Concept
Regression
A return to an earlier form of mental functioning: to earlier ways of thinking, to an earlier stage of libidinal development or to earlier kinds of relation to others. Freud used it from The Interpretation of Dreams (1900) on, for the backward path of the dream towards perception and for the fall-back of the libido to old fixation points in neurosis; Ferenczi, Balint and Winnicott later treated regression within the analysis as something that can also serve the treatment.
- Narrower concepts
- Benign and malignant regression
- Introduced by
- Sigmund Freud
- Key works
- 3
introduced by
- Sigmund Freud 1900 Freud introduced regression in chapter VII of The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), for the dream's backward movement through the psychical apparatus towards perception; he later spoke also of temporal and formal regression, among them the libido's return to earlier fixation points.
reworked by
- Michael Balint 1968 Taking Ferenczi's technical experiments further, Balint treats regression in the analysis not only as resistance but as a state the analyst must know how to meet, and one that, in its benign form, can open the way to a new beginning. Thrills and Regressions (1959) and The Basic Fault, subtitled Therapeutic Aspects of Regression (1968), are given to it.