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What ensures the progredient projection of regressive psychic formations such as dreams and speech in the session on to the screen of consciousness? Freud’s first answer is an act of faith –their spontaneous tendency to become conscious. But a difficulty emerges: by what contents are abstract thoughts represented? Silberer presents a solution –the « functional phenomenon ». From 1920, spontaneity comes under strong attack. The regressivity of the drives must undergo a deflection that leads to a progredient orientation. The primary and secondary autoerotisms, as well as the daytime reflection, depend on it and illustrate this primordial reflexivity.