TY - JOUR A1 - Blum, Harold P T1 - A word from the symposium chair JF - International Forum of Psychoanalysis, Vol. 24 (No. 1, 2015), pp. 8-9. N2 - Sociopolitical democratization, the rebirth of Sigmund Freud's legacy, and the revitalization of psychoanalysis in today's Czech Republic created the conditions for the symposium >Psychological Birth and Infant Development< to take place. The sponsors, faculty, and organizers are gratefully acknowledged, together with the citizens of the town of Příbor. Y1 - 2015 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Blum, Harold P T1 - Reconstructing Freud s prototype reconstructions JF - International Forum of Psychoanalysis, Vol. 24 (No. 1, 2015), pp. 48-56. N2 - Although at age 75, Freud asserted >deep within me there continues to be the happy child of Freiberg< (Příbor), his statement may now be regarded as an idealized version of his infancy and early childhood, devoid of trauma and stress. His reconstructions of his first three years of life, reported in his letters of October 1897 to Wilhelm Fliess, are subject to their own reconstruction. He had just repudiated seduction trauma as an exclusive etiology of psychopathology. Freud was then in the throes of an intense transference–countertransference relationship with Fliess, with reactivated unconscious conflict and developmental challenge. The reconstructions of his nursemaid, of his reactions to the birth and death of his first sibling, and of seeing his mother >nudam< require re-evaluation and revision in the context of contemporary psychoanalytic theory and new knowledge. While the specific reconstructions are of continuing interest, the methodology of analytic inquiry into early childhood and parenting transcends the inevitable limitations of the infancy of psychoanalysis. The concept of reconstruction potentiated the development of psychoanalytic thought, although with recurrent controversy, especially concerning retrospective meaning, psychic reality, and historical reality. Y1 - 2015 ER -