Adaptation is not part of Freudian vocabulary (it does not appear in the index of the Standard Edition, for example). The idea of adaptation, however, is present throughout Freud's work. It appears as early as 1895, in his "Project for a Scientific Psychology" (1950a), when he discusses the mechanisms of perception, attention and memory. The idea runs through all of Freud's subsequent work whenever he discusses the relation between psychic reality and the "reality of the outside world." It is found, for example, in "Instincts and their Vicissitudes" (1915c) and "Repression" (1915d), when he writes that dangers that can't be avoided through behavioral means are "rejected toward the interior." Other texts where the concept appears include "Neurosis and Psychosis" (1924b), "The Loss of Reality in Neurosis and Psychosis" (1924e), and "An Outline of Psycho-Analysis" (1940a). In fact, there are few texts by Freud where the question of...