TY - JOUR A1 - Yigael, Y. T1 - >The primary process<: The vicissitude of a concept JF - International Forum of Psychoanalysis, Basingstoke (Routledge – Taylor and Francis) Vol. 14 (No. 2, 2005), pp. 76-85 N2 - During the first twenty years that Freud spent creating his theory, he assumed that most of the functions responsible for creating mental-thought structures were organized according to two different forms or principles of thought. He called these forms >primary process< and >secondary process<. The >secondary process< is identified with rational thinking and the ego, and it is easy to follow the changes that this concept underwent in the works of Freud that followed. The concept of >primary process<, on the other hand, disappeared from his later works with no explanation. This article traces the changes that the >primary process< underwent in Freud's thinking and examines the connection between his analytical technique and his research method. A close study of the changes that the >primary process< underwent reveals that Freud's developmental thought process included concepts whose directional changes may be termed >regressive<. Y1 - 2005 ER -