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Event Theory: A Piaget-Freud Integration
 9781315825588, 1315825589, 0898596181

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EVENT THEORY A P IA G E T -F R E U D IN T E G R A T IO N

IRENE FAST

I ) Routledge

S'V Taylor6cFrancisGroup

Event Theory: A Piaget-Freud Integration

C H IL D P S Y C H O L O G Y A series of books edited by David S. Palermo • Logical Abilities in Children Volume 1 • Organization o f Length and Class Concepts: Empirical Consequences

O sh e rsO n

o f a Piagetian Formalism Volume 2 • Logical Inference: Underlying Operations Volume 3 • Reasoning in Adolescence: Deductive Inference Volume 4 • Reasoning and Concepts D e P a l m a and F o i.E Y • Moral Development: Current Theory and Research S m i t h and F r a n k l i n • Symbolic Functioning in Childhood H a i t h • Rules That Babies Look By: The Organization o f Newborn Visual Activity F i e l d , S o s t e k , V i e t z e , and L i e d e r m a n • Culture and Early Interactions S h a p i r o and W e b e r • Cognitive and Affective Growth: Developmental Interaction K u c z a j • Language Development, V. I: Syntax and Semantics K u c z a j • Language Development, V. 2: Language, Thought, and Culture H a l f o r d • The Development o f Thought O l s o n and B i a l y s t o k • Spatial Cognition: The Structure and Development o f

Mental Representations o f Spatial Relations • Developmental Psychology: Historical and Philosophical Perspectives T h e C o n s o r t i u m F o r L o n g i t u d i n a l S t u d i e s • A s the Twig is Bent... Lasting Effects on Preschool Programs A NISFELD • Language Development fro m Birth to Three Y a w k e y and P e l l e g r i n i • Childs Play: Developmental and Applied M c L a u g h l i n • Second Language Acquisition in Childhood, V. I: Preschool Children, Second Edition M c L a u g h l i n • Second Language Acquisition in Childhood, V. 2: School-age Children, Second Edition F i s h b e i n • The Psychology o f Infancy and Childhood S p e n c e r , B r o o k i n s , and A l l e n • Beginnings: The Social and Affective Development o f Black Children F a s t • Event Theory: A Piaget-Freud Integration W o h l w i l l and van V l i e t — • Habitats fo r Children: The Impacts o f Density L e rn e r

EVENT THEORY: A PIAGET-FREUD INTEGRATION

IR EN E FAST The University of Michigan

with R o b ert E. E ra rd Orchard Hills Psychiatric Center C arol J . F itzp atrick Case Western Reserve University A nne E. Thom pson Harvard Graduate School of Education Linda Young The University of Michigan

R Routledge

Taylor & Francis Croup

NEW YORK AND LONDON

First P ublished by L aw rcnce E ribaum A sso ciates, In c ., P ublishers 365 B roadw ay H illsdale, N ew Jersey 07642 T ransferred to D igital Printing 2009 by R outlcdgc 270 M adison Ave, N ew York N Y 10016 27 C hurch R oad, H ove, F.ast S ussex, BN3 2FA C opyright © 1985 by L aw ren ce E ribaum A sso ciates, Inc. All rights reserved. N o part o f this book m ay be reproduced in any form , by p h o to stat, m icroform , retrieval sy stem , o r any other m eans, w ithout the prior w ritten p erm ission o f the publisher.

L ib rary o f C ongress C atalo g in g in P ublication D ata F ast, Irene. Event theory. (C hild psychology) Includes b ibliographies and indexes. 1. C hild p sychology. 2. S elf-p ercep tio n in children. 3. E m otions in child ren . 4 . S ocial in teraction in children. 5. P iaget, Je a n , 1 8 9 6 6. Freud, S igm und. 1856 1939. I. T itle II Series. B F 721.F 37 1985 155.4 85-1647 ISBN 0-89859-618-1

P u b lish e r’s Note The p u b lish er has gone to g reat lengths to en su re the quality o f th is reprint but points out that som e im perfections in the original m ay be apparent.

Contents

Preface

ix

Introduction Irene Fast Piaget: A Model of Self-Nonself Differentiation Piaget and Freud: A Differentiation Model of Infancy 6

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Development Beyond the Earliest Experience of Events: Objectification 10 Psychological Reorganization: Transitions out of Narcissism 12 Summary 13 References 1.

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Infantile Narcissism and the Active Infant Irene Fast A Proposed Reformulation Summary 29 References

2,

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Primary Process Cognition: A Reformulation Irene Fast Introduction 31 Freud’s Observations of the Primary and Secondary Processes 32 The Primary Processes as Archaic, as Distinguished from the Secondary Processes, and as the Cognitive Mode of Infancy 34 A Proposed Reformulation: A Model of Events Summary 52 References

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CONTENTS

The Development and Loss of Self Boundaries Irene Fast Introduction 55 The Self Boundary 56 The Self Boundary: An Event Perspective Summary 64 References 65

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A Framework for a Theory of Objective Relations Irene Fast Introduction 67 The Event Model of Object Relations

69

The Event Model and Psychoanalytic Psychology Summary 77 References

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Children’s Development out of Event-Bound Conceptions of Their Emotion Carol J. Fitzpatrick Hypotheses 82 Method 85 Results and Discussion 88 Construction and Application of Stage Criteria: A Developmental Line in Children’s Conceptions of Their Emotion 93 References 108

Concrete Thinking and the Categorical Attitude Robert E. Erard The Basic Deficit: Clinical Illustrations 112 Toward a Definition of Concrete Thinking 121 The Establishment of Similarity in Concrete Thinking Concrete Thinking and Event Theory 132 References 133

128

Omnipotence and Primary Creativity in Rorschach Responses: Toward a Replacement of Rapaport’s “ Distance” Concept Linda Young and Irene Fast Discussion Summary References

144 149 149

CO NTENTS

8.

The Nature of Emotion and Its Development Anne E. Thompson

151

A Cognitive-lntensional-Constructivist View of Emotion 152 The Nature of Emotion: A Comparison of Freud and Piaget 153 The Notion of a Developmental Line of Emotion The Differentiation and Integration of Emotion The Early Development of Emotion 159 The Development of Reversibility of Emotion “ Positive” and “ Negative” Emotions Individual Differences in the Decline of Eventlike Affect States 167 Concluding Remarks 168 References 170 Author Index Subject Index

175 179

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157 157 163

T h is p a g e in te n tio n a lly le ft b lank

Preface

The event model presented here attempts a framework for integrating psycho­ analytic and Piagetian psychologies centered in the notion that development occurs by the differentiation of self and nonself. At its base is Piaget’s fundamen­ tal and continuing view that all mental development (including the narrowly cognitive, the emotional and the interpersonal), from the earliest sensorimotor schemes to the most sophisticated levels of formal operations, occurs by the differentiation o f the subjective and the objective. Its aim is to understand phe­ nomena conceptualized in psychoanalytic terms in a model based on this Piage­ tian perspective, or, in other words, to provide an object-relational model for the development o f psychic structure. In this it differs from major available integrations of Piaget and Freud (e.g., those of Wolff and Greenspan). They are based on Hartmann’s conception of two lines of development: one, drive-based, of affect and object-relations; the other based on inborn mechanisms other than the drives, developments in such con­ flict-free ego functions as perception, memory and motor skills. Piaget’s contri­ butions are identified with the latter. The integrative focus is on the ways in which the child’s changing cognitive structures affect developments in affectively-based relationships to others. The event framework makes no such bifur­ cation. It proposes that the differentiation of self and nonself is basic to all facets o f development, the cognitive as well as the affective, in relation to the imper­ sonal as well as the interpersonal world. The model attempts to respond to two related needs of recognized importance in recent psychoanalytic thought. The first concerns a substantial and continuing interest in early developments in self structure— the sense of identity and rela­ tionships to other persons. It is widely accepted that these developments occur by ix

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PREFACE

differentiation out of an original, undifferentiated m other-child matrix. Howev­ er, the conceptualization o f that nondifferentiation and of the developments beyond it has proven to be frustratingly elusive. M oreover, it has been difficult to integrate observations organized in object-relational terms with others, clearly related, but formulated in other terms, as developm ents out of narcissism , pro­ gressions through the psychosexual stages, transitions from primary to secondary process cognition, or the establishment of ego and superego structures. The second concerns the possibility o f re-formulating psychoanalytic concep­ tions in ways that accom modate the full range and subtlety o f observations made within that framework, without its significant theoretical problems. Recent psy­ choanalytic interest here has increasingly turned to Piaget’s theories as providing an avenue for such reformulation. G enerally, though, Piaget continues to be seen as a cognitive theorist, his contribution not intrinsically in areas o f affective and social development. Ft is here that the event model takes a different perspective, one more congruent with Piaget’s own intentions. The term “ event” refers to the basic unit of experience posited in this model (Piaget’s “ action” ), registered, initially, in sensorim otor schem es. Following Piaget, developm ent out of the primitive experience of events is hypothesized to occur by the differentiation o f self and nonself. Such differentiation processes, and complementary ones o f integration, are posited to be central to all psychic development. Ft was the recognition that events (e .g ., incidents of nursing, visual focusing or grasping) could be shown to have the characteristics of infantile narcissism (including the nondifferentiation o f self and other and the part-object nature of each, the incomplete recognition o f a world external to the self, the absolute egocentricity of experience, and the phenomena of omnipotence and primary creativity) that set the stage for the developm ent o f the model. On the one hand it provided a way to formulate psychoanalytic conceptions of infantile narcissism without requiring, as Freud thought necessary, that the infant be oblivious to his or her environment. In this model it is the infant’s mental organization— not its noninvolvement with the environm ent— that results in the phenomena o f nar­ cissism. Such a conceptualization paves the way for the integration of psycho­ analytic notions about infancy with those o f psychology outside of psycho­ analysis. The extraordinary, recent progress o f infancy research has been predicated on the conception of infants in active and adaptive involvement with their environment from the time of birth. On the other hand, the implications o f the event model for understanding narcissistic residues in borderline disorders seemed more compatible with clinical observations than did the accepted psychoanalytic one. That is, the model showed more prom ise o f accom modating the clinical observation, at least in this limited area, than did Freud’s model. The papers in this volume elaborate these and other implications of the event model for issues of early developm ent and later disturbance. They represent only

PREFACE

xi

a beginning in this exploration, a focus on the implications of the event unit itself for understanding and generating testable hypotheses about phenomena concep­ tualized in other terms, both within and outside of psychoanalysis. Following the Introduction, the papers presented here are self-contained pieces and need not be read consecutively. Chapter 1 attempts to show that the notion of the event captures the meanings of both Piaget’s concept of the action and Freud’s concept of primary narcissistic experience as the base for develop­ ment, and that the event framework more accurately reflects observations of narcissism in borderline disorders than does Freud’s concept of primary nar­ cissism. Chapter 2 proposes that the phenomena of primary process cognition are integral to the experience of events, and that the event formulation offers pos­ sibilities of resolving persistent problems in understanding the relationships be­ tween the primary and secondary processes. Chapter 3 addresses the question of self-boundary formation and its loss in psychotic disorganization, suggesting that it can be more usefully conceptualized in terms of differentiation and psychotic dedifferentiation than in terms of attachment to and detachment from the external world. Chapter 4 proposes the event as the basic unit in a general psychoanalytic theory of object relations. Chapter 5 tests hypotheses generated by event theory concerning children’s ideas about their emotions and finds them to be supported in empirical observation. Chapter 6 offers a critique of traditional approaches to understanding primitive cognition, and proposes an event-based framework for understanding development from primitive to advanced cognition. Chapter 7 shows that omnipotence and primary creativity can be scored successfully in responses to the ambiguous stimuli o f the Rorschach Inkblots, and that hypoth­ esized relationships between them can be shown. Chapter 8 sets forth a proposed developmental line o f affect ranging from event-centered thought through the development of reversibility, and of self-attribution of affect, and draws out some implications for empirical studies of young children’s understanding of emotional states.

Acknowledgments The ideas in this book have developed in the course of a number of years. They crystallized in the context of work individually and in seminars with interested students. Among them Anne E. Thompson, Carol Fitzpatrick and Robert E. Erard were central, both in stimulating my own thought and in making indepen­ dent contributions. Each has a chapter in this volume representing directions of personal interest based on or stimulated by the model. I appreciate the permission from the editors of The Annual of Psychoanalysis to reprint the paper that, with minor alterations, stands as Chapter 2 of this volume.

T h is p a g e in te n tio n a lly le ft b lank

Introduction

Irene Fast

Integrations o f Piagctian and psychoanalytic psychology have tended to view Piaget as providing a theory of cognitive developm ent which usefully contributes to the understanding o f phenomena formulated in psychoanalytic terms. Rapaport set the stage for such integrations when he included papers by both Hartmann and Piaget in his Organization and Pathology o f Thought (1951) and, in his extensive notes, suggested areas o f congruence between them. H artm ann’s style o f presenting his model o f ego psychology (1958) invites a particular way of integrating the two theories. He urges that psychoanalytic theory focus not only on the conflict between structures (id, ego, and superego), but also on the ways in which individuals come to terms with their environment. It should attend not only to conflict but to conflict-free spheres o f the ego which serve reality adaptation. These conflict-free spheres include ego apparatuses which serve perception, mem ory, motility, and so forth. They do not develop, initially, in infants unaware of their surround, but, from birth, guarantee the relation of human beings to their environment. Conflict-free spheres originate not in the drives, but in inborn mechanisms autonom ous o f the drives, and develop by maturation and experience rather than by conflict and defense. Hartmann, consequently, proposes two lines of developm ent. One concerns affective and interpersonal growth and consists in the developm ent o f drives by conflict and defense originating in an infantile period of narcissistic unawareness of the environment. The other line of developm ent concerns such functions as perception, memory and motor skills. It originates in inborn mechanisms other

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than the drives, proceeds by “ m aturation” or “ experience,” and occurs from the beginning in adaptive engagement with the impersonal environment. Piaget’s contributions readily find a place in this model. They provide a framework for understanding the infant’s early adaptive engagement with the impersonal, affectively neutral world. The two most complexly elaborated integrations of Piagetian and psycho­ analytic form ulations, those o f W olff (1960) and of Greenspan (1979) make use of this framework. W olff (1960) undertakes his comparison of infant develop­ ment in Piaget’s sensorim otor stages with psychoanalytic conceptions of infancy explicitly in the context of ego psychology and “ the nature and development of inborn ego m echanism s” (p. 7). He suggests that Piagctian and psychoanalytic formulations apply to differing but overlapping aspects of behavior: the former to the development o f intelligence and early reality adaptation, the latter to drive derivative and affective aspects o f behavior. The formulations complement each other, Piaget’s referring to behavior patterns activated when organic needs are not pressing; psychoanalytic approaches referring to periods “ when the influ­ ences of drive tensions are making themselves felt [and] the infant is so occupied with inner forces that he docs not attend to the external w orld” (p. 64). G reenspan’s (1979) aim is to propose a theory which unites cognitive and affective developm ent, the former represented by Piaget, the latter by psycho­ analysis. He proposes two ego boundaries oriented to “ different stimulus w orlds,” an outer and an inner one. The outer one is concerned with those organizations o f experience “ which relate more (or less) to the impersonal, often inanimate w orld,” the inner one to those “ which relate more (or less) to the stimulus world connected to drives, wishes, feelings, internal representations and affectively colored human relationships” (p. 129). lie associates the outer boundary with cognitive structures, environmental adaptation, and development by the maturational unfolding o f genetic and constitutional factors; the inner one with the unconscious world, the realm of internal stimuli arising from inside the body. In G reenspan’s view the cognitive and the affective represent two distinct lines of developm ent which differentiate out of an original common matrix. Throughout developm ent they function in relationship to one another: inner boundary factors o f em otion, conflict, and defense affecting cognitive develop­ ment, and levels o f cognitive developm ent important in determining the way in which individuals are able to organize affective stimuli, the forms o f defense available to them , and the clinical interpretations they are able to understand. The Piagetian conceptualizations central in these integrations are those o f the successive cognitive stages and their characteristics. Cognitive developm ent is seen to follow a path distinct from affective and interpersonal developm ent and occurs from the beginning in adaptive engagem ent with the (largely) impersonal environment. It involves the developm ent of affectively neutral ego functions through “ m aturation” and “ experience.”

