**5. Conclusions**

My interest here has been on Freud's labors as the father-figure who—so to speak—mothered his discipline into existence. Like most, perhaps all, mothers, he initiated it, nurtured it, defended it, stood-up for it, and—in certain specific respects—betrayed it. However, to the end of his life in 1939 and despite all the work he did after 1915 constructing grand theoretical frameworks of metapsychology, he did remain very clear that free-associative speaking and listening are the *sine qua non* of psycho-*analysis.* He was also convinced that psychoanalysis would be resisted—not only because radical free-association is frightening, but also because it leads inexorably both to the unconscious-as-repressed and to the fundamentally erotic energies that underlay all our cognitive, affective, and conative activities. Despite his lucidity

and prescience in these respects, this clarity did not prevent Freud from generating theoretical models that point the discipline in a profoundly different direction.

Before 1915, Freud knew that it could be the fate of psychoanalysis to 'disturb the peace of the world' [27]. In 1913, he articulated quite clearly his vision of the destiny of his discipline as a 'conflict with official science' [20]. Yet despite these insights, he remained enthralled with hard science, courted credibility in that context, and became increasingly preoccupied with the construction of theoretical frameworks that both are articulated in a manner that is quite distant from the lived-experience of free-associative discourse and are encouraging of the assessment of his discipline as if it were primarily epistemological.

I have suggested that, in relation to the revolutionary beginnings of his discipline, there is a sense in which—especially during and after World War I—Freud betrayed some of his own best insights into the human condition and the method of liberatory change. Yet as a not-unfair generalization, it can be noted how much 'new models' of psychoanalysis (some of which Freud himself initiated, many by his successors) have extended this retrogressive development toward what are, essentially, pre-Freudian ways of thinking. Of course, the cleverest maneuvers of resistance always brand themselves as loyal acts of conformity and the deferential expansion of what the 'master' initiated—even while they ignore the most uncomfortable lessons that the master once taught.

We could consider here: structural-functional (ego psychological) theories, object-relational theories, self-psychological theories, social-relational theories, and linguistic-structural theories. Unless we agree to use the term 'psychoanalysis' profligately—to encompass any conversation that delves into thoughts, feelings, and wishes—then it must be conceded that the discipline is in crisis. Indeed, it has splintered so licentiously that to refer to it as a singular endeavor is empty and otiose. I doubt that there is remedy for this. Rather, it seems warranted that psychoanalysis, as the method to which Freud introduced us, be rediscovered.
