Incompleteness

In psychoanalysis, the state of "incompleteness" does not connote an imperfect or unfinished state, but rather implies openness and retrospective reexamination. The notion of incompleteness in the work of Sigmund Freud presupposes two possibles and one constraint: the integration of new ideas and the reexamination of old ideas in retrospect, provided that the whole remains coherent.

The image of the umbilical knot used by Freud in connection with dreams in The Interpretation of Dreams (1900a) to represent the unfathomable...