INTRODUCTION

3

PIAGET: A MODEL OF SELF-NONSELF DIFFERENTIATION The papers included in this volume explore an alternate strategy for integrating Piagetian with psychoanalytic psychology. The strategy moves back from cog­ nitive stages them selves to Piaget’s conceptions o f the processes by which they are established, to see if such an approach might also be profitable. Throughout his working life Piaget maintained that a basic issue in the study o f intelligence1 is the developm ent of the individual’s ability to differentiate the subjective and the objective, the internal and the external, the psychical and the physical. This ability to differentiate is central in Piaget’s early investigations of the developm ent of language and thought in children (1926), and o f their concep­ tions of causality (1930), and o f the world (1929), and it remains basic to his subsequent studies o f infancy and to the developm ent of his stage theory of cognitive development. Piaget (1929) describes his interest as one o f examining “ the boundary the child draws between the self and the external w orld” (p. 34). He aims to inquire “ into the relations existing between the mind of the child and the external w orld” (1930, p. 237). In a later presentation of his theory as a whole (1970) he emphasizes yet again that the central factor in the developm ent of the individual’s ability to know is his capacity to distinguish accurately that which is subjective and that which is objective. Developments in this capacity arc represented in the cognitive stages, beginning with the sensory-m otor period o f infancy and continuing through the highest levels o f formal operations. This perspective invites integration with psychoanalysis in a different way from that based on H artm ann’s ego psychology. It invites attention to the pro­ cesses of differentiation between self and objects, of which Piaget’s cognitive stages are the product, and to integration with those aspects of psychoanalytic psychology in which such differentiations arc salient. It is a perspective which draws attention to the self rather than to impersonal ego functions. Throughout his work Piaget maintains the view that the self is formed in differentiation processes o f which self is one product and the indi­ vidual’s construct o f the world is the other. The feeling of subjectivity and inwardness felt by adults depends on their being aware o f thoughts as “ distinct from the things thought about, distinct from the physical world in general, and more internal and intimate than the body itself” (1930, p. 242). The gradually developing consciousness of self is “ essentially a feeling of the personal quality

'P iaget’s use o f the term "intelligence” should not be confused with one that equates its meaning with a narrowly conceived capacity for reasoning. His interest is a general epistcmological one: how individuals come to know. In psychoanalytic terms his interest might be seen to be in the psychic apparatus as a whole rather than in an aspect o f it identified with reasoning, cognition, or secondary process thought.

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of one’s desires, inclinations, affections, e tc .” (1929, p. 127). In the course of developments out of egocentrism , when objects become independent entities, the child’s own body, “ instead of being considered the center of the world, becomes an object like any other” (1970, p. 705). Developments in the child’s organiza­ tion of permanent objects, space, temporal sequences and causality contribute, at about 12 to 18 months of age, to “ the veritable Copernican revolution” in which the child who previously considered him self the center of the universe now recognizes him self to be “ only one particular member of the set o f the other mobile objects which compose his universe” (1970, p. 705). Such conceptions of the “ subjective,” the “ mind of the child” or the “ self” are not ones that emphasize autonomous ego functions that the individual may employ in his adaptation to an impersonal world; rather, they invite consideration of a self established in the course of self-nonsclf differentiation. It is a self which gradually becomes conscious of itself, is experienced as inward, recognizes itself to be one among many selves, and accurately attributes to itself its own desires, inclinations and, affections. In this perspective the world external to the self, similarly, is quite different from that implied in understandings of Piaget's formulations in the context of the conflict-free ego sphere. The world of objects includes both the human and the impersonal, rather than, as in the model o f the autonomous functions, only the impersonal world. Accurate knowledge of the world is not the result of the healthy maturation of inborn and impersonal mechanisms; it can only occur in relation to the development of the self: “ In order to be objective, one must have become conscious of on e’s “ I” . O bjective knowledge can only be conceived in relation to subjective, and a mind that was ignorant of itself would inevitably tend to put into things its own pre-notions and prejudices, whether in the domain of reasoning, of immediate judgm ent, or even o f perception” (Piaget, 1930, pp. 2 4 1-242). Knowledge o f the external world is not accurately registered on the mind in some relatively automatic way. Individuals construct their world in the course o f self­ nonself differentiation. At every level of developm ent this structuring is a function of the degree to which they are able to differentiate the subjective and the objective. Affect, in Piaget’s model, is integral to all the individual’s experience and to the development of all mental structures. In Piaget’s view, actions (the indi­ vidual’s interactions with the environment) are the fundamental units of experi­ ence, beginning in the sensorim otor actions o f infancy and continuing in the interiorized actions of later stages to the most sophisticated levels of the formal operations. Every action has two aspects, a cognitive one and an affective one. The cognitive is the structural aspect, the affective, the energic one. As Piaget (1981) emphasizes in his recently translated series o f lectures on affect, delivered at the Sorbonne in 1953-54, there is no cognition without affect, and no affect without cognition: “ Affective states that have no cognitive elements are never seen, nor are behaviors found that are wholly cognitive” (p. 5).

INTRODUCTION

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In the major body o f his work Piaget addresses him self primarily to the structural (cognitive) aspects o f actions. His model of actions, however, has implications for affect structure and developm ent as well. It implies that the individual is affectively engaged with his environment from birth. All affect occurs in the interaction of self and nonself. Affect is integral to the establish­ ment of all cognitive structures. And affect itself is structured by the cognitive organizations o f the successive cognitive stages. Such implications of Piaget’s model are more in tune with Freud’s own formulations than with H artm ann’s modifications. In Freud’s model the affec­ tively motivated individual is central to all developm ent. Cognitive developm ent occurs in an affective context. And, as Thompson convincingly argues, although in Freud’s formal theoretical conception cognition is not integral to the structur­ ing o f affect, his clinical observations implicitly accept that all affect is struc­ tured cognitively (Thom pson, 1980). Finally, this Piagetian perspective docs not invite integration with a psycho­ analytic model that proposes two lines o f developm ent, one drive- (affect-) based and initially without environmental involvement, the other based on inborn mechanisms and maturing in adaptive engagement with the environment. Piaget (1930) proposes that all psychological structure develops out o f earlier un­ differentiated experience. “ Originally the child puts the whole content o f con­ sciousness on the same plane and draws no distinction between the ‘1’ and the external w orld” (p. 242). “ Self and world are one” (p. 244). Children, Piaget (1970) states, “ lack any differentiation between an external world which would be composed o f objects independent of the subject and an internal or subjective w orld” (p. 704). This undifferentiated experience occurs in the context of the infant’s active engagem ent with the environment. All subsequent developments in cognition, affect, and object relations occur in processes o f sclf-nonsclf differentiation. In sum, the papers in this volume propose a strategy for integrating Piagetian with psychoanalytic psychologies different from those which identify P iaget’s formulations with the conflict-free sphere in H artm ann’s model o f the ego. Those modes o f integration focus on P iaget’s cognitive stages as impersonal functions originating in “ inborn m echanism s,” developing largely by processes of matu­ ration, and occurring in adaptive orientation to the external world from the beginning. Such aspects of cognition are seen as occurring in a different line of development than affect-based developm ents, the latter originating in biological drives, developing by processes of conflict and defense, and, in early life, occurring in the absence of the child’s involvement with the environment. The proposed strategy moves back from Piaget’s cognitive stages to his con­ ception o f the processes by which they are established: the differentiation in the individual’s experience of the subjective and the objective. From this vantage point, Piaget’s model is seen to be one o f self-nonself differentiation rather than one of developm ent of impersonal ego functions. Integrations are facilitated with

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psychoanalytic formulations o f self-other differentiation rather than with the conflict-free ego sphere of H artm ann’s adaptive model. Cognition is not viewed as a line o f developm ent distinct from affect and object relations, with cognition understood in Piagetian term s, the other two in psychoanalytic ones. Instead all three lines o f developm ent are seen to be aspects of the same process and to develop from birth in the context o f individuals’ active and adaptive engagement with their environment.

PIAGET AND FREUD: A DIFFERENTIATION MODEL OF INFANCY This volume explores applications of the proposed strategy to a limited concep­ tual domain, that of the earliest developm ental unit o f experience in Piaget’s model. It investigates implications of this unit for psychoanalytic conceptions of infancy, primarily the phenomena of infantile narcissism, and it outlines devel­ opments beyond this earliest unit elaborating the implications o f the model for transitions out o f narcissism. This is the explicit focus o f the first four papers, of which I am the author. The subsequent four essays individually authored by colleagues, strike out in directions o f personal interest based on or congruent with this focus.

The Infant's Interaction w ith Its Environm ent A central problem in the integration o f psychoanalytic with Piagctian psychology is Freud’s conception o f primary narcissism which posits an infant oblivious to the environment until about age tw o, when its new interest in its surround results in the transitions out o f narcissism. Freud’s aim, in elaborating his formulation of infancy, was to account devclopm cntally for his observations of disturbed adults. Infants’ experience, he proposed, is centered in the rise and fall of tension states (represented psychically as affects), and occurs without involvement with the world around it. The infant experiences itself as the center o f existence. Self is all. There is no differentiation between self and nonself. The infant takes its own experience (in thought or wish) for reality. Cognition (the primary processes) is drive (affect) dominated and proceeds by processes o f condensation and dis­ placement. M otor activity is not instrumental action aimed at satisfaction in reality, but serves for the discharge o f (affective) tension. Toward the end o f its second year, the child becomes aware of the external world. A major psychological reorganization follows that spells the end o f infan­ tile narcissism. The child, previously seeing itself as the center of existence, comes to recognize itself as one among many objects. The external world rather than its own inner experience becomes the criterion for reality. Action becomes oriented toward adaptive engagem ent with the environment. Thought can occur

INTRODUCTION

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independently o f action, and secondary process cognition, adapted to reality, replaces the primary processes. Freud was dissatisfied with this conception. Nevertheless, it seemed to him that his clinical observations implied an original psychic organization of self­ experience, cognition, and affect which does not take account of, and is not adapted to, its environment (1911, 2 1 9 -2 0 , see footnote 4). The psychological changes at about age tw o, m oreover, seemed to him to represent precisely the phenomena to be expected when the child does become aware of the world around it and takes reality into account. Integrations of psychoanalytic with Piagetian theories must come to terms with this problem: a conception o f the infant as uninvolved with its environment until about age two (Freud) versus an infant actively engaged with its surround from the beginning (Piaget). W olff and G reenspan resolve this problem by following H artm ann’s modification o f Freud that leaves Freud’s conception o f a drive-based infantile narcissism occurring in the absence of reality orientation largely intact, and adds a conflict-free sphere to accommodate reality-adapted developments in perception, memory, motility, and so on. T heir integrations permit the notion o f an infant actively engaged with the environment in some areas, those o f the conflict-free sphere, identified with Piaget’s cognitive stages, and uninvolved with the environment in those other areas associated with infant states in which the child is so occupied with inner forces that it does not attend to the outer world (W olff), or those areas associated with the realm of drive-related stimuli arising from within the body (Greenspan). The present strategy finds a different solution. It proposes that the phenomena Freud believed to require that the infant be uninvolved with its environment can be understood as consequences o f the infant’s nondifferentiation o f self and nonself in its active engagem ents with its surround. Processes of self-nonself differentiation, beginning at birth, lead to a psychological reorganization toward the end of the second year o f life, whose characteristics are in major ways those Freud attributed to the transitions out of infantile narcissism .2

The Basic U nit o f Experience: The Event In Piaget’s model the basic units of experience and behavior are actions. The earliest actions are those o f grasping, visual focusing, sucking, and so forth, which are represented in the reflexes present at birth. Each action includes a structural (cognitive) and an energic (affective) aspect. In each action the infant

2Piaget argues for a similar point of view with regard to one aspect of narcissism, the child’s belief in the automatic fulfillment o f its wishes. He argues that the child’s belief in the all-powerfulness o f thought may have to do with a special affectivc quality, as Freud suggests, but that it occurs when the child “ does not distinguish his thought from that of others, not his self from the external world” (1929, p. 152).

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is actively engaged with its environment; however, self and environment (non­ self) are initially undifferentiated aspects of the action unit. Actions are repre­ sented psychically in sensorim otor schemes with similar ones represented to­ gether in schemes discrete from one another. Among the earliest of these, identified by Piaget on the basis o f their structural (cognitive) sim ilarity, are grasp schemes, vision schem es, and sucking schemes. Schemes organized on the basis o f energic (affective) similarity have heretofore received little attention. It is these units of behavior whose relevance for psychoanalytic conceptions of infancy are elaborated in this volume and outlined in this chapter. Objectifica­ tion, the differentiation process by which self and objects are differentiated out of the global action unit, is traced as it leads to the psychological reorganization toward the end o f the second year. Aspects o f that reorganization, conceived of as the transition from sensorim otor to preoperational intelligence (Piaget) or the transitions out of narcissism (Freud) are explored as they reflect developm ent out of this basic action unit. For present purposes the basic unit of experience will be called an event. The conceptualization o f the event is intended to be true to Piaget’s model, to at­ tribute no characteristics to it which are incompatible with his formulations. The introduction of a new term is warranted, however, because, in the pursuit o f the particular integrations set forth in this volum e, emphases are different than Piaget’s, and inferences will be drawn that he did not draw. An event (of grasping, of visual focusing, of sucking) is an interaction o f the infant with its environment: infant-grasps-finger-of-father, infant-gazes-at-mother’s-face. Therefore from the earliest actions, represented in the reflexes present at birth the basic unit of experience is an object relationship: an in fa n t-in interaction-w ith-the-en v iro n m en t unit. All psychological development is hy­ pothesized to be a product o f the integration and differentiation of such units. In the early experience o f events, self and nonself are undifferentiated. Hach event is an action (sucking, grasping, etc.), and mental representation occurs in action schemes. Self and other are initially undifferentiated aspects of actions, without independent mental representation. The infant has no subjective sense of either itself or of objects: Its experience is o f an action, not of a self or an object acted upon, it is this nondifferentiation of self and nonself in action events which is hypothesized, in this m odel, to result in the phenomena attributed in psycho­ analytic psychology to infantile narcissism. Each event is an affectively motivated unit of experience. In Freud’s view the centrality of affect in infancy is a function of the infant’s responsiveness only to the rise and fall of its tension states and obliviousness to the environment. In the proposed m odel, affect is the energizing aspect of every action (event). Affect, therefore, (together with the cognitive or structural aspect of actions) is basic to the child’s every interaction with the environment. As affect participates in determining the similarity o f actions (e.g ., grasp actions identical in their cog­ nitive or structural aspect, may differ in their affective aspect if one occurs in the

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context o f pleasure, the oth er, o f fear), it contributes to the form ation o f schem es and so to the establishm ent o f the earliest m ental structures. A ctions are in significant w ays not instrum ental acts aim ed at the alteration o f reality. Freud attributes this absence o f goal oriented action to the ch ild ’s unin­ volvem ent with the w orld around it. T he event model finds its origin in the nondifferentiation o f self and nonself. Because self and object are not yet differ­ entiated out o f the global event, actions cannot be attributed to an intending self and are not directed instrum entally to a desired goal. Piaget aptly term ed actions circular reactions: once activated, they continue until internal equilibrium is reached, not, in early life, until an intended goal is achieved. Intentional and goal-oriented actions require the differentiation out o f the event o f both an intending self and an object or goal recognized as independent o f self. C ognition, as im plied by the experience o f events, has m ajor characteristics w hich Freud attributes to the prim ary processes. As is true o f experience under­ stood in prim ary process term s, events are registered m entally as affectively m otivated experiences, occurring in the present and taken uncritically as real. C ondensation and displacem ent, the m ajor modes o f cognitive organization in the prim ary processes, appear to be reflected in the organization o f sensorim otor schem es. In them , as in the prim ary processes, affect plays a central role in determ ining mental connections am ong experiences: affectively sim ilar events occur together in schem es; affectively dissim ilar ones, in schem es discrete from one another. In the earliest schem es, as in prim ary process cognition, subject and object are o f no central im portance. Schem es represent affectively m otivated actions, for exam ple, w hether an object grasped is a ring, a finger, o r a blanket edge is irrelevant to the action’s registration in a grasp schem e. It is in this sense that the infinite displaceability o f objects, that Freud describes as typical o f the prim ary processes, is represented in the event m odel. D isplacem ent occurs in this m odel, not because the infant is oblivious to the world o f objects and atuned only to its affective states, but because the infant, actively engaged with its environ­ m ent, has not differentiated self and object out o f its actions. T he nascent self and object, in events, have the part-object characteristics now generally attributed to the narcissistic stage o f infancy in psychoanalytic psychology. Particular self- and object-representations are tied to the action schem es in which they occur. The ring that is grasped and the ring that is sucked are not yet subjectively the sam e ring; the self that grasps the ring and the one that sucks it are not the sam e self. Self as thinker is not differentiated from the nonself, that w hich is thought about. As a result the infant lives entirely w ithin its im m ediate experience; nothing exists for it beyond the presently occurring action. T herefore, subjec­ tively, the narcissistic infant is central to existence. In P iaget’s (1951/1937) terms objects continually com e into existence in consequence o f the infan t’s actions and subside from existence w hen the action is over. In F reu d ’s (1914) strikingly sim ilar conception, the experience itself is the guarantor o f reality. The

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differences between Piaget and Freud in this regard arise at a higher level of conceptualization, the former attributing the infant’s subjective centrality to the nondifferentiation of the thinking self from the objects o f thought, the latter to the literal involvement o f the infant only with itself. Illusions o f omnipotence arc conscqucnces o f this nondiffcrcntiation. One aspect of such illusions is individuals’ uncritical belief (or demand) that their thoughts be matched by actualization in reality. The early experience o f events appears to provide a normal analogue for such an illusion. That is, when the infant can think o f nothing beyond that being expressed in action, its thoughts are inevitably matched by reality. For an infant that cannot cognize infant-gazing-atmother’s-face except when it is actually occurring, its thought is always matched by reality. It is only later, when thought is freed from bondage to the present event, and imagination is unlimited by actuality that it is illusory to expect thoughts to be accompanied by the realities to which they refer. Sim ilarly, the illusion that it is o n e’s own experiencing that bestows existence on an occurrence or object, and that the withdrawal o f attention rem oves its reality (W innicott’s illusion of primary creativity) is a fact o f infant experience. As long as thought and that which is thought about are not differentiated, the infant can experience as real only that which is part o f its present action, and the reality ends when the action terminates. Only with the gradual separation of thought and its referents can the world o f objects become permanent, and the illusion of primary creativity be recognized as such. In sum, the event is posited as the basic unit o f experience. Events are the actions from which Piaget traces all the developm ent in his cognitive stages. The notion of the event appears also to accommodate major phenomena Freud at­ tributed to infancy. It does so in a model which finds these phenomena to be consequences o f the infant’s nondiffercntiation o f self and nonself in its active engagements with its environm ent, rather than o f the infant’s literal noninvolve­ ment with the environment in infancy.

