
Drawing on archaeological and palaeographic evidence, Assmann shows that,
owing to its extremely radical character, the setting up of the counter-religion
of Akhenaton must have represented a major trauma for contemporaries. In a
few gripping pages, he describes the destruction of images, the suppression of
rites and feasts which were central in Egyptian religion and religiosity; and he
concludes that ‘the ‘theoclastic spirit’ of the counter-religion must have meant a
confrontation with extreme otherness’ (1997, p. 28). Thus, for Assmann, it was
trauma that constituted the brutal establishment of the monotheism of Aton, and
then its equally radical eradication that resulted in its preservation in a crypt of
the collective memory in the form of a distorted representation, that of Moses,
the Egyptian.
It can thus be seen that Assmann’s work throws essential light on two central
themes of Moses and monotheism which I am now going to examine: the first is
otherness, and the second is trauma and its effects.

‘“I” is an other’: Otherness as trauma

Moses, Assmann emphasizes, is a figure of memory but not of history, unlike
Akhenaton who is a figure of history but not of memory (1997, p. 2). We possess
historical traces of the existence of Akhenaton, but there is no memory of him and
every effort has been made to erase even the trace of the existence of the monotheistic
religion that he founded. On the other hand, although we have no historical trace of
the existence of Moses, he has survived until our own time in the collective Western
memory. The substance of this memory is that it is Moses who founded monothe-
istic religion and, with it, the distinction, which would persist across the centuries,
between true and false, between the worship of the true god and the veneration of
idols. Hence, Assmann names this the ‘Mosaic distinction’.
When, trying to analyse the motive forces of anti-Semitism, Freud makes of
Moses an Egyptian, he is taking up a debate which goes back to antiquity and has
continued throughout Western history from Manetho to Schiller. He does, however,
bring a new and fundamental element to it by linking it to the question of anti-
Semitism. Remarkably, Freud is not concerned with knowing what is erroneous in
the behaviour of anti-Semitic peoples, but rather what it is in the Jew that arouses
hatred, as he himself wrote to Arnold Zweig on 30 September 1934:
Faced with the new persecutions, one asks oneself again how the Jews have come to be what
they are and why they have attracted this undying hatred. I soon discovered the formula:
Moses created the Jews. So I gave my work the title: The Man Moses, a historical novel.
(E. L. Freud, 1970, p. 91)
 CONSTRUCTING THE TRUTH 527

In other words, it is the fact of having been chosen that motivates the hatred of other
peoples towards the Jewish people to which may be added that the Jews have never
recognized the original parricide (Freud, 1939, p. 86ff.).
That Freud’s Moses is designated both as the founder of the Jewish religion
choosing a chosen people and as an Egyptian signifies ipso facto that the stranger,
the Egyptian, the ‘false’, is not outside us but, on the contrary, within us from the
beginning. Linking the Egyptian identity of Moses to the sources of anti-Semitism,
as Freud does, thus constitutes a terrible assertion: not only is there the other (the
Egyptian) in I (the Jew), but what is at the root of Jewish identity and gives it its
unique and specific character is precisely the stranger.
Furthermore, by giving the truth to his people and thereby founding the Mosaic
distinction, Moses excludes the others from it. Consequently, the creation of this
distinction, even though it is at the origin of culture, comprises a heavy negative coun-
terpart. In creating the truth, Moses at the same time creates intolerance, rejection.
My reading of Moses and monotheism thus leads me to put forward the hypothesis
that the process of civilization appears to be deadly in this text, not only on account
of the death drive that it liberates through instinctual renunciation—which is the
position of Civilization and its discontents (Freud, 1929)—but equally because the
creation of the ‘self’ creates a hostile ‘other’, who will have to be kept at a distance
all the more in that he is at the origin of that which constitutes our being.
By uniting in the person of Moses the figure of the founder of the Jewish
religion and that of the Egyptian, Freud kills, as it were, two birds with one stone:
he dismantles the mechanisms of anti-Semitism and simultaneously tries to reduce
the fundamental splitting between ‘I’ and ‘other’ which is at the very origin of the
cultural process. In this second movement, he reconstructs a destroyed unity—that
of a time ‘before’ the separation between Jew and Egyptian, ‘before’ the Mosaic
distinction—the very destruction of which was the condition for the advent of mono-
theistic culture. One could almost write—if only it did not sound too paradoxical
for the man of culture that he was first and foremost—that by reuniting that which
had been separated, by dismantling the Mosaic distinction, he was going against the
cultural process.
In any case, by reducing the fundamental splitting that is at the very origin of
culture, he was trying to mitigate the perverse effects of this process, the most lofty
realizations of which are very familiar to us—psychoanalysis is one of them—but
whose products of catabolism are the hatred of difference, intolerance, racism and
xenophobia. These products are reminiscent of those from which protozoa die in
Weismann’s experiments, commented upon at length in Beyond the pleasure prin-
ciple (Freud, 1920); they are indeed products from which our culture could die, and
perhaps even Freud’s discovery itself.
One final remark on this theme—right up until An outline of psycho-analysis
(1940), Freud defended the hypothesis that the id of the second topography contains
instinctual deposits from past generations, while the superego is the guardian of their
cultural acquisitions. In Moses and monotheism, these deposits are inscribed within
a relationship between ‘I’ and ‘the other’ which is, as it were, external to ‘us’. Since
the origins of humanity, and no doubt already before the advent of monotheism, the
528 JACQUES PRESS

