In 1983, while working on the correspondence between Freud and Sandor Ferenczi, Ilse Grubrich-Simitis discovered the manuscript which Harvard has published in translation as A Phylogenetic Fantasy: Overview of the Transference Neuroses. The volume contains a facsimile and transcription of the draft, the English translation, an introduction by the translators, and an essay by Grubrich-Simitis, entitled "Metapsychology and Metabiology," which makes extensive use of the yet unpublished Freud-Ferenczi correspondence. The draft was found in a trunk belonging to Ferenczi. On the back of the last page of the draft is a letter written by Freud, dated July 28, 1915, which begins: "I am sending you herewith the draft of the XII ... " There is thus no question that the draft is of the last of the series of papers on metapsychology that Freud composed at a feverish pace during the spring and summer of 1915. Although Freud originally intended to publish the papers together in book form, only five saw print: "Instincts and their Vicissitudes" (1915a); "Repression" (1915b); "The Unconscious" (1915c); "Metapsychological Supplement to the Theory of Dreams" (1915d); and " Mourning and Melancholia" (1917). The other seven papers were thought to be destroyed by Freud or lost. Freud gave the draft the title "Overview of the Transference Neuroses". The title of the English translation is appropriate, however. In the second half of the draft, Freud breaks free of the constraints of his intended subject and speculates on events in the phylogenetic history of humankind that might underlie the dispositions to both the transference and the narcissistic neuroses.
This essay is divided into two parts. In the first section, I set A