DEVELOPMENT BEYOND THE EARLIEST EXPERIENCE OF EVENTS: OBJECTIFICATION This volume begins to trace developm ents by differentiation beyond the primi­ tive event. It hypothesizes that these differentiations can be shown to result in the changes attributed in psychoanalytic psychology to the transitions out of nar­ cissism at about age two. These transitions can be understood as consequences of the differentiated articulation o f a self and a world o f realities recognized as independent o f self, rather than requiring the hypothesis o f a child newly aware, at about age tw o, o f a world o f which it had been literally oblivious until then. That is, the event model proposes that it is not the child’s awareness of the world, but the child’s awareness o f the w orld’s independence o f self, that results in the psychological revolution at the close o f the second year o f life.

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Piaget elaborates the processes o f objectification as particularly significant in the early differentiation o f self and the independent world. Objectification occurs when two schemes are activated simultaneously. For example, when, at about three months o f age, the infant can grasp the ring it sees, the simultaneous activation o f the grasp and vision schemes results in their integration. The ring, previously a seeable in one scheme and a graspable in the other, now becomes a sceable-graspable, and is never again an altogether undifferentiated aspect of either a vision or a grasp scheme. This process results in the differentiation of self and nonself. As the nonself (the ring) becomes a seeable-graspable, it is to that extent differentiated from and independent of the child’s actions (of both grasp and vision schemes). Sim ilarly, when the child grasps the ring it sees, self as seer and self as grasper occur simultaneously, and the self begins to be differentiated out o f both vision and grasp events. That is, in the simultaneous activation o f the vision and grasp schemes self and other are differentiated out of the global action event and from each other. The integration of part-selves and part-objects into wholes is an aspect o f the same process. The simultaneous occurrence of the self as seer and as grasper, which differentiates self from the vision and grasp schem es, also represents the integration of part-selves into a larger whole as seer-grasper. The ring as a seeable-graspable, similarly, not only differentiates the ring from the global action schemes and from the self, but begins its constitution as a whole object. Thus self-nonself differentiations and the integration o f part-selves and partobjects into wholes may be seen as two aspects o f the same process in infancy. They occur when discrete schemes are activated simultaneously. It may be, indeed, that the objectification processes of infancy provide a prototype for the integration of self and of objects, and self-other differentiation throughout life. Among the objectification processes most salient to the reorganization at about age tw o, are those in which intention (self) and causality (nonself), and thought (self) and that which is thought about (nonself), are differentiated out of events. At about six months o f age, Piaget observed, early aspects of the differ­ entiation o f intention and causality out o f the global action can be detected. In “ making interesting sights la st,” the infant might watch a mobile dancing above its crib, wriggle when it stops, and watch intently as the mobile dances again. The infant self as “ intender,” or center o f will, is being added to the developing whole. At this point the mobile is still largely an action object, its existence a function of the event in which it occurs, and its character defined by the infant’s actions (e.g ., the ring as a graspable or a seeable). In the course of the next months, however, the child becomes increasingly aware that objects are gov­ erned by their own rules and begins to explore their nature (in experiments with toy cars on an inclined plane, the building of block towers, etc.). Objects as subject to impersonal causality are being differentiated from the self as center of intention, and both self (as intentional) and objects (as rolling, balancing on the block below, etc.) become more completely integrated wholes.

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At about nine months, the infant’s capacity to hunt for a hidden object signals another advance in objectification. Earlier, an object not part of a present action is not within existence for the infant. For the infant to search for a hidden object, it must have existence even when it is not being acted upon. The constant object independent of the child’s self is being constituted. Complcmentarily, for the search to occur, the infant must also be able to “ think” or imagine an object in its absence. Self as thinker, independent o f the objects of thought, is being established. In sum, objectification represents a major early process of differentiation out of global actions. It occurs when two schemes are activated simultaneously. It can be seen to represent, sim ultaneously, the differentiation of self and other out o f events and the integration o f part-selves and part-objects into increasingly complex wholes. Among the differentiations of particular salience for the psy­ chological reorganization toward the end of the second year are self as thinker and center o f will in relation to the objects o f thought governed by impersonal causality.

PSYCHOLOGICAL REORGANIZATION: TRANSITIONS OUT OF NARCISSISM In both Freud’s mode! and, the event model the child’s recognition o f a world independent of self is central to the transitions out o f narcissism. In Freud’s theory the emergence from narcissism is attendant on the child’s new awareness of the environment of which it had previously been unaware. In the event model the awareness of a world independent o f self is a consequence of self-nonself differentiation: the world although fam iliar since birth, is recognized, with in­ creasing com pleteness, to be external to the self. Central to the “ turn to reality” in Freud’s model is the beginning o f reality testing, which is the consequence o f the child’s new awareness of its environ­ ment and resulting adaptation to it. In the event model the infant’s behavior is reality adapted from the beginning. The testing o f reality, however, becomes necessary as a result o f self-nonself differentiation. That is, in early event experi­ ences, when thought and action are undifferentiated, the infant’s thought is automatically validated in the action; however, when thoughts become in­ creasingly free of action in present reality, their validity can no longer be as­ sumed on the basis o f action and new criteria must be found for judging their merit. In psychoanalytic terms, thoughts must be tested against the relevant realities. Secondary process cognition replaces the primary processes. In Freud’s model, the child’s thought can occur independently o f action, and be evaluated for its appropriateness before being acted upon. The event model finds the child’s capacity for thought independent o f action central to the psychological

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reorganization (the transition from sensorim otor to preoperational thought). It proposes that this capacity is a consequence o f self-nonself differentiations: the differentiation o f thought (self) and what is thought about (nonself). In Freud’s model the attainm ent o f secondary process cognition represents the beginning of mature thought. In Piaget’s model the attainment o f symbolic thought (i.e., thought independent o f its referents) is a significant step in the complex develop­ ments leading to the capacity for formal operations. Children’s sense o f their own centrality in existence and the illusion of om ­ nipotence are no longer supported by experience; to Freud, the infant has become aware o f a reality to which it must submit. But in the proposed view it is the differentiations of self and nonself that call these illusions into question. When self and nonself are undifferentiated and children live within their presently occurring experience, they must assume that their actions bring events into cxistcnce and that when their attention moves elsewhere, the event ccascs to exist. However, when self as thinker and center o f will are differentiated from objects, and the latter arc known to continue in existence independent o f one’s thoughts and to be governed by their own rules, not by one’s intentions, the infant’s sense o f being the source and center of all existence is no longer vali­ dated in experience. W hat had been a fact o f daily expcricnce can be recognizcd as illusion. Finally, instrumental action becomes possible. Freud found the narcissistic absence o f goal-oriented action in infancy to result from the infant’s sensitivity only to the rise and fall o f its tension states and its noncathcxis of its environ­ ment. The event model finds the infant adaptively engaged with its environment from birth. The egocentric absence of instrumental action has its causes in a different source: the lack o f an intending self and a world recognized as indepen­ dent o f self. It is with the differentiation of self as thinker and center o f intention from an independent world run by its own rules that goal-oriented action be­ comes possible. In sum the event model proposes that the transitions out o f narcissism depend, as Freud proposes, on the infant’s recognition of a world external to itself. But it suggests that this recognition is the product o f self-nonself differentiation, and that the changes Freud attributes to the infant’s newly becoming cognizant of its environment can be understood as differentiation outcomes.

SU M M A R Y The proposed strategy for integrating psychoanalytic and Piagetian psychologies takes as its focus Piaget’s conception o f self-nonself differentiation as cr rural in the individual’s developing capacity to know, rather than his conception o f the cognitive stages which are the products of the differentiation processes. This volume explores some implications o f this strategy for the integration o f Piage-

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tian and psychoanalytic conceptions o f infancy, o f w hich the most central is the reform ulation o f psychoanalytic conceptions o f infantile narcissism in a self­ nonself differentiation model congruent with P iaget’s form ulations. The model proposes that the phenom ena o f infantile narcissism do not require the conception o f an infant literally oblivious to its environm ent, as Freud pro­ poses, but can be understood as functions o f the nondifferentiations o f self and nonself. The event is proposed as the basic unit o f experience. It reflects Piaget’s conceptions o f the earliest actions and their organization in schem es that are the foundation o f all mental structures. The event has, as w ell, m ajor characteristics o f narcissistic experience: the nondifferentiation o f self and other, experience as affectively m otivated, prim ary process cognition, the infant as subjectively cen­ tral to existence, illusions o f om nipotence and prim ary creativity, and the ab­ sence o f instrum ental action. Processes o f objectification represent the earliest differentiations out o f events and lead to psychological reorganization at about age two. A m ong the differ­ entiations salient to the eventual reorganization, are self as center o f thought and intention in relation to objects (nonself) w hose existence is independent o f o n e ’s thoughts and whose actions are not governed by o n e ’s intentions but by im per­ sonal rules. It is these differentiation processes, rather than the c h ild ’s new aw areness of the environm ent, w hich are seen to account for the transitions out o f narcissism . R ather than the child becom ing aw are o f an external world the child becom es aware that the world is external. C hanges in reality testing, cognition, and instrum ental action can be seen as differentiation outcom es.

REFERENCES Freud, S. (1911). Form ulations on the two principles o f mental functioning. In J. Strachcy (L-.d. and trans.), The standard edition o f the com plete psychological works o f Sigm und F reud (Vol. 12, pp. 2 1 8 -2 2 6 ). London: Hogarth Press. (Original work published in 1911) Freud, S. (1914). On narcissism: An introduction (V ol. 19, pp. 2 3 5 -2 3 9 ). London: H ogarth Press. (Original work published in 1914) G reenspan, S. I. (1979). Intelligence an d adaptation: An integration o f psychoanalytic and develop­ m ental psychology. Psychological Issues M onograph, 4 7 -4 8 . Hartmann, H. (1958). Ego psychology a n d the problem o f adaptation. New York: International U niversities Press. Piaget, J. (1926). The language a n d thought o f the child. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Piaget, J. (1929). The ch ild 's conception o f the world. T otow a, NJ: Littlefield, Adams and Co. Piaget, J. (1930). The c h ild 's conception o f physical causality. London: Kegan Paul. Piaget, J. (1951). Principle factors determ ining intellectual evolution from childhood to adult life. In D. Rapaport (E d .), O rganization and pathology o f thought. New York: Columbia University Press. (Original work published in 1937) Piaget, J. (1970). Piaget’s theory. In P. M ussen (E d.), C arm ichael’s m anual o f child psychology (Vol. 1, 3rd e d ., pp. 7 0 3 -7 2 2 ). New York: W iley.

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Piaget, J. (1 9 8 1). Intelligence a n d affectivity: Their relationship during child developm ent. Palo Alto, CA: Annual Review s Inc. (Translated and edited by T. A. Crown and C. F-. Kaego) Rapaport, D. (1951). O rganization a n d pathology o f thought. New York: C olum bia University Press. Thom pson, A. (1980). Em otion, cognition, a n d object: Philosophical and psychological views. Unpublished m anuscript, University o f M ichigan. W olff, P. (1960). The developm ental psychologies o f Jean Piaget and psychoanalysis. Psychologi­ cal Issues, M onograph # 5 , International U niversities Press.

T h is p a g e in te n tio n a lly le ft b lank

Infantile Narcissism and the A ctive Infant

Irene Fast

Psychoanalytic theory has been characterized from its beginnings by conceptual formulation and reform ulation, as established paradigms have proven inadequate to accommodate observation or to resolve conceptual dilemm as, and new para­ digms promise to do so more usefully. Freud was centrally occupied with such theoretical elaboration and revision throughout his working life. The dynamic, economic, genetic, and structural theories are among the major products. After Freud, further valuable theoretical contributions have been made. O f these, perhaps the most broadly influential have been the developm ent o f object rela­ tions theory and of ego psychology. Currently, the extraordinary productiveness o f infant research offers a major stim ulus toward further conceptual growth, perhaps o f comparable scope. Until recently, prevailing conceptions o f infancy suggested particular charac­ teristics o f infants now sharply contradicted by observation. The editors o f The Competent Infant (Stone, Smith, & Murphy, 1973) (the title itself speaks to the altered perspective from which infants are now viewed) quote the type o f state­ ments about infants that have appeared until recently in respected publications and which are now known to be erroneous. For example: “ The human infant is bom completely helpless, at the mercy o f its environm ent.” ; ‘‘The greatest part of everything which is going on does not reach the delicate system of the newborn. Only a few and very strong stimuli reach the infant’s psyche at birth” ; “ Consciousness, as we think of it, probably does not exist in the new born— but the sense of pain does— responses to these sensations, however, are o f purely reflex character and are mediated below the level of the cerebral cortex” , “ The pattern o f movements in newborn babies is, therefore, the same as that found in 17

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malformed infants who arc without cerebral hemispheres . . . later voluntary movements become possible.” (pp. 3 -4 ). Within psychoanalytic psychology too, a major conceptualization of infancy, that o f infantile narcissism, is being called into question by new perspectives on infancy and contemporary observational data. Two central aspects o f this for­ mulation are incompatible with contemporary notions about infants. First, al­ though in Freud’s view infants’ focus of experience is the interior of their bodies, without cathexis on the external world, recent highly productive ap­ proaches to infant observation have been based on the premise that infants are sensitive to and interactive with their human and nonhuman environments from the beginning. Second, although the conception o f infantile narcissism considers that infant motor activity is aimed at affective discharge and not at adaptive action, a central focus o f infant observation has been the character o f infants’ increasingly sophisticated interactions with their environments from birth. In the face of these difficulties, proposals are being made to discard the psychoanalytic notion o f narcissism as not useful for the understanding of infan­ cy, or to modify it significantly in order to achieve congruence with what is now known about infants. Lichtenberg (1979) shows that current data derived from infant observation require modification o f generally accepted psychoanalytic formulations of drive theory, ego psychology, object relations theory, and affect theory. Among the increasingly well-established and accepted notions he cites and documents are ones specifically relevant to, but incompatible with, psycho­ analytic formulations of infantile narcissism. In particular, Lichtenberg finds that infants are from birth interested in their environm ents, and that from the begin­ ning their activity occurs in mutual adjustment with the environment and grows in skill and complexity. Stechler and Kaplan (1980), on the basis o f their and their colleagues’ extended study of infants undertaken within a psychoanalytic framework, conclude that psychoanalytic m etapsychology, including the concept of narcissism, is not applicable to the data flowing from direct infant observa­ tion. Feterfreund (1978) also cogently evaluates a number o f psychoanalytic terms, among them narcissism, and shows that in their present form they are without clear and acceptable application to infancy. To discard the concept of infantile narcissism, however, presents other prob­ lems for psychoanalytic psychology. During the recent decades in which infant research has burgeoned, the concept o f narcissism as formulated by Freud and developmentally based in infantile narcissism has played a valuable part in extensive and fruitful clinical investigation o f the group o f disorders subsumed under the term “ borderline.” Among those disorders which appear to share common characteristics are as-if characters (Deutsch, 1942), persons with screen identities (Greenson, 1958), imposters (D eutsch, 1955; G reenacre, 1958), schiz­ oid characters (Khan, 1960) and those described explicitly as borderline (Kemberg, 1966). Persons in these categories are regularly described as showing residues of infantile narcissism in various respects. A sense of their own cen­

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trality in events and an incomplete recognition of a world external to and inde­ pendent o f themselves are seen to characterize their self-structures and object relations. They are observed to be without clear recognition of themselves as distinct individuals in relation to other individuals recognized as independent of self. Instead they are described as perceiving others as extensions o f self, as props for projection, as no more than need-satisfying objects. Purposeful, goaloriented action typical o f postnarcissistic activity is difficult for them and often experienced as being alien to their very being. Narcissistic illusions of om nipo­ tence arc generally observed to be pervasive. A dilemma is posed for psychoanalytic psychology by the results of these concurrent lines o f investigation. The one, infant observation, suggests that notions o f narcissism are incom patible with what is known of infancy. Clinical observation, on the other hand finds residues of what is conceived to be infantile narcissism to be of major significance in understanding borderline disorders in children and adults. A resolution o f the dilemma is proposed here in a reformulation o f infantile narcissism which accom odates both groups of observations. Specifically, it pro­ poses that objectively infants are in active and adaptive interaction with their environments from the time of birth but that subjectively they are unaware of a world external to them selves. Their narcissistic unawarcncss of the external world does not lie in the arena o f their experience (the inside o f the body or the environment), but in their understanding of experience which objectively occurs in adaptive com m erce with their environments. This focus on infants’ under­ standing of their experience makes it possible to account for other aspects of narcissism, specifically, the infant’s centrality in its experience, the place of action, the illusion o f om nipotence, and the transitions out o f narcissism at about age two. M oreover, this reformulation is more congruent with observed residues of narcissistic experience in borderline conditions of children and adults than the formulation of these phenomena as originally proposed.