identity of successive generations has also consisted of what they reject radically,
as well as of what has been put into it from outside and is beyond any possibility of
subjective apprehension.
It could be considered, then, that the views defended in Moses and monotheism
radicalize the point of view of the second topography and show us, clinically, with
the help of the ‘case of Moses’, how the stranger placed within us by precedent
generations forms part of our being, whether we like it or not. In order for monothe-
ism to be born, Moses the Egyptian had to wrench himself away from his country,
from his roots, and to designate them as bad; he had to renounce the enchantment of
a world in which the Mosaic distinction between the true and the false, between the
true God and the worship of images, did not exist. But this very wrench is a lure; the
‘other in us’ continues to be active not so much in the sense of something repressed
that is always pressing towards consciousness, but rather as a part of the other that is
inextricably part of us, and which we will never be able to get rid of.

Trauma and trauma

By moving the kaleidoscope slightly, the prism is modified: it is then the traumatic,
catastrophic character of the conditions of birth of the cultural process which, in one
and the same movement, is both questioned and constructed. As usual, Freud carried
out his demonstration simultaneously on the individual and collective levels.
What did the trauma consist of for Freud? It consisted of the murder of the great
man, reproducing the murder of the father of the horde. Having been repressed, it
continued to act in a subterranean manner across the generations before giving the
father life again, a few hundred years later, in the form of Moses the Midianite. This
process culminated, then, in the fusion between the God of Aton and Moses, on the
one hand, and Yahweh, on the other. The work of repression, of memory and of the
re-emergence of memory did not stop there, however: it continued in the ensuing
centuries until the Jewish religion was constituted in its more or less definitive form
some eight or nine centuries after the Exodus.
If, in the light of what has been said so far, it is accepted that Freud elaborated,
via ‘day-dreaming’ activity, the early traumas reactivated by his situation during
the 1930s, and that it was a symptomatic production, it is quite characteristic of
this activity to ‘suture’ the early traumas. The suturing occurs by highlighting,
through the ‘three essays’ of Freud (1939), the fundamental importance of the
paternal and parricidal dimension, a dimension that clearly belongs to a later stage
of development. Grubrich-Simitis (1997) has put forward the hypothesis, moreover,
that the maternal dimension is brushed aside by the emphasis Freud placed on the
phylogenetic dimension, within a Lamarckian perspective. It is at this point, too,
that Assmann’s contribution to psychoanalytic reflection on trauma has its place,
throwing a different light on the Freudian ‘suture’. This contribution has, it seems
to me, three aspects to it.
First of all, Assmann gives a remarkable definition of trauma: ‘It is only through
such frames [of recollection] that a [traumatic] event becomes experiencable, com-
municable and memorable’ (1997, p. 26). In psychoanalytic terms, one could say
 CONSTRUCTING THE TRUTH 529

