Undoing (psychology) - Freud's Development of The Concept

Freud's Development of The Concept

Freud first described the practice of undoing in his 1909 "Notes upon a Case of Obsessional Neurosis". Here he recounted how his patient (the "Rat Man") first removed a stone from the road in case his lady's carriage should overturn upon it, and thereafter 'felt obliged to go back and replace the stone in its original position in the middle of the road'. Freud argued that his 'undoing this deed of love by replacing the stone where...her carriage might come to grief against it...was determined by a motive contrary to that which produced the first part' by hate, not love.

It was two decades later in 1926 that he formalised the ego defence as' undoing what has been done....it is, as it were, negative magic, and endeavours, by means of motor symbolism, to blow away not merely the consequences of some event (or experience or impression) but the event itself'. Freud then went on to use '"undoing" what has been done... good enough grounds for re-introducing the old concept of defence, which can cover all these processes that have the same purpose - namely the protection of the ego against instinctual demands' - one of the major technical advances of his later years.