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Our starting point is the rather strange impression that is produced on us on reading Freud's article in which, contrary to his habit, he seems to entangle himself in a certain number of aporias that all ultimately relate to the relation, as such unmentioned, between material or historic and psychic reality. Let us pose the hypothesis that the article in question constitutes a defence against a form of psychic suffering that is related to his age and health. It appears that the author omits to consider the metapsychological analysis of the transformations that he ultimately hopes his intrusive interventions will bring about, and that he completely fails to consider the psychic reality, whose working through is nevertheless the object of all psychoanalytic work.