that what is traumatic, in the sense defined here, is that which has no psychical frame
to contain it.
Second, Assmann points out that the coexistence of a psychic modification—in
this case, cultural, in the form of the introduction of the monotheism of Aton—with
a real event in itself has a traumatic effect. In the case that we are considering, the
real event was the plague that devastated Egypt at the end of the reign of Akhenaton,
which, associated with the counter-religious experience of Aton ‘contributed to
the emergence of a trauma’ (p. 27). Now the fact that the coexistence of a psy-
chical modification with an element of external reality has a traumatic effect finds
its counterpart in individual psychopathology; this is a fact encountered daily in
analytic experience. For this to occur, the element of external reality must confirm a
content that has only existed hitherto in fantasy, giving it an effect of concreteness,
of actuality in the sense of actual neurosis. A situation of traumatic circumstances
then arises. Its effects are always formidable in that they entail a paralysis of mental
functioning (Ferenczi, 1931a, 1931b; Fain, 1992). One can thus think that illness
and anti-Semitic persecution, to which I would add the resonance that Ferenczi’s
death had for Freud, constituted such circumstances, reactivating an early situation
that was inaccessible to memory and working through, but which obliged him to
resort to the day-dream and its literary elaboration.
The third point on which Assmann’s study makes a precious contribution to
psychoanalysis is the reaction following the trauma, which tends to efface it, and,
through this very movement, inscribes it in the depths of the psyche: ‘the recollec-
tion of the Amarna experience was made even more problematic by the process of
systematic suppression whereby all the visible traces of the period were deleted’.
And he adds this striking phrase: ‘after having suppressed the memory, the recollec-
tion of this suppression was also effaced. Only the imprint of the shock remained:
the vague remembrance of something religiously unclean, hateful, and disastrous
in the extreme’ (1997, p. 27). Assmann states here a psychoanalytic truth of very
great depth, namely, that at the collective level there exist two traumatic modalities
that can lead to the forgetting and the return of the forgotten. Just as Freud extends
by analogy—it is his own term—his study of individual psychology to collective
processes, we can follow the process in reverse, extrapolating from the collective
to the individual, and transpose Assmann’s reflections on collective memory to our
daily psychoanalytic practice.
In the first case, the sequence involved is that which Freud describes throughout
his work: trauma–repression–return of the repressed. The trauma did indeed take
place, but it resided in the rejection by consciousness of an ‘irreconcilable’ act. It
gives rise to an attempt to erase the memory, which then makes its return via various
false connections. The psychoanalyst’s work consists in untangling the thread of
these connections so as to re-establish their true organization.
The second case is the one I have just related with reference to Assmann’s nar-
rative: the trauma destroys the frame of psychical meaning or cannot be integrated
within it, which comes to the same thing. The reaction to the trauma does not only
consist, then, in erasing the memory of the traumatic event. One does not content
oneself with denying that it exists or has existed, but one sets about erasing every
530 JACQUES PRESS

trace of it, not only the memory but also the very fact that one has remembered
and, finally, as Assmann writes, even the memory of the suppression is erased. By
the same token, the connections linking the suppressed memories with the person’s
history are also erased. There is a true attack against linking in Bion’s (1959) sense
of the term, an attack that goes hand in hand with an attempt to destroy the instinc-
tual impulse itself.
This attempt is illusory and destined to failure, but it marks the incapacity of the
individual to treat the experience in question psychically. The problem is that a trace,
if not of what has been destroyed, at least of the destruction itself, always remains. It
is here that the metaphor of the palimpsest comes to mind—those manuscripts that
had to be scratched before being reused. The erased text is no longer readable, but
one can see that something was there, and that it has been destroyed even though it
will remain forever inaccessible. However, the contours can be more or less defined
negatively: this is what I have called a trace of a non-trace (Press, 1999), evoking the
non-integration of the experience of breakdown (Winnicott, 1965, 1974). This can
also mark the body itself in the sense of predisposing it to somatizations, or alterna-
tively—but then in a greater positivity—in the sense of transgenerational marking,
which is what one may make suppositions about the early traumatic experiences in
Freud’s personal history.
Finally, it is remarkable that Assmann’s description shows a sequence whose
analogy with individual psychology is once again illuminating. The projective
movement intervenes in the second instance to patch up the trauma and seeks to
give it meaning: the link with the plagues of the epoch is already an attempt to
give meaning and form to an unspeakable and unthinkable experience; basically,
an attempt at cure, like delusion in psychosis. But what matters is the earlier, first
moment, when there is a traumatic breach of the ego.
Revisiting the foundations of Freud’s reflections on Moses has led me, then,
to affirm the existence of a traumatic modality that is different from the one Freud
described. It is equally subject to the sequence disappearance–latency–return,
but is inscribed within a different dynamic and, above all, a different economic
movement, and comes very close to Ferenczi’s descriptions. But at this point a
surprise is in store for us. Indeed, an examination of Moses and monotheism shows
that things are much more complex, in that the text itself provides us with the
essential keys to understanding the traumatic modalities that I have just defined
as foreign to it.

