Freud, Fliess, and the parenthood of psychoanalysis

This paper focuses upon the roles of procreation, fatherhood, and identification with the fertile mother in Freud's creation of psychoanalysis. Fatherhood and motherhood, pregnancy and birth, children and siblings, figure prominently in Freud's self-analysis and in his relationship with his prototransference object, Wilhelm Fliess. Although Freud attributed his self-analytic interest and revived oedipal conflict to the death of his father, becoming a parent himself was also a significant determinant. Birth as well as death reactivated his childhood and stimulated his creative ferment.