"Anticipated normal path of development"

So, in my Freud class we've been using the phrase "anticipated normal path of development," usually to describe some sort of normative aspect of what Freud is thinking: that is, he posits some normal developmental path of the psyche and reads the diseases or problems as deviations from that path. Or at least that's what I've been hearing in our usage of this phrase.
But I was rereading the Schreber case, and it looks as if this phrase can be read in a different way. I just thought I'd outline how this other reading may be possible, just in case anyone else was confused like I was.
The phrase comes up in the rather schematic (but actually very, very delicately handled--just note the work quotes are doing) summary of repression which occurs in the third part of the case ("The Mechanisms of Paranoia"). This is where Freud splits repression into three phases, which we went over in class. Our phrase, though, occurs in the first of these--the fixation of the instincts (or drives). Freud says the following:

The first phase consists in fixation, which is the precursor and necessary condition of every "repression." Fixation can be described in this way. One instinct or instinctual component fails to accompany the rest along the anticipated normal path of development, and, in consequence of this inhibition in its development, it is left behind at a more infantile stage. The libidinal current in question then behaves in regard to later psychological structures as though it belonged to the system of the unconscious, as though it were repressed.
-Three Case Histories, 170

The original translation here doesn't really help in all the ways it should. Here's the German, to which I'll return:

Die erste Phase besteht in der Fixierung, dem Vorläufer und der Bedingung einer jeden "Verdrängung." Die Tatsache der Fixierung kann dahin ausgesprochen werden, daß ein Treib oder Treibanteil die also normal vorhergesehene Entwicklung nicht mitmacht und infolge dieser Entwicklungshemmung in einem infantileren Stadium verbleibt. Die betreffende libidnöse Strömung verhält sich zu den späteren psychischen Bildungen wie eine dem System des Unbewußten angehörige, wie eine verdrängte.
-Studienausgabe, Werke aus den Jahren 1909-1913, 303-4.

So, here are the two ways to read the phrase. First, as we've summarized above, one could read it like this:

Fixation goes like this: One instinct fails to become more sophisticated along with the rest of the instincts as the psyche is becoming an adult. As a consequence, the instinct is left behind in its child-like state: it is inhibited, it can't mature like the others. So the fixation is a point in the psyche where the instincts haven't taken on more adult aims. They keep perpetuating, abnormally, what normally only occurs in the child.

Though it might have ways it is correct, this might be a case of misreading, in the end. Perhaps Freud is relying less on normativity as he does here. And perhaps--here is the other way to read it--he is talking not about the development of the instincts of the child into the instincts of an adult, but about the development of the instinct itself, that is, the process of its seeking out of an object and trying to satisfy itself that he describes, for example, in "Instincts and their Vicissitudes." One would then read the phrase in this other way:

Fixation goes like this: One instinct fails to undergo the same process that we can expect of most instincts--welling up in the psyche from some point of origin in the body, choosing an object, directing itself towards the object or taking up an aim, and satisfying itself in the object (see "Instincts"). Instead, along the way towards satisfying itself, along this process or development of itself, its movement gets regularly inhibited. This repeatedly leaves the instinct at the stage of unfulfillment, where it just keeps trying to prepare itself for fulfillment. This stage, then, behaves towards other psychological structures which appear as time passes (the formation of other instincts, perhaps), in the same way as it did at the time it formed--it just keeps trying to fulfill itself as it did. So the fixation is where the instinct doesn't get satisfied, and so stays at a stage that is more infantile than the rest of the psyche.

Now, reading it this way doesn't get rid of the normative: in saying that Freud perhaps relies less on normativity as he did in our first reading, what I meant was that Freud perhaps relies on normativity differently. And here, we see what this difference could be: Freud in this second reading sees abnormality as an effect of the instinct's repeated frustration. When he uses the word "normal," in other words, he is not talking about normativity. He is talking about what we reasonably expect about instincts: that they will progress in a certain way and cultivate the tendency to do so. Now, you can call this normative, but that's much more of a reach than it was before, because Freud is really saying that the normative comes in as a result of all this--in the way the frustrated or inhibited instinct ends up acting in the same way towards its object, while other instincts keep getting formed. It is left at an infantile stage because it still can't find the right way to repeatedly satisfy itself--not because it doesn't follow some preset schema that just constitutes the "normal." So what Freud is saying in the phrase "anticipated normal path of development" is really "the regular tendency towards fulfillment we can generally expect from instincts"--though again, the normative is still an effect of the frustration of this process, or its becoming fixated. To put it another way, one can read the passage in the first, normative way I outlined only if we read it, before this, in this second way.
Does this make the difference clear? While I could give support for the second reading in some other works, like the Three Essays, "Instincts," or "Repression," I'd rather stick with this passage, which makes this much clearer in the German. Before we turn to that, however, we can see two aspects already in the English that provide evidence. Both turn on the understanding of "development," which in the above I have been trying to call "process" or "tendency towards fulfillment" to bring it away from the notion of child development or maturation.
Now, I haven't been doing this because "development" is the wrong word but because considering it in the sense of "child development" makes it sound like it is not the development of the instinct that is at issue. The psyche in general comes into focus instead. And--this is the crucial part--this is what makes the "anticipated normal path" sound normative. For if what is normally anticipated is not the sort of cultivation of a way to go about repeatedly satisfying a sexual instinct, say, but the progression of instincts along the paths that are laid down in normal children as they become adults--well, what is presupposed is some general notion of what the normal mind's maturation should look like. And while Freud has this notion, it only forms itself as a result of seeing instincts repeatedly find certain ways of satisfying themselves.
So, here is evidence for regarding "development" as the development of the instinct and not of the mind in general.
1) "In consequence of this inhibition in its development..." Freud is clearly saying that the "development" here is not the development of the psyche but the development or unfolding of the instinct. That is, the inhibition here is not an inhibition of development in general, but is an inhibition of the instinct's development.
2) The reference to "later psychological structures." If one wants to talk about maturation in general, and thus of normativity, this is where it gets done. The later psychological structures are the mature ones towards which the fixated development of instinct behaves in an infantile manner.
But now I can turn to the German. There is, first and foremost, the minor problem of "Entwicklung" being translated as "path of development" rather than just as "development"--I think this was an effort to try and avoid the precise problem we're looking at. Modifying the phrase will produce, then, "anticipated normal development." This will help us in a minute. In the meantime, we encounter more significant problems with "anticipation." I think this might be better understood in the sense of "expected." This would make the phrase under consideration something like "expected normal development." Finally, of course, there is "normal." Now, in the English, the placing of it makes it crucially appear to modify "development" without being connected in any way with "anticipated" or "expected," so what we hear is not something like "development that normally occurs, the development that we can expect" almost as if the two were interchangable. Instead, we get something like "the development of the normal is what we are expecting." Obviously I'm stretching a bit here, but I just want to make the difference clear. So I'd suggest moving things around to be "the normal, expected development," letting the "expected" sort of qualify "normal." There's probably better, other ways to do this, but let's move on and finish this up.
The other really problematic word is "accompany," to which is added the really unnecessary "the rest." To say that what is at issue is the instincts "failing to accompany the rest" makes it sound as if all the instincts get together in a group and don't have different, individual paths of their own. That is, to put it this way makes it sound as if what is at issue is the instincts getting together with the rest of the normal instincts, rather than each instinct taking an individual course of one's own that, normally, in a regular way we can expect, other instincts undergo. So when Freud says "daß ein Treib ... die Entwicklung ... nicht mitmacht," he is saying that an instinct doesn't participate in its development, not that one instinct doesn't somehow group itself together with the development of others, which the English rendering admits.