Moses and Moses

When reading the third essay, ‘Moses, his people and monotheist religion’ (Freud,
1939, p. 54–137), one cannot escape the following observation. Freud carries out a
synthesis between his first discoveries and those inaugurated by Beyond the pleasure
principle (1920). To put things succinctly: on the one hand, Freud treats repression
as a traumatic neurosis but, on the other, he develops the notion of a period of latency
separating two stages—which was not present in Totem and taboo (1913)—and its
immense consequences for individual and collective psychic development.
 CONSTRUCTING THE TRUTH 531

Hence the first example of latency that Freud gives (1939, p. 67) is a case of
traumatic neurosis. The entire development of the analogy between group and indi-
vidual psychology is centred on the diversity of traumatic impressions from earliest
childhood, impressions of a sexual, aggressive or narcissistic nature, affecting the
body itself (p. 76). Freud grants a primordial place to the notion of ego immaturity, to
the fact that it receives impressions that it is not capable of elaborating psychically, in
particular, because it is still without language (p. 76ff, p. 130). He also distinguishes
the positive effects of the trauma, entailing its repetition, from the negative effects
where the memory of it is effaced (p. 76). The author goes on to define the effective
causes ensuring the durability of the repressed impressions by virtue of the content of
historical truth. Finally, the two clinical examples given bear witness to early forms of
identification and their contribution to the formation of character (pp. 78–80, p. 125).
This is to say that the 1939 version of repression no longer has much in common
with the delicate and complex mechanism described in ‘The papers on metapsychol-
ogy’ (Freud, 1915, pp. 146–58). It is no longer a question of dissociation between
affect representative and ideational representative and of their eventual reconnection
in the light of other associations: repression, as Freud had already written succinctly
(1919), is a traumatic neurosis a minima. Furthermore, an indication is given to us
through a lack, an absence: nowhere in the text is there any allusion to the differ-
ence, albeit one well established by Freud himself, between primal repression and
repression après-coup or after the event.
‘The analogy’ I have established, following Freud, as well as Ferenczi’s consid-
erations on trauma, enables us to pursue the reflection: it is the losses of meaning
in the individual’s early history which underlie the difficulty in establishing subse-
quently a functional system of repression in the sense of the first topography. This
brings me back to one of the fundamental differences separating Moses the law
giver from Moses the survivor, the Freudian trauma from that glimpsed through
Assmann and Ferenczi.
This remark introduces another enriching aspect of Freud’s reflection during the
years 1934–9, namely, the question of historical truth. In the way Freud broaches
it, this question resonates as a last attempt to treat the aporia between trauma and
instinctual drive dialectically (Grubrich-Simitis, 1988), as an echo of the debate with
Ferenczi, in particular in relation to the latter’s experiments with mutual analysis.

Constructing the truth: The question of historical truth

In the thematic ritornello writing, characteristic of Freud (1939), an insistent
question frequently arises which goes hand in hand with the author’s sense of dis-
satisfaction with regard to his own conclusions. Namely, how, in the last analysis,
is one to explain the character of the Jewish people, its persistence and, through it,
the compulsive character of the return of a given experience as well as the power of
conviction of religion? This ultimate factor is only fully discussed right at the end of
the book (pp. 127–32). It is no longer only expressed in instinctual terms as in 1920,
but resides ultimately in the fact that the experience compulsively repeated contains
a core of historical truth dating from the
532 JACQUES PRESS

…earliest impressions, received at a time when the child was scarcely yet capable of speaking.
… [Thus] the idea of a single great god … must be recognized as a completely justified
memory, though, it is true, one that has been distorted. An idea such as this has a compulsive
character: it must be believed. To the extent to which it is distorted, it may be described as
a delusion; in so far as it brings a return of the past, it must be called the truth. Psychiatric
delusions [Wahn], too, contain a small fragment of truth. (p. 130, original italics)