A PROPOSED REFORMULATION Piaget’s theory of cognitive developm ent appears to provide a base for a model of infantile narcissism congruent with both psychoanalytically observed phe­ nomena of narcissism and the data and perspectives o f infant observation. Both Freud and Piaget hypothesize that in their early days infants live entirely within their immediate experience. W hatever is being experienced (e.g ., in grasping or nursing) only is while the experience lasts. In Freud’s terms (1925) the experi­ ence itself is the guarantor of reality. In Piaget’s terms (1951/1937) the world of the infant is one in which objects continually come into being as the result of the infant’s actions (grasping, visual focusing, nursing) and subside into nonexis­ tence at the termination o f the experience.

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To Piaget such incidents, grounded in the biologically based capacities o f the infant at birth, are the basic units o f experience and are registered internally in schemes. They are the foundations on which all later cognitive (and, implicitly, social and emotional) developm ent occurs. For present puiposes these incidents are called events. Events and the developm ents based on them , I will argue, have characteristics which qualify them as narcissistic in ways central to Freud’s formulations and congruent with clinical observations o f narcissism as it occurs in borderline disorders. First, the event, the basic unit o f experience, is composed o f an infant-ininteraction-with-the-environment incident (e .g ., infant-grasps-finger-of-parent; infant-nurses-at-breast). The basic unit o f mental representation, therefore, is hypothesized not to be a self-representation or an identification but, objectively, a representation o f a relationship between self and the human or nonhuman environment. In the infant’s experience, how ever, Piaget em phasizes, the event is initially undifferentiated. The infant has no subjective sense o f self, o f action, or of object; these are products o f later differentiation out o f the (subjectively) global experience o f events. That is, the infant, objectively engaged with an environment external to itself, is (subjectively) not aware of the environm ent’s externality. On its face this concept is congruent with the emphasis o f infancy research on the infant’s active engagem ent with the environment. It is consistent, too, with Freud’s conception o f narcissicism as involving a lack of awareness o f the environment. It is the fo rm o f that unawareness in Freud’s formulation (that the infant is aware only o f its own bodily states) that is incompatible with infancy research. It is in the form o f the infant’s unawareness o f the environm ent, too, that the proposed model differs from Freud’s. The infant is not unaware o f the external environment. It is unaware that the environment is external. The narcissistic experience o f children and adults with borderline personality organizations shows residues o f the form o f unawareness posited in the event model. The character o f such persons’ incomplete awareness o f the external world is not observed clinically to consist in a focus on the interior o f the body and incomplete sensory contact with their surroundings. Rather, such individuals are regularly observed to require constant relationships with others: the imposter requires an audience (G reenacre, 1958); the as-if personality requires a com ple­ ment to the self fragment being enacted (Deutsch, 1942); the borderline child, in its object hunger, requires an " o th e r” who serves as the prop for the actualiza­ tion o f the particular relationship imagined by the child (e .g ., Ekstein, 1966; Fast and Chethick, 1972). K em berg’s (1966) formulation o f the structure o f that relationship appears to be congruent with the notion o f the event as the basic unit of experience. He proposes that the earliest, most primitive and basic form of internalization occurs in a unit composed o f a self-image, an affect or motive, and an object image. That is, even in the most primitive experience the indi­ vidual is engaged w'ith the environm ent, though not aware that it is independent

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of self. It is such units (dyads) w hich K em berg hypothesizes to be typical o f the prim itive object relations o f borderline individuals. In sum , to propose that the basic unit o f experience is the event in w hich the infant is actively engaged w ith the environm ent is congruent with infancy re­ search. The concept o f the event is com patible in a particular way w ith the psychoanalytic notion that in narcissistic experience individuals are unaw are o f a world external to them selves. O bjectively, infants (and borderline individuals) function in interaction with their environm ents. S ubjectively, how ever, infants in their earliest experience o f events have no differentiated sense o f an environm ent independent o f them selves (and in borderline individuals that aw areness is to varying degrees incom plete). Second, in this reform ulation the infant is central in the event. The centrality resides in an absolute cgocentricity in the infan t’s understanding o f its experi­ ence. It is the infant’s own action that creates the event: only w hen the infant is nursing does the nursing event (with its as yet undifferentiated com ponents o f self, the breast, etc.) have reality. In P iag et’s (1951) term s, objects com e into existence (subjectively) as a result o f the in fant’s action, and w ith the term ination o f the experience they subside from existence. T he infant is central w ithin the event as w ell. In any event (e .g ., child-grasping-finger-of-parent) it is only those aspects o f the environm ent relevant to the infant’s ow n experience w hich achieve reality (e .g ., the paren t’s finger w hen grasping, the p aren t’s breast w hen nurs­ ing). Finally, the infant is central in the w ay that it structures the event com po­ nents o f its experience. The p aren t’s finger, for exam ple, is understood only as a “ graspable,” the breast as a “ su ck ab le.” T hat is, objects in the environm ent are not understood in term s o f their consensually validated properties but in term s of their usefulness ( “ to su c k ,” “ to g rasp ” ) to the infant. This characteristic o f the experience o f events is com patible with infant re­ search and with F reud’s conception o f narcissism as involving individuals’ expe­ rience o f the w orld in term s o f them selves. It is not com patible with F reu d ’s m odel o f the developm ental origins o f that centrality in the infant’s exclusive focus on its ow n bodily states. In this respect, as in the case o f narcissistic unaw areness o f a w orld external to the self, borderline experience is m ore congruent with the proposed concep­ tualization o f infantile narcissism than with the established m odel. O bservations o f narcissistic centrality in borderline functioning generally have little to do with individuals’ central focus on their ow n bodily tension states. H ow ever, bor­ derline functioning does seem to reflect each o f the three aspects o f narcissistic centrality hypothesized to be typical o f infantile experience o f e v e n ts.1 First, in

'It is well lo reiterate som ething well know n but easily forgotten, that borderline experience and psychic structure cannot be viewed as identical to that o f the young infant. T o suggest patterns of congruence can only point to directions for exploration o f the w ays in which residues of developm en­ ta l^ early patterns do and do not persist in later life.

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borderline experience relationships or com plex events are felt to be in existence only while the individual experiences them . D eutsch’s im postor patient, for exam ple, successively becam e Inventor, M ilitary H ero, G entlem an Farm er, and so forth. W hile the im posture lasted it affected the p atient’s clothing and d e­ m eanor, his relationships w ith others, and the appropriate physical appurte­ nances. W hen the im posture ceased it appeared to have vanished w ithout a trace. A w om an artist (D eutsch, 1942) described as an “ as-if” personality becam e the student o f one painter and com pletely absorbed not only his technique but his entire approach to art. Subsequently, when she becam e the student o f another painter she took on his m ethods and approach with equal thoroughness, but in her work no trace rem ained o f her form er interest. An integration o f the two very different approaches, w hich could have resulted in a uniquely individual orienta­ tion did not occur. B orderline children, sim ilarly, are observed to assum e many discrete identities or selves, each o f w hich is part o f an entire relationship and environm ent, each o f w hich is seem ingly w ithout existence when not being elaborated. O ne such child, for exam ple, began each therapy hour with a curious ritual in which he joined the forefinger and thum b o f his right hand and moved them from his low er torso to his chin. O nly later did he explain that each time he zipped him self into the identity o f one o f his many Super H eroes and for the period of the hour interacted with his therapist and the objects in his environm ent as if they were objects in the world o f Spider B oy, Flashm an, o r another o f his heroes. Second, within these eventlike units o f experience the self is central as well. It is the particular im posture, the painting identity being elaborated, or the Super Hero identity being enacted, w hich determ ines the aspects o f others and o f the environm ent that will be accorded reality. And third, these environm ental (hum an and nonhum an) objects are understood, not in the context o f consensually validated reality, but (as in play when a broom stick can be a horse) in the context o f the requirem ents o f the self’s enactm ent. In sum , in the event the infant is central. In this aspect the proposed model is congruent with F reu d ’s form ulation o f narcissism . The postulated fo r m o f the centrality, how ever, is not a function o f the infant’s im m ersion in the experience o f its bodily states, but a function o f the ch ild ’s understanding o f what is objectively an adaptive interaction w ith the environm ent. The forms o f the cen­ trality o f self integral to event experience seem not to involve residues o f early focus on the body self but interaction with the environm ent understood in nar­ cissistic terms. T hird, in this conception o f events as interaction units in which the infant is central, action has a particular place. T o Piaget, infants’ actions are initially global and their experience is not o f them selves acting on an object. In the prim ary and secondary circular reactions o f early infancy it is the action that is central. D ifferentiated perception o f self and object are products o f later develop­ ment. That is, in an event the infant objectively interacts in a specific way with the environm ent (it nurses at the breast; it focuses visually on an object). S ubjec­

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tively, however, its experience is o f an “ enactm ent,” the bringing into being of an event that subsides into nonbeing when the action terminates. This characteristic o f events is congruent with the emphasis o f infant research on the infant’s adaptive interaction with the environm ent, and also with Freud’s view that narcissistic activity is som ething other than goal-oriented action. The event model suggests, however, that the form o f activity is not exclusively affective discharge, but an enactm ent in which the active self and the object acted upon are undifferentiated components. The proposed formulation appears to be compatible with clinical observation of borderline disturbances of later childhood and adulthood. It is widely observed that both borderline adults (e .g ., Deutsch, 1942; G reenson, 1958; K han, 1960) and children (Frijling-Schreuder, 1969; Rosenfeld & Sprince, 1963) have significant work problems o f a particular kind. When their work involves goaloriented action their involvement, which may be successful in social term s, has a quality o f deadened, robotlike conform ity, without self-involvem ent or personal meaning. When work involves creative activity, or can be cast in creative term s, their attitude is quite different. Then borderline adults may become enthusiastic and optimistic, have a vivid sense of self and o f their own efficacy, and be highly productive. In such activity they do not fin d a solution to a problem but create it by a process in which they “ brood over” or “ incubate” a problem until a crystallized solution emerges. The product is not an objective effect on an imper­ sonal environment produced by instrumental action; it is experienced as a new creation. This creation is a self-expression in which producer and effect are indistinguishable components. Objectively the product may be one generally described as creative (a poem , a picture, etc.), but it may, equally, be the solution to a technical problem , mastery o f assigned reading, or the cooking of dinner. Subjectively, however, the preferred process o f production follows the rules o f creation, rather than those of goal-oriented action. The creative process typical of borderline activity has the form Kris (1952) conceptualizes to be the process o f creation in general. He attributes the forma­ tion of the creative process developm entally to the period of transition from narcissistic to reality-oriented experience. Among its narcissistic aspects are the individual’s sense of “ incubating” or “ gestating” a problem and making it a part of the self, o f producing it as a crystallized whole experienced as a new creation and as an expression o f self. The presentation of the product in com m u­ nicable form is the contribution o f the individual’s reality orientation (see Fast, 1975, for extended discussion). These observations of the work orientations o f borderline individuals are congruent with Freud’s recognition that the orientations to work and action in narcissistic experience are anomalous. They are not, how ever, readily under­ stood as being founded in an infantile period in which activity serves only for affective discharge. The proposed model in which the infant experiences its (objectively) goal-oriented action as an enactm ent, brought into being by its own

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action, in which self and what is created by self are not yet distinguished, provides a framework more congruent with the clinical observations o f later narcissistic functioning. Fourth, the notion o f the event as the basic unit o f experience provides a model for understanding the developm ental origins of the narcissistic illusion o f omnipotence that is compatible with both infancy research and clinical experi­ ence. Freud proposed that the illusion o f omnipotence accompanied the infant’s exclusive involvement in its bodily self, but he did not develop a detailed for­ mulation of the nature of that association. In the proposed model two forms of the illusion of om nipotence are integral to the experience of events. The first is a component of the infant’s centrality in its experience; the existence of an event is a function of the infant’s experiencing it. This is the narcissistic illusion that reality is a function of one’s own creation (in W innicott’s 11953] term s, primary creativity). Within events environmental objects are accorded reality only as they serve in the infant’s enactm ent. And the attributes assigned to environmental objects are not determ ined by objective criteria but by their place in the infant’s experience. Omnipotence in this case does not mean that the infant has a sense of personal powers o f creation and destruction (though the infantile experience may be the base for later notions of that sort). Observably, however, the infant’s world, as the infant experiences it, is created by its own actions and understan­ dings. The second is the illusion that one’s thoughts carry with them the actualities to which they refer, a form of om nipotence typically referred to as the omnipotence of the wish. In Piaget’s model the infant, in its earliest experience, cannot think beyond the present event. In its experience thought and the referents o f thought (what is thought about) are not distinguished. To say that the thought, infantnursing-at-brcast, can occur only when the sensory-m otor scheme o f the infant’s action, nursing-at-breast, is activated, may be useful for purposes o f clarifica­ tion, although in Piaget’s model of the infant’s experience a sensorim otor scheme is the only undifferentiated internal representation. The capacity to have the thought without-the sensorim otor enactment is a product o f later differentia­ tion. Initially, therefore, whenever a mental representation (e.g ., infant-nursingat-breast) occurs, the actuality is also present. The omnipotence of thought, in the sense that the thought carries with it the relevant actuality is, in this model, a fact o f the infant’s experience. The infant cannot think anything beyond the immediately present because whatever it thinks is accom panied by the relevant reality. This form o f “ om nipotence,” as well as the other (that reality is one’s own creation), is congruent with notions of the infant in increasingly adaptive in­ terchange with its environment. Only later, when thought can occur independent­ ly of the present reality, is it unrealistic to anticipate (wish or demand) that one’s thoughts evoke the actualities to which they refer. It is this unrealistic expecta­

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tion that is observed in the narcissistic illusions o f omnipotence in the borderline disturbances of children and adults. Fifth, and finally, the proposed model for a reformulation o f infantile nar­ cissism proposes that developm ents in the experience o f events culm inate in major psychological reorientations at about age tw o, the period which in Freud’s model is significant for the transition out o f narcissism. The two models posit significant changes in comparable areas of psychological functioning. At about age two the child is hypothesized in both models to become focally aware of a world (human and nonhuman) external to itself and governed by its own rules. A radical change in orientation begins, in which the narcissistic (or egocentric) perception of reality in terms o f oneself is gradually replaced by the perception and validation o f on e’s self and o n e’s experience in terms o f the world at large. A sense o f personal efficacy in instrumental action becomes prom inent. Illusions of omnipotence are gradually given up. A new order o f thought becomes possible. However, the specifics o f Freud’s model of the child’s transition out of narcissism are not consistent with what is now known about infants. Freud’s central tenet is that these changes are a function o f the child’s turn from an exclusive preoccupation with its own tension states to an awareness o f the exter­ nal environment and to an interest in actions to alter it. The developments from pleasure to reality ego and from primary to secondary process thought accom­ pany this shift in interest to a new arena of experience. It is in this central proposition, that the transition out o f narcissism at about age two is a function of a previously absent interest in the environm ent, and that m otor activity only then begins to function as action to alter reality, that Freud’s formulation is incom pati­ ble with the products and perspectives o f infant research. The proposed model offers a framework for understanding the transition out of narcissism which avoids these difficulties and appears to be satisfactory in other respects as well. It suggests that, from the beginning, complex and interre­ lated changes occur in the infant’s experience and understanding o f events which have two eventual outcomes: They result in narcissistic modes o f organizing experience becoming untenable, thus making reorganization necessary, and they prepare the way for reorganization, thus making it possible. Two major processes o f change relevant to present purposes can be indicated, though an extensive elaboration o f them is not appropriate here. One process follows Piaget’s notion o f “ objectification.” This is the process by which event components (e.g ., self, other, motive or action, time, space, etc.) become differ­ entiated out o f events and independent o f them. As Piaget conceives it, complex schemes representing particular actions (e .g ., grasping, visual focusing, nursing) are formed as those actions are performed over and over again. Objectification occurs as these schemes become integrated with one another. When the infant is able, for example, to focus visually on a ring and to grasp it, the ring, heretofore differentially experienced as a “ seeable” in one schem e and a “ graspable” in

