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<.
The existence of man is distinguished by its split state: man stands in the middle of life yet still has an awareness of his own death. He has to compensate whatever is missing in him naturally at the societal level, created as culture, and at the individual level through creativity. Rank investigated the human 'creative drive', the anthropological aspiration to express oneself in creative works, and to overcome the fear of death with its help. Freud admired poets and artists, whose achievements he could not psychoanalytically access, but he considered science superior to the harmless and na ve arts. There are two anthropological radicals: premature birth and the consciousness of death. Freud's massive fear of death made it difficult for him to acknowledge the problem of death appropriately. In Rank's concept, the development of human creativity contributes towards the fear of death being alleviated so that the knowledge of death can be integrated into life; creativity belongs to the fundamental opportunities of man that may enable him to find a way through neurosis. Failure is as much a part of life as is creativity: those who do not experience and accept life in its tragic dimension are denied creativity. Only a creative person who accepts his partial failure finds the strength to continue to be creative without his imperfect work leading to the ritual repetition of the same thing again and again, that is, getting stuck in recidivism.