This question is taken up for the last time in the third part of ‘Constructions
in analysis’ when Freud (1937b), going beyond the archaeological metaphor that
dominates the beginning of the article, remarks that analysis does not always lead
to recollection: something remains inaccessible, and it has to be constructed for the
patient. The index of truth thus no longer comes from recollection, but from the
shared sense that something that was missing has been (re)constituted. It is here
that there arises the question of historical truth and its connection with trauma. The
demonstration comprises three stages.
The first stage: ‘a general characteristic of hallucinations … [is that] something
that has been experienced in infancy and then forgotten returns—something that the
child has seen or heard at a time when he could still hardly speak’ (1937b, p. 267).
The second stage: the analyst must ‘recognize with him [the patient] the kernel
of truth contained in his delusion’ (p. 268). Nowhere did Freud express himself in
terms so similar to those used by Ferenczi. For this kernel of truth has a twofold
character: it is constituted by the instinctual kernel. However, this instinctual kernel
is combined with the kernel of reality which constitutes, in this context, the basis of
a new mode of hallucinatory functioning, produced not in the mode of hallucinatory
satisfaction but in that of a perceptual excess overwhelming an immature ego without
access to language. But Freud immediately adds that the analyst’s work consists in
‘liberating the fragment of historical truth from its distortions and its attachments
to the actual present day and in leading it back to the point in the past to which it
belongs’ (p. 268), a sentence that rings like a warning concerning Ferenczi’s innova-
tions. However, with hindsight, one can also see, in this space between actualization
and recollection, the immensity of the task undertaken by Ferenczi, prefiguring the
contributions of Winnicott.
The third and last stage is the analogy (to use the terms of Freud, 1939):
the delusions of patients appear to me to be the equivalents of the constructions which we
build up in the course of an analytic treatment—attempts at explanation and cure, though it is
true that these, under the conditions of a psychosis can do no more than replace the fragment
of reality that is being disavowed in the present by another fragment that had already been
disavowed in the remote past. … Just as our construction is only effective because it recovers
a fragment of lost experience, so the delusion owes its convincing power to the element of
historical truth which it inserts in the place of the rejected reality. (1937b, p. 268)

The analyst’s construction thus appears on the one hand to be a sort of ‘countertrauma’,
the effect of which is directly linked to its content of historical truth,2 counterbalancing
2
Blass (2003, 2004) also accords a special place to historical truth. But she tends to envisage religion
and psychoanalysis as two modes of access to it, whereas I consider religion and delusion, on the one
hand, and psychoanalytic knowledge, on the other, as different, and in certain respects opposite ways of
constructing a neoreality.
 CONSTRUCTING THE TRUTH 533

the kernel of historical truth in the patient’s symptomatic construction. But the other
aspect of the analogy is much less reassuring: our constructions are also seen as attempts
to construct a reality. If, in the first part of Freud’s theory, the reality in question is
clearly a psychic reality, here it is historical reality that we are trying, or, rather, should
be trying, to construct or to reconstruct, thus arriving at a neoreality. Projected into the
domain of delusion, we find ourselves apparently at an impasse. But if we take one
more step we shall see that it is not so: the historical truth is finally nothing other than
this neoreality constructed during the course of analysis.
Things now become clearer. To the extent that the historical truth is a constructed
truth, it cannot be the material truth of the past: our constructions are surely faulty
where the materiality of the facts is concerned, as is Freud’s, moreover, on the
subject of Moses. On the other hand, however, in so far as they are rooted in the
history of the individual, they contain the fragment of material truth that guarantees
their power of conviction. Hence an essential paradox: our constructions are neces-
sarily faulty and they are irreplaceable. It is when the tension contained within this
paradox is lost that our psychic functioning slides. This was doubtless Ferenczi’s
error. But Freud himself does not escape this confusion, which occurs during some
of his most creative moments: Totem and taboo (1913, reality of the murder of the
father of the horde); the ‘Wolf Man’ (1918, reality of the primal scene); and finally
Moses and monotheism (1939) with the reality of Moses’s Egyptian identity and of
his assassination.
What are we to conclude from this other than that the value of our construc-
tions resides in a subtle alloying of several elements: the grain of sand of material
truth that they absolutely must contain; the effect of conviction that they carry (in
the sense established by Freud, 1937), while always bearing in mind the risk that
this conviction rests on a shared denial; and, finally, the movement that impels the
one who constructs the historical truth? It was precisely this movement that was
behind Freud’s writing of Moses and monotheism; it was also the impulsion behind
Ferenczi’s endeavours to reach out towards his patients; finally, it is what inspires
each one of us in our daily clinical work as well as our theorizing activity, and gives
density to both. It is the movement of life itself.