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another, becomes a seeable-graspable, and to that extent becomes independent of either scheme. As objectification continues, the various event components be­ come increasingly free o f embeddedness in events and become objectified in terms of particular attributes. The ring becomes, subjectively, a seeablc-graspable-suckable. The infant self, increasingly objectified as it is engaged simul­ taneously in more than one schem e, becomes a seer-grasper, then a seer-graspermouther, and so on. By six months, Piaget observes, the infant, in “ making interesting sights last” shows signs o f personal intention. Self as purposive is added to the increasingly objectified whole. By about nine months o f age objects are sufficiently objectified (independent o f the infant-created event) that when an object is hidden behind a pillow (and so outside the im mediate event) it suffi­ ciently retains subjective existence for the infant to hunt for it. Further develop­ ments in objectification may be observed in infants’ increasing ability to perceive objects as independent o f their own actions, in interest in objects’ behaviors governed by their own rules, in libidinal object constancy (an object’s continued subjective existence independent o f the infant’s affect), and so forth. In another line of developm ent the infant’s global experiencing o f events, in which thought and the objects of thought are not differentiated, begins to develop toward experience in which they are. This differentiation process establishes both the capacity for symbolic thought and the subjective experience o f a stable external world (specifically, a world independent o f the infant’s experiencing of it). Nodal points in that developm ent can be traced in Piaget’s observations. He observes that at age six months an infant’s excited interest in an object (e .g ., a toy duck) instantly vanishes when the object is no longer within experience (is lost from view). However, at nine months the infant hunts for the duck when it is removed from sight. To hunt for a nonvisible object requires that cognition be able to deal with an object in its (at first momentary) absence. An organization of thought or imagination not tied to present physical reality (i.e ., o f symbolic thought) is being constituted. The obverse is equally true. To hunt for a duck which is not within immediate experience requires that the duck have existence for the child even when it is not being experienced. A world independent o f the experiencing self (object constancy, an “ external” world) is being established. These lines o f developm ent undermine all four o f the aspects of narcissism described as characteristic o f the earliest experience o f events. First, the global experience o f events in which self is not differentiated from the (objectively) external world is undermined as objectification increasingly articulates the exis­ tence and distinctive attributes of self and objects; and global experience is undermined when the differentiation o f thought from actuality establishes an increasingly perm anent reality independent o f one’s experience o f it. Second, the narcissistic sense o f self as centra! in creating events is no longer supported by experience when objects are recognized to continue in existence even when they are not being experienced. Self as central within events in determining what aspects o f the environment have reality and in determining their attributes is no

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longer a fact o f experience when objects are increasingly known to have perm a­ nence both in their existence and their attributes. Third, enactm ent, the sense o f an undifferentiated expression o f an event as a whole becomes modified as self becomes objectified and a sense o f personal intention becomes one o f its at­ tributes. Fourth, illusions o f omnipotence are called into question when the centrality of self in the creation and character of events is no longer absolute and when thought may or may not be accompanied by the actualities to which it refers. By about age tw o, these major aspects o f narcissistic experience, initially integral to the infant’s cognitive organization, are no longer supported in the child’s experience. A new mode of understanding is required. The same developm ents that undermine the narcissism o f the early experience of events also set the stage for the transition out of narcissism. In Freud’s view the transition results from the child’s interest in the external world as a new arena of experience. It is the turn to the external world which brings with it a new orientation to action, a major cognitive change (from primary to secondary process thought), and a perception o f oneself and one’s experience in the context of the larger reality (the transition from pleasure to reality ego). In the proposed model the transition out of narcissism represents a reorganization of the ch ild ’s understanding of experiences familiar since birth, and is the culm ination of processes (among them objectification and the differentiation o f thought from the actualities to which it refers) which from birth have modified the absolute nar­ cissism of the earliest experience o f events. It is these processes which, by about age two, make possible a new order of thought (symbolic thought), a new orientation to reality (the world recognized as external), a replacement o f enact­ ment by instrumental action, and a perception o f oneself and one’s experience in the context o f a reality independent o f self. First, the increasingly complete differentiation of thought from the actualities to which it refers eventuates in symbolic thought (thought in the absence of its referents). Experience (thought, im agination, etc.) is consequently freed from the shackles of the present. Comparison and contrast, the resolution o f discrep­ ancy, judgm ent, and the differentiation and integration o f experience all become possible and contribute to every aspect o f the transition, most particularly to reality testing. Second, the same differentiation process by which symbolic thought is freed from the actualities of the present experience also results in the child’s new orientation to an external w orld, that is, the child’s experience of its environm ent as external. By about age two the recognition of a world independent o f self is relatively securely established. Third, the transition out o f narcissism is hypothesized to result in changes in the character of “ action.” In Freud’s model it is a change from motor activity for purposes of affect discharge, to action aim ed at the alteration of reality. In the proposed model, the infant has objectively been in active and adaptive engage­

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ment with its environm ent since birth. The infant’s own experience initially, however, is o f an enactm ent, the undifferentiated bringing into being o f an event. As self and object (as well as other event com ponents) become objectified, intention (self-as-actor-on-an-environment-independent-of-self) becomes estab­ lished. The change in the organization o f action in the transition out of nar­ cissism, therefore, is hypothesized in this model, as in Freud’s, to be toward a capacity for instrum ental, goal-oriented action. It does not suggest, as in Freud’s model, that the child was previously objectively unengaged in such action. Rather, the change is from the child’s experience o f its objectively instrumental actions as enactm ents, to a sense of self as actor in an environment independent o f self. Fourth, the child is hypothesized to make what has been compared to a Copernican revolution, from an orientation in which the world is understood in terms of the self, to one in which even the self is understood in terms o f the dimensions of external reality. In Freud’s model this change (from pleasure ego to reality ego and reality testing) accom panies, in ways not clearly delineated, the child’s move from a focus only on its own body, to its beginning cathexis of the external world. In the proposed model, by about age two the infant’s sense of its own centrality in existence is no longer supported by experience. The notion, “ if I experience it, it is” is no longer tenable when objects are known to exist even when not being experienced— and when experience (in thought or im agina­ tion) is often not accom panied by the relevant reality. That is, one’s thought (experience) can no longer be the guarantor o f reality. The match, or lack of it, between one’s thought and the actuality must be explored. This exploration, reality testing, is made possible by the child’s increasingly secure sense o f a world external to itself, and by the capacity for symbolic thought which enables the child to make the judgm ents required when thought (wish, perception) is tested against a reality outside the self. This formulation o f the transitions out of narcissism is in no way incompatible with current knowledge o f child developm ent. It is also more congruent than Freud’s form ulation, with clinical observations o f borderline phenomena. In both concepts the child’s recognition o f a world independent o f self is central to the transition. It is the form o f that recognition in which the frameworks differ; Freud’s suggesting that the child becomes aware o f the environment to which it had previously not attended, the event formulation suggesting that the child becomes aware that the fam iliar world is independent o f self. Clinical work with borderline individuals does not suggest that if therapy is successful they gradu­ ally become aware o f a world to which they have heretofore insufficiently at­ tended, but rather that as they differentiate self and nonself and establish an increasingly firm construct o f the nonself world, they can no longer maintain illusions that the w orld’s existence is a function o f o n e’s experiencing and subject to one’s will. M oreover, the borderlines’ growing awareness is not o f a new and unfam iliar “ real” w orld, but o f a world they must recognize (often with

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profound separation anxiety), to be independent o f self. A nd, finally, clinical observation does not suggest, as F reu d ’s model im plies, that in the transitions out o f narcissism self-involved, self-loving individuals becom e aw are o f an outside world to w hich they m ust subm it. The most deeply disturbed individuals, who have the least sense o f an independent w orld, do not have the m ost narcissistically expansive sense o f self. On the contrary, such persons typically have the least well-organized self structure and m ost uncertain sense o f identity. C ongruent with the event m odel, the organization o f self and o f nonself w ould appear to be com plem entary; and the m ore solidly established the self, the m ore solid too is the individual’s construct o f the independent external world.

SU M M AR Y The burgeoning o f infant research in the last two decades has posed a dilem m a for the psychoanalytic conceptualization o f narcissism . The perspectives and observations o f infancy research em phasize the infan t’s active and adaptive interaction w ith the environm ent from the beginning. The data are incom patible with psychoanalytic view s o f infants as focused exclusively on their ow n bodily states, unaw are o f the external world and active only in affective discharge, not in action to alter reality. O ne response to this discrepancy has been to suggest that the concept o f narcissism be discarded for purposes o f understanding infancy. In the sam e tw o decades, how ever, extensive clinical research, particularly in the area o f borderline disorders, has m ade significant and fruitful use o f concepts that depend on the notion o f infantile narcissism . T o discard the concept, there­ fore, seem s ill-advised. Instead, a theoretical form ulation is proposed which attem pts to achieve a reconciliation betw een the research view o f the infant as in adaptive interaction with its environm ent from birth, and the psychoanalytic conception o f the infant as narcissistically unaw are o f an external world and w ithout action aim ed at the alteration o f reality. T he new form ulation is modeled on P iag et’s paradigm for early infant experience with the event posited to be the basic unit o f experience. Event is defined as an incident in w hich the infant is in adaptive interaction with the environm ent and is, therefore, fundam entally com patible with the research. The infant’s understanding o f the event, how ever, has the m ajor characteristics of clinically observed narcissism . From birth m odifications occur in the ex p eri­ ence o f events that culm inate at about age two in a reorganization o f experience whose param eters are com patible with both psychoanalytic observations o f the transition out o f narcissism and Piaget’s conception o f the transition from the sensorim otor period to the period o f egocentric thought. T he event model is shown to be congruent with established observations o f narcissism in the experi­ ence o f borderline individuals: their incom plete differentiation from the external

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world, their sense o f their ow n centrality, their difficulties with instrumental action, and their persistent illusions o f omnipotence.

REFERENCES Dcutsch, H. (1942). Some forms of emotional disturbance and their relationship to schizophrenia. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 11, 301-321. Dcutsch, H. (1955). The impostor. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 24, 483-505. Ekstein, R. (1966). Children o f time and space, o f action and impulse. New York: AppletonCentury-Crofts. Fast, I. (1975). Aspects o f work style and work difficulty in borderline personalities. International Journal o f Psychoanalysis, 56, 397-403. Fast, I., & Chethik, M. (1972). Some aspects of object relations in borderline children. Interna­ tional Journal o f Psychoanalysis, 53, 479-485. Freud, S. (1914). On narcissism: An introduction. Standard edition. 19. Ixrndon: Hogarth Press, pp. 235-239. Frijling-Schrcudcr, E. C. M. (1969). Borderline states in children. Psychoanalytic Study o f the Child, 14, 307-327. Greenacre, P. (1958). The impostor. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 27, 359-382. Greenson, R. R. (1958). On screen defences, screen hunger and screen identity. Journal o f the American Psychoanalytic Association, 6, 242-262. Kernbcrg, 0 .(1 9 6 6 ). Structural derivations of object relationships. International Journal o f Psycho­ analysis, 47, 236- 253. Khan, M. M. R. (I960). Clinical aspects of the schizoid personality; affects and techniques. Interna­ tional Journal o f Psychoanalysis, 41 , 430-437. Kris, E. (1952). Psychoanalytic explorations in art. New York: International Universities Press. Lichtenberg, J. (1979). Implications fo r psychoanalytic theory o f research on the neonate. Un­ published manuscript. Noy, P. (1969). A revision o f the psychoanalytic theory of the primary process. International Journal o f Psychoanalysis, 50, 155 170. Pcterfreund, E. (1978). Some critical comments on psychoanalytic conceptions o f infancy. Interna­ tional Journal o f Psychoanalysis, 59, 427-441. Piaget, J. (1951). Principal factors determining intellectual evolution from childhood to adult life. In F. Rapaport (Ed.), Organization and pathology o f thought (pp. 154- 175). New York: Columbia University Press. Rosenfeld, S., & Sprince, M. P. (1963). An attempt to formulate the meaning of the concept ‘borderline.' Psychoanalytic Study o f the Child, 18, 603-635. Stechler, G ., & Kaplan, S. (1980). The development of self. Psychoanalytic Studies o f the Child, 35, 85-105. Stone, L. J., Smith, H. T ., & Murphy, L. B. (1973). The competent infant. New York: Basic Books. Winnicott, D. W. (1953). Transitional objects and transitional phenomena. International Journal o f Psychoanalysis, 34, 89-97.

Primary Process C ognition: A R eform ulation 1

Irene Fast

INTRODUCTION Freud’s conception o f human cognition in terms of two fundamentally distinct organizations has been a challenging one since its first presentation in The Interpretation o f D ream s (1900/1923). Freud him self did not elaborate his theo­ ry extensively in the course of his working life. A fter formulating his notions of the primary and secondary processes in a generally satisfactory way, with partic­ ular attention to the primary processes, he turned his attention more fully to the complexities of ideas and wishes organized in primary process terms which he found to be o f major importance in understanding psychopathology. The further elaboration o f the theory itself, how ever, has been o f continuing interest in psychoanalytic psychology. Three interrelated issues stand out as foci of attention. The first concerns the nature of the primary processes as, on one hand, archaic residues o f an infantile narcissistic period, unmodified by learning, in which cognition is without relation to reality (e .g ., Fenichel, 1945; Fliess, 1959; Jones, 1955); or, on the other hand, as organized, subject to learning and participating in the highest forms o f intellectual activity, (e.g ., Holt, 1967; Noy, 1969, 1979). The second concerns the distinction between primary and second­ ary processes, specifically whether they represent two modes o f thought, analo­ gous to two languages in which ideas may be expressed, or a single cognitive mode, thought aimed at wish fulfillm ent, with the primary processes its prim i­ tive form, the secondary processes its sophisticated one. The third is a develop■This paper first appeared in slightly different form in The Annual o f Psychoanalysis 1983, II , pp. 199-225.

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mental issue, the primary processes as the sole cognitive mode in infancy, or alternatively, the presence (perhaps in undifferentiated form) of both the primary and the secondary processes (or precursors of them) from the beginning of life (Hartmann, 1958; Holt, 1967; Rapaport, 1950). Various conceptual models have provided frameworks for theoretical discus­ sions: elaborations of the economic and ego psychological ones within psycho­ analysis (e.g ., G ill, 1967; Holt, 1967; Rapaport, 1950), linguistic paradigms (e.g ., Edelson, 1972), and with increasing frequency, Piagetian ones (e.g ., Basch, 1977; Noy, 1969; Rapaport, 1951, notes to chapter 6 ). This chapter proposes that detailed attention to P iaget’s formulation of the sensorim otor intel­ ligence of infancy and the developm ents toward a cognitive transition at about age two offers possibilities for a reformulation of primary process cognition congruent with Freud’s observations that suggest directions for the resolution of these areas of conceptual difficulty.

FREUD'S OBSERVATIONS OF THE PRIMARY AND SECONDARY PROCESSES Freud’s conceptualizations o f the primary and secondary processes most closely tied to his clinical observations occur in The Interpretation o f D ream s ( 1900). He proposes that the primary processes represent a different mode of thought than that in the everyday waking life of adults, a mode analogous to an alternate language in which ideas may be presented. In this thought form an idea occurs, not as a thought but as an experience, as in an immediate situation, with belief uncritically attached to it. Primary process thought occurs in the present, without placement in such reality frames as time (an event rem embered), judgm ent (I think . . . ), or denial (It is not . . . ). It is egocentric in that it is organized around the fulfillment of the subject’s aims or wishes. It is an hallucinatory wish fulfillment in that the aim or purpose is experienced as actualized, not as a wish which requires actualization. Although an idea expressed in primary process terms is experienced as real it is, in another sense, unconscious. Consciousness, in the sense of reflective aw areness, is not present in primary process thought. Phenomena organized in primary process terms (e.g ., dream s, sym ptom s, jokes) may be complexes o f intricate structure representing manifold logical relationships, argum ents and counterargum ents, conditions, digressions, illustra­ tions, and so forth. These com plexes are not organized, how ever, by the pro­ cesses of logical thought in which their relationships (if . . . then; also . . . ; but . . . ) are articulated, but by processes centrally involving condensation and displacement. By such processes one idea may be represented by another (dis­ placement) and com plexes o f interrelated ideas may be organized in composite formations (condensation).

