The "Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning" are a further development of the distinctions that had already been presented, through an almost neurological terminology, in the Design of Scientific Psychology. The concepts of primary and secondary processes presented in these texts take on their definitive meaning through the distinction that is introduced: the pleasure principle and the reality principle. Already in this text, reality is transformed, not only into a "truly autonomous force," but also into a central nosographic factor. The reality principle appears to follow the pleasure principle chronologically, when the attempt to satisfy through illusion is abandoned. Then, the pleasant is not sought, but the real, even if it is not pleasant.
"Disavowal" is one of Freud's shortest and most condensed texts. Although it mainly deals with a specific problem of metapsychology, it touches on questions about psychoanalytic technique from beginning to end. "Disavowal" is a process in which the subject expresses material (thoughts, feelings) that until then had been repressed, but at the same time refuses to recognize it as their own. Disavowal is a way for one to take into account the repressed; it is essentially already a negation of repression, but not an acknowledgment of the repressed.