Translations of summary
Konstruktion der Wahrheit. Von der Sprachverwirrung zu Konstruktionen in der Analyse. Der Autor
vertritt die These, dass die Beiträge, die Freud in der Zeit von 1934 bis 1939 verfasste, einen finalen
Wendepunkt in seinem Werk konstituieren, der auf einen Versuch zurückzuführen ist, mittels Selbstanalyse
frühe traumatische und durch seine Lebensbedingungen in den 30er Jahren reaktivierte Elemente durch-
zuarbeiten. Der Verfasser betont, dass die Schwankungen in Freuds Beziehung zu Sándor Ferenczi und
die Trauer, die auf dessen Tod im Jahre 1933 folgte, für diese traumatische Situation eine wichtige Rolle
spielten. Er ist der Ansicht, dass Freud in diesen letzten Werken einen posthumen Dialog mit Ferenczi
führte. Dieses Durcharbeiten veranlasste ihn, seine Traumatheorie in Moses und der Monotheismus ein
letztes Mal zu revidieren. Diese Revision untersucht der Autor ausführlich im Lichte der Arbeiten des
Ägyptologen Jan Assmann. So taucht ein neues analytisches Paradigma auf: das der Konstruktionen in der
Analyse, wie es im Beitrag mit demselben Titel formuliert wurde. Die Aktivität der Konstruktion zeichnet
sich als Alternative zu der gegenseitigen Analyse ab, für die Ferenczi eingetreten war, und hängt eng mit
dem Konzept der historischen Wahrheit zusammen. In der Psychoanalyse bedeutet dies, eine historische
Wahrheit zu konstruieren, deren Verankerung in der Wahrheit des Materials aus der Vergangenheit wesent-
lich ist, aber nicht mit ihr verwechselt werden darf.
534 JACQUES PRESS

Construyendo la verdad. De La confusión de lenguas a Construcciones en el análisis. El autor presenta

la hipótesis de que los trabajos que Freud escribió en el periodo de 1934-1939 constituyen un momento
crucial en su obra, resultado de un intento de elaboración autoanalítica de los elementos traumáticos precoces
reactivados por las condiciones de vida de Freud en la década de 1930. El autor destaca que los altibajos
en la relación de Freud con Sandor Ferenczi y el duelo que siguió a su muerte en 1933 desempeñaron un
importante papel en su situación traumática. El autor sugiere que a través de estos últimos trabajos Freud
continuó un diálogo póstumo con Ferenczi. Esta elaboración condujo a Freud, en su libro Moisés y la
religión monoteísta, a una versión última de su teoría del trauma, una revisión que el autor examina exten-
samente, a partir de los trabajos del egiptólogo Jan Assmann. Surge un nuevo paradigma analítico: el de las
construcciones en el análisis, desarrolladas en el artículo del mismo nombre. La actividad de construcción
aparece como una alternativa al análisis mutuo propuesto por Ferenczi y está estrechamente ligado a la
noción de verdad histórica. En términos psicoanalíticos se trata de la construcción de una verdad histórica
cuyo anclaje en la verdad material del pasado es esencial, aunque no debería confundirse con ella.

La construction de la vérité : De Confusion de langues à Constructions dans l’analyse. L’auteur émet

l’hypothèse que les travaux des années 1934–9 constituent un dernier tournant dans l’œuvre freudienne
résultant d’une tentative de perlaboration auto-analytique des éléments traumatiques précoces réactivés par
les conditions de vie de Freud dans les années 1930. Il insiste sur le rôle que jouent, dans cette conjoncture
traumatique, les aléas de la relation avec Sándor Ferenczi, puis du deuil qui a suivi sa mort en 1933, et
émet l’hypothèse qu’à travers ses derniers travaux, Freud poursuit un dialogue posthume avec lui. Ce travail
de perlaboration conduit, dans L’Homme Moïse et le Monothéisme, à une ultime révision de la théorie du
traumatisme, que l’auteur examine à partir des travaux de l’égyptologue Jan Assmann. Il débouche sur un
nouveau paradigme analytique, celui de la construction, développé dans l’article du même nom. L’activité de
construction apparaît comme une alternative à l’analyse mutuelle proposée par Ferenczi et est étroitement liée
à la notion de vérité historique. Il s’agirait dans la cure de construire une vérité historique, dont l’ancrage dans
la vérité matérielle du passé est essentiel, mais ne qui ne doit pas être confondue avec celle-ci.