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Freud formulated these observations in economic and developm ental terms. The primary processes, he proposed, are developm entally the first form of cogni­ tion. They occur in the context o f infantile narcissism , a state in which the infant is absolutely egocentric. The focus o f infant experience is exclusively the rise and fall o f its own tension states; it is without interest in or adaptation to the world outside itself. The primary processes are the cognitive mode o f this nar­ cissistic period and proceed without relation to the external world. They function on the model of hallucinatory wish fulfillment. A w ish, in this m odel, is an accumulation o f tension (unpleasure) which leads to a discharge process. If actual gratification does not occur im mediately, memory images of previous satisfactions are evoked. These memory images are hallucinatory reevocations of actual experiences o f satisfaction. The primary process cognition of dreams and symptoms takes the form o f these evocations. To account for the condensation and displacem ent he observed clinically, Freud postulated a mobile energy that could attach itself to any representation o f a drive. At about age two the child becomes interested in its environm ent and second­ ary processes begin gradually to replace primary ones. Freud focused relatively little attention on the conceptualization o f secondary processes. In his discussion he usually equated secondary process cognition with categorical or conceptual thought in which ideas or events are understood by placing them in the context of general, abstract categories. Relationships among ideas and events are governed by the rules o f logic. Secondary process thinking is, in essence, an impersonal and allocentric cognitive mode that Freud accepted as the highest form of cog­ nitive functioning. Freud’s developmental formulation, however, suggests a different mode of secondary process cognition; it is akin in form to primary process thought though differing from it in significant respects. Like the primary processes, Freud sug­ gests, the secondary processes aim at wish fulfillment. Their essential cognitive form is that of a “ trial action,” a mental representation of oneself in active relation to a desired outcom e. This thought form requires a freely accessible body o f “ purposive m em ories.” It is a cognition o f action, o f personal motive or purpose, autocentric in orientation. But it is different from primary process thought. A trial action is performed mentally, without accom panying motor action. Thoughts are distinguished from their referents. The imagined action is not taken uncritically as a real one. Thought is conscious in the sense that it is accompanied by reflective awareness. The appropriateness o f a particular action is evaluated in the light o f real circum stances in the external world. Satisfaction is achieved by purposeful action within reality (rather than hallucinatory satisfac­ tion if gratification is not immediate). Freud’s conceptualization o f the secondary processes implicitly assumes two cognitive modes: the one, categorical thought, proceeding according to the rules of logic, the other a purposive mode similar in style to the primary process but

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differing from it in ways reflecting maturity of cognition. Freud did not note the difference between the two nor did he clarify their relationships, and in later writings he appears to refer to them interchangeably. In the subsequent literature, too, this difference appears not to have been noted nor been seen as having import for the resolution of conceptual issues.

THE PRIMARY PROCESSES AS ARCHAIC, AS DISTINGUISHED FROM THE SECONDARY PROCESSES, AND AS THE COGNITIVE MODE OF INFANCY The Primary Processes as Archaic. The primary processes have tended to be viewed as archaic, chaotic, without organization, and not subject to develop­ ment; but also they have been seen as a cognitive mode with its own structure, able to function at varying levels of sophistication. Freud him self at times viewed the primary processes as primitive residues of the earliest period of life, their contents unmodified by the passage o f time and observable only in regressions from the more mature secondary processes. But he also ascribed specific organi­ zational characteristics to them and, especially in The Interpretation o f Dreams, described them as dealing with sophisticated thought contents, pictorially repre­ senting highly abstract concepts or constellations in which complex logical rela­ tionships are condensed. Both views o f the primary processes have persisted in subsequent investiga­ tions. Jones (1955/1916), for exam ple, attributes primary process cognition to “ the primitive m ind” observable in children and savages, in dream s, and in­ sanity. Fenichel (1945) describes the primary processes as “ remote from any logic,” primitive modes of thought occurring when people are tired, asleep, or intoxicated. Hartmann (1958) and Kris (1952) represent an early reaction against this view. Hartmann suggests that the imagistic thought of the primary processes participates in even the most highly theoretical scientific formulations; and Kris, in his concept o f regression in the service of the ego, elaborates the contributions of the primary processes to creative activity. In both these formulations, howev­ er, the implication rem ains that primary process cognition itself is more primitive than secondary process. It plays a part in the preliminary stages o f scientific thought, or represents a regression whose products must subsequently be ex­ pressed in the com m unicable forms o f secondary processes. Holt (1967) and Noy (1969) perhaps most clearly express the notion of the primary processes them ­ selves as sophisticated. Holt argues that Freud’s formulations require concep­ tions of the primary processes as structures rather than as products of freely and chaotically moving energy. Conceptions o f dream work as using a structural network of m em ories, o f condensations and displacements as meaningful rather than arbitrary, o f the primary processes as used for defensive purposes and the

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formation o f symptoms all require structure within the primary processes them ­ selves. Holt suggests, moreover, that myths, legends, and fairy talcs may repre­ sent cultural “ indoctrination into consolidated and extended forms of the prim a­ ry process, a cultural transmission of ways to d ream .” (K ris, 1952, p. 375). Noy (1969; 1979) carries further the idea o f the primary processes functioning on a sophisticated level. He suggests (1969) that psychoanalytic notions o f the prim a­ ry processes as archaic have their base in observations o f them as they occur in psychopathology. Here, indeed, primary process thinking occurs on a primitive level. Noy argues, how ever, that in the problem solving now recognized to be a function of dream ing, and in the artistic activity o f adulthood, primary process cognition may occur on high levels. Later (1979), he argues that normal develop­ ment requires that both the primary and the secondary processes reach “ optimal levels of developm ent and m aturation” (p. 170). To view the primary processes as structured and as developing toward in­ creasing sophistication poses the problem o f defining the differences between primitive and sophisticated primary processes. A possible direction for solution lies in Freud’s developmental formulations o f the primary and secondary pro­ cesses as both aimed at wish fulfillment but differing from one another in sophis­ tication. The primary process m ode, then, might be specified as one aimed at the satisfaction of personal wishes or aims, in which the cognitive unit is fundam en­ tally an image o f self in the realization of a purpose or wish (an hallucinatory wish fulfillment, a trial action, a purposive m em ory), and organized by processes of condensation and displacem ent. Its primitive form s, observable in dream s, sym ptom s, and so on, might be distinguished from mature ones by the criteria Freud adduced to distinguish primary from secondary process thought in his developmental model: the degree to which thought occurs on a mental level independent o f the motoric one, the maintenance o f the distinction between thought and its referents, the presence o f reflective awareness and the capacity for the evaluation o f the trial action or purposive memory against relevant exter­ nal criteria. A central requirem ent o f such a formulation would be to show that the cog­ nitive mode (as distinct from the level o f sophistication) o f the secondary pro­ cesses aimed at wish fulfillm ent, can satisfactorily be equated with the mode of the primitive primary processes. In a general way Freud’s formulation of their identity of aim and the apparent similarity in form o f a primary process image of a wish-fulfilling event to a trial action or purposive memory suggests that this equation may not be impossible. However, while the primary processes are understood to proceed by a condensation and displacem ent, neither in Freud’s nor in subsequent discussions is there an elaboration o f the means by which secondary process trial actions and purposive memories are organized. There appears to be an implicit assumption that they are governed by the rules of logic as is categorical thought. It is open to question, how ever, whether imagistic thought, even at its most m ature, is amenable to processes of logic or whether it

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might proceed instead by some form of displacement and condensation of im­ ages, in, for example, the creative work of scientific theoretical formulation or artistic production. The proposal that primary process cognition may occur on a sophisticated level and may be equated with the secondary processes aimed at wish fulfillment also raises more general questions about the conception of mature cognition. In psychoanalytic psychology mature cognition is identified with secondary process thought. The differentiation of the primary and secondary processes is concep­ tualized to occur as a result of a cognitive reorganization at about age two when symbolic thought and reality testing became possible. If primitive and sophisti­ cated primary process cognition can also be distinguished on this basis, and the latter equated with the secondary processes aimed at wish fulfillment, then the possibility arises of conceiving two mature cognitive modes or “ languages” in adulthood, one an imagistic and purposive mode, the other a categorical or logical one, both sophisticated in the sense o f having participated in the cognitive reorganization at about age two. Relations Between the Primary and Secondary Processes. The question of essential organizational distinctions between primary and secondary process thought have been most fully addressed, subsequent to Freud’s own discussion, by Rapaport (1951). He argues that the difference between the two lies in their mode of organizing mental contents, the primary process using a primitive drive organization, the secondary process a sophisticated, conceptual one. He draws an analogy between these organizational differences and the force fields pro­ posed by Lewin (e.g., Lewin, K ., 1951/1926). It is not that the materials (memories, ideas) dealt with in the two processes differ, but rather that in one cognitive mode, the mature one, content is organized conceptually within ab­ stract categories such as time, space, weight, matter, and so on, and thought proceeds by induction and deduction; in the other mode, the primitive one, content is organized around drives (strivings, wishes, etc.) that proceed by condensation and displacement of images.2 Rapaport recognizes a problem in this formulation. Although he maintains the notion that drive-organized thought (primary process cognition) is in its nature primitive, Rapaport (1951) also draws attention to the fact that in the mature functioning o f adulthood drive organizations of thought have an important place in the pursuit of life goals and purposes (p. 709). His resolution of this dilemma

2ln this conception Rapaport also makes a significant contribution to the conceptualization of condensation and displacement. Freud tended to suggest that the line of thought in a condensation or displacement passed from idea to idea which might stand in very loose connection to one another. In Rapaport’s formulation the connecting pathway is explicitly the drive or motive, and linkages among displaced or condensed ideas are found in the aims they represent. This view is accepted here as well.

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is not entirely satisfactory. He suggests that drive organizations of thought may occur on a mature level to the extent that drives arc informed by the conceptual cognitive mode. But it is not easy to conceive how archaic drive organizations of thought might function on a mature level by integration with a differently orga­ nized thought form, and still maintain their own mode of organization centered in drives or purposes. And it is not altogether satisfying to conceive that the cog­ nitive mode in which life goals and purposes are organized is in its very nature primitive, and is redeemed only as it is controlled by a thought mode which deals in abstraction and proceeds by induction and deduction. The proposal that the primary processes (in Rapaport’s terms, drive-organized thought) may occur on both primitive and sophisticated levels, the latter equated with Freud’s secondary processes aimed at wish fulfillment, offers an alternate resolution of the problem. The proposal suggests that it is possible to separate the issue of drive-organized and conceptual thought modes from the question of primitivcness and sophistication. It retains the notion of two modes of organizing mental contents, one centered in drives (purposes, wishes), the other a cate­ gorical mode; but it suggests that both modes occur in the mature cognition of adulthood. Drive-organized cognition does not remain primitive, contributing to adult functioning only as it is controlled by categorical thought. Rather, in mature form both modes occur on the level of symbolic thought, in the context of reflective thought, and the testing of thought against external standards. It is their style that distinguishes the modes, not their degree of sophistication. In such a formulation cognitions expressing the purposes, plans, and goals of adult life occur in the mature form of drive-organized thought adapted to the relevant realities. The imagistic primary process thought that Kris and Hartmann describe as accompanying even the highest levels of artistic and scientific creativity, can be seen as a mature rather than primitive form of primary process cognition. In place of the difficult notion o f primitive thought forms making valid contributions to the most sophisticated scientific and artistic creativity, this formulation suggests that the imagistic thought of the primary process might itself match in sublety and sophistication the highest forms of categorical thought. The development of a new formulation in mathematics or physics, then, or the elaboration of a poetic or dramatic sequence may be seen to proceed by a succession of image displacements and condensations toward the goal o f a satis­ factory theoretical or artistic product. And even the level of drive-organized thought in dreams could be examined for the degree o f its primitiveness and sophistication, differentiating, for example, simple dreams of undisguised wish fulfillment that Freud describes, from those in which sophisticated ideas and complex logical relationships might be represented. The Primary and Secondary Processes in Infancy. Freud’s observations of primary process thought in dreams and symptoms led him to hypothesize the

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origins o f the primary processes in a period o f life when the infant is altogether unaware of its environm ent, and the secondary process origins at about age two, when the child’s interests turn to the external world. The notion that the infant is uninvolved with its environment even in the first days of life has been vigorously challenged. W ithin psychoanalysis Hartmann (1958) in particular was led by his interest in adaptation to recognize that at least in some cognition-relevant functioning (e .g ., perceptual and motor skills) infants are actively and adaptively engaged with their environments from the beginning. His view has been widely accepted, particularly within ego psychology (e.g ., Holt, 1967; Rapaport, 1951). The increasing body of data from infant observa­ tions and current perspectives in infant research also overwhelm ingly support the notion that infants interact adaptively with their environments from the time of birth. Psychoanalytically sophisticated critiques o f the results of infant research (e.g., Lichtenberg, 1980; Peterfreund, 1978) urge that psychoanalytic formula­ tions o f infancy based on concepts of infants’ early uninvolvement with their environments must be discarded or significantly revised. The recognition that infants are adaptively engaged with reality has im plica­ tions for the conceptualization o f primary and secondary process thought. Hartmann, accepting the notion that the primary processes are unrelated to real­ ity, suggests that the adaptive behavior o f infants be seen as showing precursors of secondary process cognition, and that the developm entally earliest cognitive organization be viewed not as one of primary processes exclusively, but rather as an undifferentiated one out of which both the primary and the secondary pro­ cesses emerge. It is a view which has been generally accepted (e .g ., Holt, 1967; Noy, 1969; Rapaport, 1951), though the specific characteristics o f the un­ differentiated period and o f the differentiation processes have not been fully elaborated. Such a formulation has an intuitive validity, as is suggested by its ready acceptance. But significant conceptual issues remain. The nondifferentiation of the early period may be conceived in terms o f two cognitive modes not yet sharply dem arcated, the one an affect-based developm ent shaped by conflict and defense out o f the narcissistic mother-child unity (the primary processes); the other a developm ent based on innate mechanisms occurring by maturation and learning in adaptive interaction with the nonpersonal environment (the secondary processes). O r the nondifferentiation may be understood as a single, undifferenti­ ated cognitive mode in which the infant interacts, at least in part adaptively, with both its human and its nonhuman environment. If the former conception is accepted, the problem o f the infant’s adaptive engagement with the environm ent persists. That conceptualization retains Freud’s formulation o f the infant’s narcissistic nonengagement with the environ­ ment in the infant-m other relationship. Only in its relation to the nonhuman environment is the infant adaptively engaged with its surround. Such a fram e­ work remains markedly at variance with recent perspectives on infancy (both

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within and outside psychoanalytic psychology) which urge that the infant’s in­ teractions with the m other are themselves adaptive engagem ents with the en­ vironment and central to the infant’s learning about the world. If, instead, the undifferentiated period is viewed as a single cognitive mode, out of which, at about age two both the primary and the secondary processes emerge, other conceptual problems arise. Such a view requires a reconcep­ tualization o f infantile cognition in which primary process thought is seen to have its foundations (or precursors) in the infant’s at least partial engagem ent with reality. Therefore this view must show how, on a base o f cognition occurring to some extent in the context o f the infant’s active and adaptive engagem ent with reality, the archaic primary processes of adulthood develop— ones in which thought is divorced from reality, which offer substitute gratification in the ab­ sence o f real satisfaction, which are devoid o f purpose, and not subject to learning. The concept o f an undifferentiated period must offer a way o f under­ standing the cognitive reorganization at about age tw o, that in Freud’s model results from the child’s new awareness of and adaptative engagem ent with an external world o f which previously it has been oblivious. And, in addition, this concept must address satisfactorily the problem o f whether and how such a cognitive reorganization results in categorical thought and in mature thought aimed at wish fulfillment. Summary. Since Freud’s metapsychological formulations o f his observa­ tions o f the primary processes, conceptual issues have been raised about the place and form o f primary process cognition in both mature adulthood and infancy. The notion, increasingly accepted, that the primary processes may occur on a sophisticated as well as an archaic level, raises questions as to the form of the primary processes in m aturity, differences between the primitive and mature primary processes, and the relation o f the sophisticated primary processes to the secondary processes. The possibility is suggested that Freud’s twofold concep­ tualization o f the secondary processes as thought aimed at wish fulfillment and as categorical thought might offer a direction for resolving some o f these issues, if the former is taken to be the mode o f the sophisticated primary processes. To be satisfactory such a formulation would be required to show that the secondary processes aimed at wish fulfillment have the sam e form or mode as the archaic primary processes. The differences between the primitive and sophisticated pri­ mary processes might then be seen to be those Freud specifies as centrally distinguishing the primary from the secondary processes: their occurrence on the level of symbolic thought, and their ability to take into account relevant realities. In maturity, both the sophisticated primary processes and categorical thought might occur on a level that takes these factors into account, but might be distinct in mode. As questions about the primary processes in adulthood have been raised, the form of their occurrence in early childhood has also been a topic o f conceptual

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interest. Specifically, the widely accepted notion that infants interact adaptively with their environments from birth has resulted in the proposal of an undifferenti­ ated cognitive period in infancy out of which both primary and secondary process thought are differentiated. In its present form however, based on H artm ann’s ego psychology, either the problem o f the infant's noncngagem ent with the environ­ ment persists as it concerns the infant-m other relationship, or a framework is needed for understanding the developm ent o f the primary processes in the con­ text of the infant’s at least partially adaptive engagem ent with its environment.

