The relation between zeitgeist and psychoanalytic theory formation can be illustrated with reference to the transition from neurosis to psychosis. The author regards Freud as an oedipal thinker in two respects, first as the psychologist who "discovered" the father complex, and secondly as a scholar in the positivist tradition of the nineteenth century with its claims to be able to distinguish clearly between subject and object, hallucination and perception. The pre-oedipal, narcissistic disturbances described and discussed since the beginning of the First World War allow the conclusion that this period saw the onset of a zeitgeist increasingly prepared to countenance archaic dimensions of the psyche and an intermingling of subject and object. In the author's view, the difficulty of reconciling classical and post-classical psychoanalytic theory lies in the fact that this involves completely re-thinking our ideas on the bourgeois individual and challenging the concepts we have of such things as objectivity, normality, autonomy and individuation.