Costruzione della verità: da una confusione di lingue alle costruzioni in analisi. L’autore avanza l’ipotesi
che gli scritti freudiani dal 1934 al 1939 constuiscano una svolta finale. Tale svolta risulterebbe dal tentativo
di elaborazione autoanalitica da parte di Freud di traumi infantili riattivati negli anni 1930 da determiante
circostanze. L’autore suggerisce che il rapporto tumultuoso che Freud aveva con Sándor Ferenczi e il lutto
che lo colpì in seguito alla morte di quest’ultimo, nel 1933, hanno rivestito un ruolo primordiale in questa
situazione traumatica. Secondo l’autore questi ultimi lavori costituiscono un dialogo postumo con Ferenczi.
Questa elaborazione ha portato Freud, in Mosè e il monoteismo, ad una revisione finale della sua teoria
sul trauma, revisione che l’autore esamina in pieno alla luce dell’opera dell’Egittologo Jan Assmann. Ne
risulta un nuovo paradigma analitico: quello delle costruzioni in analisi, postulate nell’articolo dallo stesso
titolo. L’attività di costruzione appare come un’alternativa all’analisi mutuale proposta da Ferenczi ed è
strettamente legata alla nozione di verità storica. In termini psicoanalitici, si tratta della costruzione di una
verità storica il cui ancoraggio alla verità materiale del passato è essenziale, benchè non vada confusa con
quest’ultima.

References
Assmann J (1997). Moses the Egyptian: The memory of Egypt in western monotheism. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard UP. 288 p.
Balint M (1968). The basic fault: Therapeutic aspects of regression. London: Tavistock. 160 p.
Bion WR (1959). Attacks on linking. Int J Psychoanal 40:308–15.
Blass RB (2003). The puzzle of Freud’s puzzle analogy: Reviving a struggle with doubt and
conviction in Freud’s Moses and monotheism. Int J Psychoanal 84:669–82.
Blass RB (2004). Beyond illusion. Psychoanalysis and the question of religious truth. Int J
Psychoanal 85:615–34.
Bokanowski T, Kelley-Lainé K, Pragier G, editors (1995). Sándor Ferenczi. Paris: PUF. 168 p.
(Monographs of the Revue Française de Psychanalyse.)
Dupont J, editor (1988). The clinical diary of Sándor Ferenczi, Balint M, Jackson NZ, translators.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP. 256 p.
Fain M (1982). Le désir de l’interprète [The desire of the interpreter]. Paris: Aubier-Montagne.
157 p.
 CONSTRUCTING THE TRUTH 535