A PROPOSED REFORMULATION: A MODEL OF EVENTS The event model proposes that the infant’s earliest experiences as Piaget concep­ tualizes them have essential characteristics of the primary processes as Freud observed them in adulthood. Primary process cognition conceived in these terms occurs in the context o f the infant’s active and adaptive engagem ent with its environment. From the time o f birth the infant’s cognitive processes are modified by learning, a process whose form can be identified with displacement and condensation. This learning culm inates in a major cognitive transition at about age two, in which the capacity for symbolic thought, the recognition of a world of realities external to the self, and a recognized need to integrate one’s thoughts with reality are central. This cognitive reorganization provides the base for both sophisticated primary process (drive-organized) cognition and categorical or con­ ceptual thought. In later childhood and adulthood cognition which has not par­ ticipated in the cognitive reorganization has to varying degrees the characteristics of the archiac primary processes Freud observed in dreams and symptoms.

The Primary Processes in Infancy: The Experience of Events In Piaget’s model the basic units o f experience in infancy are actions (e.g ., grasping, visual focusing, nursing) which are registered cognitively in sen­ sorimotor schemes. They are referred to here as events.3 Each event can be seen, objectively, to be composed o f an infant-in-interaction-with-the-environment unit (e.g ., infant-grasps-finger-of-parent; infant-sucks-at-breast). The infant’s subjective experience, how ever, is not differentiated into subject, action and object. Action is central. Subject and object are initially undifferentiated aspects of the global action event. Cognition and motor enactment are also undifferenti-

3The term event is used here rather than Piaget's own terms although the proposed conceptual elaborations are intended to remain true to Piaget's formulations. The use of an alternate term serves to recognize that some implications drawn here from Piaget's theory arc not ones Piaget himself made, and are the author's responsibility.

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ated. The cognitive representation o f the event is o f an action. T herefore, a cognition (e .g ., o f a grasp event) cannot occur independently o f action (i.e ., of actual grasping). Im plicitly actions are purposive, though intentionality does not become m anifest until later w hen the intending subject is differentiated out o f the global event. Learning occurs as events are repeated and organized into in­ creasingly com plex w holes (in P iag et’s term s by assim ilation and, gradually, by accom m odation). T he unit o f this organizational process is the event as a w hole, not an abstracted aspect o f it. The larger organization w ithin P iag et’s schem e is a com plex o f events. The basis for integration into such w holes is the action, not the self or the object acted upon. A m ong the earliest w holes (schem es) so form ed are ones o f visual focusing, grasping, and sucking. The particular object acted upon is irrelevant to an ev en t’s inclusion in a particular schem e. In a com plex grasp schem e for instance, objects grasped, such as a finger, a blanket edge, a spoon, are im plicitly represented but do not have a defining function for the grasp schem e itself. Events so described have strong sim ilarities in form to prim ary process cogni­ tions as Freud observed them clinically in adults. The unit o f experience (cogni­ tion) takes the form o f an occurrence in the im m ediate present: an infant-ininteraction-w ith-the-environm ent event. A s in the prim ary processes o f dream s, belief is uncritically attached to event experiences: the experience itself is the guarantor o f reality; events com e into (subjective) existence as a result o f the infant’s experiencing and subside from existence at the term ination o f the experi­ ence. The event is, initially, w ithout placem ent in tim e, space, or other reality frame. As in archaic prim ary process cognition, thought and its referents are not distinguished, in the earliest events there is no differentiation yet betw een a cognition o f an event and its actual enactm ent. Events take the form Freud ascribed to prim ary process wish fulfillm ents: They are enactm ents in the present o f (as yet im plicit) purposes, m otives, or aim s (to grasp, to suck). They are unconscious in the sense o f not being subject to reflection; the infant lives entirely within its present experience. The organization o f events occurs by processes w hich appear to be infant analogues o f condensation and displacem ent, on the base o f the particular drive or aim: cognitive units (events) as w holes are adduced to one another on the basis o f sim ilarity o f action (purpose, aim ), the objects acted on playing little part in determ ining w hich cognitions may go together o r substitute for one ano th er.4 Events also have characteristics usually associated with the prim ary processes in adulthood but not generally regarded as integral to them . First, objects as they 4The originality o f P iaget’s placem ent o f action or purpose rather than objects or self at the core o f cognition in infancy, and its com patibility with F reud’s conceptions o f the prim ary processes tends not to be fully appreciated. In Freud’s view too, though not in his earliest statem ents, it is the wish or purpose that is the connecting factor am ong im ages, subject and object being infinitely displaceable. As he puts it, perhaps most vividly (Freud, 1922), “ The language o f symbolism (the prim ary processes) . . . know s no gram m ar; it is an extrem e case o f a language o f infinitives, and even the active and passive are represented by one and the sam e im ages” (p. 212).

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occur initially in events are action objects and part objects. They are defined, not by their various physical attributes, but by their place in action schemes. 1'he parent’s finger which is grasped is, to the infant, only a “ graspable.” When the finger is the object in a visual focus event it is a “ seeable.” M oreover, the breast which is the object in a nursing event is not perceived to be an aspect of the mother, but to represent her entirely in the action event. And the finger that is a graspable in one schem e, and a seeable in another, is objectively the same finger, but subjectively, for the infant, it becomes a “ seeable-graspable” only later. Initially the finger as seeable and the same finger as graspable are discrete objects. Second, the self in the event (initially, like the object, only implicit) is, also like the object, an action self and a part-self. Self as “ see-cr” and self as “ grasp­ e r” arc among the earliest self-aspects, and, as in the case o f objects, these two self-aspects are initially discrete. Self as “ seer-grasper” and, eventually, as a complex of attributes is a later developm ent. The self is also narcissistically central in the event in ways elaborated in Chapter 1: Its own experiencing brings the event into existence and with the termination o f the experience the event subsides from existence. Within the event the infant’s particular action deter­ mines which aspects of its environm ent achieve existence (the finger, the ring), and environmental objects are defined by the infant’s action (as graspablcs, seeables). Third, developm entally early forms of the illusions of omnipotence and pri­ mary creativity, generally associated with primary process cognition, can be seen to occur in the event. As is more fully discussed in Chapter 1, because thought and motor action are not differentiated in early event experience, the expectation that on e’s thoughts arc accom panied by the relevant realities (the illusion of omnipotence), is entirely justified by experience. And because only that which participates in its actions has existence for the infant, it is subjectively a fact of infant life that all existence is a function o f its own experiencing (the illusion of primary creativity). Fourth, splitting may be seen to have its developmental origins in event experience. Initially events arc discrete. Gradually events with the same actions (aims, purposes) are organized into larger wholes. Any event, however, which is incompatible in action, purpose, or aim with another particular event organiza­ tion (scheme) is not adduced to it and is without influence on it. An event may be organized then with other events whose aims match its own. Later defensive splitting, the discrete organization o f experiences incompatible in aim , appears to reflect these developm entally early processes. Whereas this model o f the earliest form of infantile cognition appears to accommodate Freud’s observations o f primary process cognition satisfactorily and to be congruent with phenomena o f early developm ent clinically associated with primary process thought, it is in a number o f respects incompatible with Freud’s theoretical formulatLons.

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First, in Freud’s view the primary processes are, from the beginning o f life, divorced from reality. Thought (hallucinatory wish fulfillment) occurs only when gratifying m otor action (e .g ., actual nursing) is not im mediately possible. Here the present model is most centrally at odds with Freud’s. The event model proposes that thought and action are undifferentiated components of the event; in other words, thought can occur only in the presence o f motor action. The primary processes arc not divorced from reality but arc absolutely tied to it. This formulation paves the way for a conceptualization o f the primary pro­ cesses as intimately related to reality, not only in infancy but also in the drive organizations o f adulthood which represent mature interests and life purposes. It is the absence of reality relatedness in som e drive-organized (primary process) cognitions of adulthood that presents a problem for this model. Second, in its proposal that the primary processes occur in interaction with the human and nonhuman environm ent, this model also provides for the possibility of learning in primary process cognition, learning which occurs by processes o f displacem ent and condensation. Therefore even in adulthood increasing refine­ ment of thought (e.g ., the developm ent o f a plan of action or the imagery o f a poem) might occur by pathways o f successive displacem ents and condensations. It is the absence o f learning evident in some cognitions (e .g ., some of those contributing to dreams and symptoms) which must be accounted for. That is, the question is not whether some primary process cognition may be sophisticated, but why or how some aspects may remain archaic. Third, Freud’s theory proposes a deprivation model of learning. The earliest cognition (hallucinatory wish fulfillm ent) occurs when actual satisfaction is im ­ possible. It is a substitute for the actual, relevant expression o f drive (incorporat­ ing wish and purpose) as might occur in nursing. The proposed model suggests that the cognitions o f infancy occur in the infant’s active and satisfying engage­ ment with reality, in the actions o f seeing, grasping, nursing, and so on. The conceptual problem is not to show how cognition may become related to real satisfactions, but under what conditions thought may become a substitute for them. Fourth, this model proposes that the earliest cognitions occur in the context of action that is at least implicitly purposive, whereas in Freud’s view purposive action is from the beginning the very antithesis of primary process cognition and becomes possible only with the “ turn to reality” at about age two. It is therefore a problem for this model to show, not how purposive action may begin to occur, but under what circumstances cognition divorced from it may develop.

Developments in Event-Centered Experience: Toward Cognitive Reorganization In Freud’s theory the secondary processes replace the primary ones at about age two. Central to his formulation are the child’s new relations to reality, capacity for symbolic thought, and testing of cognitions (ideas, wishes) against reality.

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The outcomes are capacities for secondary process thought aimed at wish fulfill­ ment, secondary process categorical thought, and, when the modification of ideas in the light o f reality is not tolerated, their persistence in archaic primary process form. Freud did not extensively elaborate his conception o f the developm ents that lead from primary to secondary process cognition, but in his conception o f the cognitive reorganization itself, the child’s relationship to reality is central. The primary processes are a function o f the child’s early lack of involvement with its environment. The child’s turn to reality represents a new interest in and involve­ ment with its social and physical environm ent, and carries with it, in ways not delineated in detail, the capacity for symbolic thought and the testing o f ideas against reality. The problem for the event model is to show how developm ents out o f the earliest experience of events, representing adaptive engagem ents with the en­ vironment, might result in cognitive reorganizations at about age two whose characteristics are congruent with Freud’s observations. The present state of theory and empirical observation in this area does not permit a detailed elabora­ tion o f such processes and their outcom es. However, as is more fully discussed in the Introduction and in Chapter 1, the processes o f objectification and of the differentiation o f thought and its referents contribute, in Piaget’s model, to a significant cognitive reorganization at about age two (in Piaget’s terms the transi­ tion from sensorim otor to prcoperational intelligence). Piaget’s focus is on the central significance of these processes in leading to the capacity for symbolic thought; but the outcome o f these processes can also be formulated in terms more immediately relevant to issues of primary and secondary process cognition. The child’s relationship to reality can be seen in this framework, as in Freud’s, to be central to the reorganization, although the conceptual context for that centrality is different. The earliest event-centered cognition of infancy is absolutely tied to reality: In the experience o f events no thought can occur except that which represents a presently occurring engagement with the environment. It is a fact of infant experience that its thoughts coincide with the relevant realities and that all existence is a function of its experiencing. The developm ents in objectification and the differentiation of thought and its referents disrupt this relationship between cognition and reality. When thoughts are free to roam beyond the immediate present it is no longer valid for the child to assume that every thought (or wish) will be accompanied by what is being thought about or wished for. As the social and physical actualities o f the environ­ ment are increasingly recognized to have their own independent existence and character, the uncritical assumption that they are created and patterned by one’s thoughts becomes untenable. That is, the concurrent differentiation of the global sensorimotor event into thought independent o f the actuality to which it refers (symbolic thought) and of a body of social and physical actualities not governed by one’s own thought (an external world) renders untenable the earliest assum p­

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tion of congruence between cognition and reality. Now the relationship between a cognition and real circumstances becomes a focal interest which cannot be assumed but must be established. O ne’s ideas must be modified to meet the requirements of reality and/or reality must be altered to correspond to one’s ideas (purposes, wishes). Thus, these processes of objectification and the differentiation of thought and its referents suggest ways in which developm ents out of the earliest experience of events might lead to a cognitive reorganization congruent with that proposed by Freud, one in which symbolic thought, the recognition o f an environmental reality (social and physical) independent o f self, and the testing of cognitions against reality are central. In this m odel, however, the change is not attributed to the infant’s new awareness o f a hitherto unknown environment; cognitive re­ organization is the consequence o f a new understanding o f familiar experience. Due to the differentiation o f thought and its referents and the processes of objectification, the child is now able to think sym bolically, to be aware that realities are not a function o f its own experiencing, and to know that the con­ gruence o f its ideas (w ishes, purposes) with the relevant actualities cannot be assumed but must be accomplished.

Mature Event-centered Thought as Secondary Processes Aim ed at W ish Fulfillm ent In Freud’s developm ental model a capacity for secondary process thought aimed at wish fulfillment is a major consequence o f the new awareness o f the external world and the capacity for symbolic thought and reality testing. The two lines of development in the experience o f events lead to the capacity for such cognition. During the processes of objectification and the differentiation o f thought and its referents, the unit o f cognition remains the event, a sclf-in-interaction-withthe-environment unit. G radually, however, the character o f events is signifi­ cantly modified. An event may increasingly occur mentally with or without the actuality to which it refers. That is, as thought and action become differentiated an event can occur cognitively without accompanying action. These cognitions o f events may be placed in differing reality frames. When the infant can cognize an object in its absence as well as in its presence, the object in-existence-but-notpresent is differentiated from the same object in a present sensorim otor event. Event experiences, then, are no longer uncritically taken as real. Instead they can be placed in increasingly complex reality frames o f mem ory, anticipation, pre­ tending, and so forth. The flexibility and sophistication o f event-centered thought is vastly increased by the capacity for symbolic thought, the results of objectification processes, and the testing o f ideas against realities recognized as external. The capacity for thought free of the im mediately present actuality permits the evocation of a wide range o f cognition impossible when nothing can be thought but what is being

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cnacted. The objectification o f event-components loosens intraevent bonds and increases interevent connections. G radually, for example, the increasingly objec­ tified self is less limited by the present event and has connections to self-aspects specific to other events, and these connections in turn reduce the cognitive separation o f previously discrete events. This loosening of intraevent bonds among event components and the increasing of interevent connections vastly increase the complexities o f associational pathways and the flexibility o f this cognitive mode. And the eventual testing o f cognitions in the event-centered mode in the light o f realities recognized as external, refines the cognitions themselves and permits complex relationships between them and the realities to which they refer (e.g ., as a wish or purposive event-centered cognition becomes modified to meet the requirements o f circum stances, or action is taken to modify one’s circumstances in accordance with the wish). The outcom e o f these developm ents in event-centered cognition is congruent with Freud’s observations o f secondary process thought aimed at wish fulfill­ ment. The unit o f thought, the event, has the characteristics o f a trial action and can occur independently o f motor activity. Thought is not taken uncritically as real. It has increasingly free access to a large body of purposive memories. The appropriateness o f possible actions may be evaluated against the standards o f a reality recognized as external. One addition to Freud’s conceptualization concerns the place o f condensation and displacem ent, here identified with the assimilation and accommodation pro­ cesses by which event-centered cognitions are organized into larger wholes. Freud did not elaborate his theory in terms o f possible developm ents which lead the infant from primary to secondary process thought. In the present framework these developm ents are tentatively hypothesized to occur by processes o f con­ densation and displacem ent. Sim ilarly, Freud speaks o f secondary process thought aimed at wish fulfillment as occurring by trial action and relying on a body of purposive memories but does not further elaborate the thought processes involved. Here these processes of developm ent are viewed as proceeding by increasingly mature forms of displacem ent among and condensations o f the complexly integrated trial actions and purposive memories (i.e ., events), which can now be modified and elaborated on the basis o f reality recognized as inde­ pendent of self.

