[The birth of metapsychology. On the current interpretation of "Entwurf einer Psychologie" (1895)]

The general attitude towards Entwurf einer Psychologie (1895) is to reckon it among Freud's pre-analytic writings, i.e. that part of his work later more or less disowned by the author. Schmidt-Hellerau challenges this assessment by Freud and many of his successors, demonstrating that the Entwurf can legitimately be regarded as a meta-theory resolving - or skirting- the old classification problem of whether psychoanalysis is a science or an art by connecting the hitherto dissociated spheres of soma and psyche and conceptualizing of physiological and psychological processes. See thus, the Entwurf reveals itself as a theoretical document of astonishing modernity and undiminished relevance in that it records Freud's ambitious attempt to overcome the mind-body schism and the divide between neurophysiology and psychology. And it is precisely this problem, the author contends, which Freud's later metapsychology--and the controversies it has aroused--revolves around.