Fain M (1992). La vie opératoire et les potentialités de névrose traumatique [Operational life and
the potentialities of traumatic neurosis]. Rev Fr Psychosom 2:5–24.
Falzeder E, Brabant E, editors (2000). The correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Sándor
Ferenczi, Vol 3: 1920–1933, Hoffer PT, translator. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP. 528 p.
Ferenczi S (1920). The further development of an active therapy in psychoanalysis. In: Further
contributions to the theory and technique of psychoanalysis, p. 198–217: London: Hogarth,
1926.
Ferenczi S (1927). The problem of termination of the analysis. In: Balint M, editor. Final contributions
to the problems and methods of psycho-analysis, p. 77–86. London: Hogarth, 1955.
Ferenczi S (1928). The elasticity of psychoanalytical technique. In: Balint M, editor. Final
contributions to the problems and methods of psycho-analysis, p. 87–101. London: Hogarth,
1955.
Ferenczi S (1930). The principle of relaxation and neocatharsis. Int J Psychoanal 11:428–43.
Ferenczi S (1931a). Child-analysis in the analysis of adults. Int J Psychoanal 12:468–82.
Ferenczi S (1931b). Trauma and anxiety [Notes and fragments]. In: Balint M, editor. Final
contributions to the problems and methods of psycho-analysis, p. 249–50. London: Hogarth,
1955.
Ferenczi S (1949). Confusion of the tongues between the adults and the child—The language of
tenderness and of passion. Int J Psychoanal 30:225–30.
Freud EL, editor (1970). The letters of Sigmund Freud and Arnold Zweig, Robson-Scott E, Robson-
Scott WD, translators. London: Hogarth. 190 p. [Freud S, Zweig A (1968). Briefwechsel. Freud
EL, editor. Frankfurt-am-Main: Fischer. 203 p.]
Freud S (1900). The interpretation of dreams. SE 4–5.
Freud S (1908). Creative writers and day-dreaming. SE 9, p. 143–53.
Freud S (1913). Totem and taboo. SE 13, p. 1–161.
Freud S (1915). The papers on metapsychology. SE 14, p. 105–215.
Freud S (1918). From the history of an infantile neurosis. SE 17, p. 7–122.
Freud S (1919). Introduction to Psycho-analysis and the war neuroses. SE 17, p. 207–10.
Freud S (1920). Beyond the pleasure principle. SE 18, p. 7–64.
Freud S (1929). Civilization and its discontents. SE 21, p. 64–145.
Freud S (1933). Sándor Ferenczi [Obituary]. SE 22, p. 227–9.
Freud S (1936). A disturbance of memory on the Acropolis. SE 22, p. 239–48.
Freud S (1937a). Analysis terminable and interminable. SE 23, p. 216–53.
Freud S (1937b). Constructions in analysis. SE 23, p. 255–69.
Freud S (1938a). Splitting of the ego in the process of defence. SE 23, p. 275–8.
Freud S (1938b). Some elementary lessons in psycho-analysis. SE 23, p. 281–6.
Freud S (1939). Moses and monotheism. SE 23, p. 7–137.
Freud S (1940). An outline of psycho-analysis. SE 23, p. 144–207.
Green A (1986). The dead mother [1983]. In: On private madness, p. 142–73. London: Hogarth.
Grubrich-Simitis I (1988). Trauma or drive—Drive and trauma. A reading of Sigmund Freud’s
phylogenetic fantasy of 1915. Psychoanal Study Child 43:3–32. [(1987). Trauma oder Trieb—
Trieb und Trauma. Psyche—Z Psychoanal 41:992–1023.]
Grubrich-Simitis I (1997). Freud’s study of Moses as a daydream: A biographical essay. In: Early
Freud and late Freud: Reading anew Studies on hysteria and Moses and monotheism, Slotkin
P, translator, p. 53–89. Hove: Routledge. (Bott Spillius E, editor. New Library of Psychoanalysis,
Vol. 29.) [(1991). Freuds Moses-Studie als Tagtraum: Ein biographischer Essay. Weinheim:
Verlag Internationale Psychoanalyse.]
Haynal AE (1988). Technique at issue: Controversies in psychoanalysis from Freud and Ferenczi
to Michael Balint. London: Karnac. 221 p. [(1987). La technique en question. Controverses en
psychanalyse. Paris: Payot.]
Haynal AE (2001). Un psychanalyste pas comme un autre: La renaissance de Sándor Ferenczi
[A psychoanalyst unlike any other: The renaissance of Sándor Ferenczi]. Lausanne:
Delachaux et Niestlé.
536 JACQUES PRESS

Kaës R, Faimberg H, Enriquez M, Baranes JJ (1993). Transmission psychique entre les

générations [Psychic transmission between generations]. Paris: Dunod. 208 p.
Robert M (1980). From Oedipus to Moses: Freud’s Jewish identity, Manheim R, translator.
Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson. 229 p. (Littman Library of Jewish Civilization.) [(1974).
D’Œdipe à Moïse. Paris: Denoël.]
Rodrigué E (2000). Freud. Le Siècle de la Psychanalyse [1996] [Freud: The century of
psychoanalysis], Vol 1, Rey P, translator. Paris: Payot. 636 p.
Schur M (1972). Freud: Living and dying. New York, NY: International UP. 587 p.
Press J (1999). La perle et le grain de sable: Traumatisme et fonctionnement mental. Essai
psychanalytique [The pearl and the grain of sand: Trauma and mental functioning. A
psychoanalytical treatise]. Lausanne: Delachaux et Niestlé. 248 p.
Winnicott, DW (1965). The psychology of madness: A contribution from psycho-analysis. In:
Winnicott C, editor. Psychoanalytic explorations, p. 119–29. London: Karnac, 1989.
Winnicott DW (1974). Fear of breakdown. Int Rev Psychoanal 1:103–7.