[Freud's contribution to medical methodology]

Freud's contribution to the history of medicine may be centred upon his conception of the human subject and the method used for study and treatment. This method is not, as Freud claimed, that of the natural sciences. This is because Freud considered the psychic system to be divided in two superimposed planes compared to the conception of the unified subject (very widespread in medical anthropology). These two planes are the preconscious-conscious (whose fuctioning tends to be ruled by logical relations) and the subconscious (whose functioning is based on relations of resemblace and contiquity comparable to those described by Frazer in magical thougt). The method Freud contributed to Medicine is the interpretative listening to discourse on two planes (simultaneous and superimposed) with which this divided subject expresses the intra-psychic conflict.