Mature Event-Centered T hought as Sophisticated Primary Process Cognition The developm ents beyond the earliest experience o f events by objectification also suggest possible characterizations o f the primary processes as they occur on a sophisticated level, capable o f participation in processes of artistic creation and scientific theory developm ent or, as Noy suggests, participation in all cognitive

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activity. Mature event-centered thought shows m ajor characteristics o f the pri­ mary process mode, occurring, how ever, on a sophisticated level. The cognitive unit is a self-in-interaction-with-the-environment event. It is therefore centrally a cognition of images (primarily visual, perhaps, but also auditory, kinesthetic, etc.). These images occur without confusion of thought and its referents. The individual expects neither that the relevant reality accompany the internal image (the illusion of om nipotence), nor that reality is only that which has been created imaginatively (primary creativity). Mature event-centered thought is a cognitive mode occurring as experience in the present, appropriately placed, how ever, in such reality frames as mem ory, anticipation, hypothesis, or fantasy. It is autocentric in that its focus is the wishes, purposes, or aims of the self (directly, or in displacem ent, or condensation). But it is postnarcissistic in that what is objec­ tively independent of self is recognized to be so. In its focus on aims and wishes it is a thought form particularly amenable to the evocation and expression of affects. It proceeds by condensation and displacem ent as image follows image, and event components are displaced or condensed in the thinker’s elaboration of an idea or developm ent o f a plan. Event components in these processes are virtually infinitely displaceable but cognition in this mode may become in­ creasingly refined as condensations and displacements are required to meet par­ ticular needs (e.g ., a poetic image that best captures a particular mood, a dynam ­ ic constellation that resolves a theoretical problem, or a plan that works in all particulars). It is a form of cognition that deals in whole rather than part objects. Therefore displacem ents and condensations occur among aspects of wholes (self, object, continuous time) rather than among discrete part objects. Finally, with the increase in objectification and the attendant elaboration of interevent bonds, splitting is no longer a phase-appropriate organization into discrete schem es of events with differing aims. Now repression replaces splitting, and splitting takes on its specifically defensive character, disruptive o f the ongoing integrative processes. Such a formulation accom modates the notion of the participation of the prim a­ ry processes in the mature cognition of adulthood in a particular way. The event model suggests, with Kris, H artm ann, Holt, and Noy, that the primary processes are not reserved for primitive cognitions found in dreams and symptoms; but it avoids the problem of the Kris and Hartmann formulations that require that thought form s— which are themselves archaic— contribute creatively to sophisti­ cated artistic or scientific thought. Instead the reformulation suggests that such contributions require considerable sophistication in primary process (or eventcentered) thought itself. And it agrees with N oy’s proposal that primary as well as secondary processes may develop to optimum levels. But event theory goes further than Noy in elucidating the characteristics o f such optimally developed primary process cognition: The reformulated model equates the primary pro­ cesses in mode and structure with Freud’s developmental model of secondary processes aimed at wish fulfillment.

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1'his formulation speaks as well to the question o f primary and secondary processes as two languages for the expression o f ideas, rather than a single cognitive mode (thought aimed at wish fulfillment) occurring on primitive (pri­ mary process) and sophisticated (secondary process) levels. It suggests, in con­ trast to the view proposed by Rapaport, that drive-organized thought itself can occur on sophisticated levels. Along with categorical thought, then, there may exist two cognitive modes or languages in adulthood, each susceptible o f the highest levels of refinement. It may be speculated that the uses of this mature event-centered cognitive mode are likely to be most frequent in aspects o f life involving the pursuit of goals and the elaboration and realization o f plans; that is, in those activities in which actualization o f personal intention is central. In cultural experience sophis­ ticated primary processes may be adapted to those pursuits whose aim is the expression of an idea (or complex of ideas) evocatively rather than analytically, in images o f particular events, as in poetry, dram a, or novels. In the clinical situation it is this cognitive mode which may most clearly reflect the processes of free association with their emphasis on events in the particular, the complexities of personal affect and intention, and the process in which, as event associatively follows event, the subtleties o f motivation and emotion may become increasingly clear. In the clinical literature it is the mode most likely to be found prominently in case presentation rather than associated theoretical formulations.

Secondary Process Categorical Thought 1'he processes o f objectification and the differentiation o f thought from its refer­ ents also lay the foundation for the secondary processes defined as logical or categorical thought. The major body o f Piaget’s work traces that developm ent from the reflexes present at birth through the preoperational period and the period of concrete operations to that o f formal operations, the highest form of logical thought. For present purposes, therefore, only some o f the immediate conse­ quences of the developm ents out o f initial event-centered experience will be indicated. Initially in developm ent, action (aim, drive, wish) is the only base on which cognitive integration occurs (in the formation o f sensorim otor schemes). The processes o f objectification introduce a new mode o f organization: Event components (self, object, etc.) are integrated across action events into wholes based not on similarity o f aim but on objective identity— self aspects with other self aspects, object aspects with other aspects o f the same object. Eventually other event components (tim e, space, causality) become objectified as well. For example, discrete times (time for a nap, time for lunch) become continuous time; or spaces (where I sleep, where I eat) become integrated maps o f one’s house, one’s neighborhood, and eventually o n e’s world generally. It is such integra­ tions, combined with the capacity for symbolic thought, which make possible developments in the direction o f logical thought. Now objects (including self and

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such phenomena as time and space) can increasingly be defined and explored in terms o f general characteristics abstracted from them , such as longer, bigger, heavier, and so forth (in Piaget’s terms, concrete operations); and from there transitions can be made to the logical thought o f formal operations. Logical or categorical cognition differs from mature event-centered cognition in significant ways. The unit o f thought is not the event but characteristics (weight, length, etc.) abstracted from events. It is less likely to function in action images and more likely to deal in symbols such as words and numbers. Its focus is not the particular; instead the particular is examined in light o f the general. Thus it is allocentric rather than autocentric. It proceeds not by condensation and displacem ent among event im ages, but, in its most sophisticated form, by the rules o f formal logic. This cognitive mode is adapted to comm unicate through reasoned discourse rather than by presentation of the evocative event. In the clinical situation it is likely to be central in the interpretive process rather than in the processes o f free association, and in the clinical literature, it appears in theoretical analysis rather than in case presentation.

Relations Between Sophisticated Prim ary Process Cognition and Secondary Process Categorical Thought It is this categorical mode and the mature event-centered mode, both developing out of the primitive experience of events and both founded in the cognitive reorganization at about age two, which are hypothesized here to represent the two cognitive modes o f adulthood. Both are proposed to occur on sophisticated levels and no a priori judgm ent is possible as to the superiority o f one over the other.5 They may be viewed as two modes or “ languages” in which a particular idea may be expressed. An exploration o f the meaning of slavery, for exam ple, may be elaborated in the event-centered mode of the novel, as in Uncle Tom ’s Cabin, or the categorical mode o f an essay in which issues o f slavery are elaborated in reasoned argument. It is tentatively proposed that in every cognitive activity, from the develop­ ment o f scientific theory to the artistic activity described by K ris, both modes participate though one may predom inate. In cognitive activity like theory build­ ing, dominated by the categorical mode, the influence o f the event-centered

5It is in the proposition that event-centered thought may reach high levels o f sophistication that this model most sharply differs from Piaget’s. He too proposed that thought proceeds by two logics, one more closely tied to imagery, action, intuition and analogy; the other to explicating relations between propositions (therefore, if . . . then), to exposition aimed at proof and to deductive reason­ ing (in Rapaport, 1952, p. 157 n. 16). However in his view the former occurs on a developmentaily more primitive level than the latter.

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mode may be found in intuitions as to which of several lines of reasoning might most usefully be followed, or in a steady awareness of the possible applications of particular theoretical elaborations. Conversely, in the arts the event-centered mode may predom inate but categorical thought might also be seen to play a significant role. Drama may represent most fully the characteristics of sophisti­ cated evcnt-ccntcrcd cognition. A play presents the crystallization of a single event or idea. It is presented as a real situation and elaborated in a series of images which gradually enlarge and resolve the central action. W ithin the play the protagonist is central, and only those aspects o f others and of the nonhuman environment relevant to the realization o f his situation are enacted. Nonetheless, in the play’s every aspect categorical thought is also im plicated. Every com po­ nent o f the play (voice quality, gesture, social interaction, the nonhuman en­ vironment) must reflect accurate placement in the abstract categories o f the historical, geographical, and cultural circumstances in which the play occurs. Archaic Prim ary Process Cognition. Finally, the developm ents in eventcentered cognition can also be seen to contribute to the formation of clinically observed archaic primary processes, which Freud describes as providing sub­ stitute gratifications, divorced from reality, devoid of purpose, and not subject to learning. In Freud’s view these are characteristics of the earliest infantile thought, and they persist in those cognitions which the individual has found intolerable to integrate with reality. The present framework, with its emphasis on the infant’s earliest cognitions as representing active and adaptive engagements with reality, must accommodate cognitions with archaic primary process characteristics in another way. It hy­ pothesizes that initially an ineluctable unity exists between thought and reality. Thought “ divorced” from reality is made possible by the processes of objec­ tification and the differentiation of thought and its referents. These developments permit thoughts to occur which arc not being enactcd in reality. However, these cognitions themselves are only gradually modified to take into account the fact that they are no longer isomorphic with reality. In Piaget’s terms (1929) naive realism and anim ism, which represent incomplete differentiation of the proper­ ties o f thought and physical objects, become focal at about age two and only gradually disappear in the course of childhood. In terms o f the present discus­ sion, when thought no longer represents only the present event, the illusions of omnipotence and primary creativity are no longer validated in the child’s experi­ ence, but the child only gradually gives up these illusions. It appears to be in the cognitive reorganization at about age two that the child beomes focally aware that its thoughts and the realities to which they refer are independent of one another and must be integrated by modifying one an d /o r the other. When the child is unable to modify the reality to accord with an idea (wish, aim) and finds it intolerable to modify the idea to accord with reality, the idea is excluded from the cognitive reorganization. Such cognitions (or bodies o f cognitions) constitute the archaic primary processes in this model.

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In this framework then primary process cognitions are seen to be archaic (divorced from reality, providing substitute gratification, without purpose, and unmodified by learning) in specific ways. They take the form of an image o f a satisfying engagement with reality, but are integrated with reality neither in the fusion o f early sensorimotor cognition nor in the mature integration o f thought and reality by active modification of one and/or the other. Cognitions are in this way divorced from reality. They arc substitute gratifications insofar as the illu­ sions of omnipotence and primary creativity obtain; that is, to the extent that a cognition is assumed to carry with it the relevant reality rather than being a thought which must be actualized. They are purposive in the sense of being images of purposive (or wish-fulfilling) events but without purpose in the sense of purposive action fully taking into account present circumstances and the possibility of modifying them. Finally, they are cognitions which have been subject to substantial learning but excluded from the reorganization of cognitions into mature thought aimed at wish fulfillment and categorical thought, and from the refinements built on that reorganization.

Relations Between Archaic and Sophisticated Primary Process Thought This model proposes that both the archaic and the sophisticated event-centered cognition (observable in adulthood) participate in the early period o f develop­ ment in which thought is absolutely adapted to reality in the action event. Also both are subject to subsequent processes of objectification and the differentiation of thought and its referents in which thought free of present action becomes possible. It is in the cognitive reorganization— centered in the recognition of the independence of thought and reality, and the need for integrating them— that the major separation o f the primitive from the sophisticated event-centered cognition is hypothesized to occur. This model is congruent with Freud’s in proposing that the crucial period for the separation of primitive from mature thought is the cognitive reorganization at age two; that the integration of one’s thoughts with reality, cither by action to alter reality or modification of one’s thought to conform to it, is central to that reorganization; and that primitive primary process cognitions are those the individual has found intolerable to modify in accord with immutable reality. It is compatable with Hartmann’s view ( l9S8/i939) in suggesting that the archaic primary processes do not represent the first cognitions of infancy but are the result o f a differentiation which occurs at about age two. The model’s independent contribution is to propose how such developments might be concep­ tualized in a Piagetian framework. Primitive and sophisticated primary process cognitions are hypothesized to represent the same cognitive mode. The cognitive unit is a self-in-interactionwith-the-environment event. It is experience in the particular, in images of satisfying (wish-fulfilling) occurrences in the present. It is autocentric, focused on the wishes and aims of the subject and environmental circumstances relevant

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to those aim s, and it is organized by processes o f condensation and displacement. It is not by these characteristics that the event-centered cognitions of dream s, free association, planning, artistic or scientific creations, or the cognitions contribut­ ing to symptoms can be differentiated as to their degree o f sophistication or primitiveness. The defining difference is hypothesized to be the degree to which thought is known to be without effect on the realities to which it refers; objective reality is recognized to be independent of one’s thoughts and it is accepted that the integration of the two must occur by the alteration o f reality to make possible the actualization o f one’s ideas and/or the modification o f one’s ideas in the light o f reality. For purposes of exposition, primitive and sophisticated event-centered cognition may be seen in dichotomous terms; however, the developmental con­ text, indicating origins in the sensorim otor events o f earliest infancy and their possible outcomes in highly sophisticated event-centered thought, suggests that any given drive-organized or primary process cognition might be examined for the degree of its maturity along the entire continuum.

SU M M A R Y The notion of the event, based on Piaget’s model o f sensorim otor intelligence, is proposed as the basic unit of primary process cognition. The event, as it occurs in infancy (initially in such experiences as nursing or grasping) has characteristics central to Freud’s observations o f the primary process mode of thought. It is an experience in the present, taken uncritically as real, o f a satisfying (wish-fulfill­ ing) experience. Events are organized by processes identifiable with displacem ent and conden­ sation. Event-centered cognition may occur on a primitive or sophisticated level, differentiated by the criteria with which Freud distinguished primitive cognition aimed at wish fulfillm ent (the primary processes) from sophisticated cognition (the secondary processes) in his developmental formulation. In the latter a “ trial action” (an event) may occur mentally without accom panying motor action, is subject to reflection, and the possibilities of action may be tested against realities recognized to be external to the self. In the mature thought of adulthood, sophis­ ticated event-centered thought coexists and interacts with categorical or logical thought; the former is more prom inent in cognition focused on personal goals, affective elaboration, and creative activity; the latter, in cognition whose aim is rational analysis or the evaluation and presentation o f ideas according to imper­ sonal rules o f logic. Archaic primary processes (primitive event-centered cogni­ tion), observed in dreams and symptoms o f adulthood represent event-centered cognitions which, for reasons o f anxiety, have not participated in the processes that result in higher level event-centered thought. Developments out o f the primitive experience o f events tow'ard mature eventcentered thought (the secondary processes aimed at wish fulfillment) and cate­

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gorical thought (thought generally viewed as typical of the secondary processes) is traced in event terms. The earliest cognition of events occurs in infants’ active and adaptive engagem ents with reality. Processes of objectification gradually result in loosening the bonds between thought and the objects o f thought, and culminate at about age two in capacities for symbolic thought, the recognition of realities which are not a function of one’s experience of them (permanent ob­ jects, an “ external” w orld), and the need and capacity for testing one’s ideas against those realities with the consequent modification o f one’s thought to meet the requirements of reality and/or action to alter reality to meet one’s purposes or wishes. Cognitions excluded from the integrative process persist, neither absolutely tied to reality in the sensorim otor event nor integrated with a reality recognized as independent. They represent the archaic primary processes, divorced from reality, offering substitute rather than real gratification, not oriented to the adap­ tive alteration o f reality, and unmodified by further learning which would depend on their adaptation to reality. The proposed formulation suggests possible resolutions of three persistent conceptual problems concerning the primary processes. First, it suggests that the primary processes may occur on a sophisticated as well as a primitive level, and it proposes characteristics which distinguish the two and a model for their devel­ opment. Second, it suggests that the sophisticated primary processes be equated with the secondary processes aimed at the wish fulfillment o f Freud’s develop­ mental theory, and that the sophisticated primary processes with categorical thought, represent two interacting cognitive modes or languages in which ideas may be expressed in adulthood. Third, the model proposes a developmental formulation in which cognition identifiable with the primary processes may occur in the context of infants’ active and adaptive engagem ent with reality. In so doing it offers a conception congruent with what is now known about infants and obviates the need for positing a form of secondary process thought in earliest infancy to account for infantile adaptive behavior.

REFERENCES Basch, M. F. (1977). Developmental psychology and explanatory theory in psychoanalysis. Annual o f Psychoanalysis, 6, 2 2 9-263. Edelson, M. (1972). Language and dreams. Psychoanalytic Study o f the Child. 27, 203-281. Feniehel, O. (1945). The psychoanalytic theory o f neurosis. New York: W. W. Norton. Fliess, R. (1959). On the nature o f human thought: The primary and secondary processes as ex­ emplified by the dream and other psychic processes. In M. Levitt (E d.), Readings in psychoana­ lytic psychology. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. Freud, S. (1900). The interpretation o f dreams. In J. Strachey (Ed. and T rans.), The standard edition o f the complete psychological works o f Sigmund Freud (Vols. 4 & 5). London: Hogarth Press. (Original work published in 1923)

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Freud, S. (1922). Dreams and telepathy. Standard Edition, 18. London: Hogarth Press, pp. 197— 220 .

Gill, M. M. (1967). The primary process. In R. R. Holt (Ed.), Motives and thought, psychological issues, Vol. 5. New York: International Universities Press. Hartmann, H. (1958). Ego psychology and the problem o f adaptation. New York: International Universities Press. Translated by D. Rapaport. (First published 1939) Holt, R. R. (1967). The development of the primary process: A structural view. In R. R. Holt (lid.), Motives and thought, psychological issues. New York: International Universities Press. Jones, R. (1955). The theory of symbolism. In E. Jones (Ed.), Papers on psychoanalysis (pp. 87144). New York: Williams and Williams. (Originally published 1916) Kris, E. (1952). Psychoanalytic explorations in art. New York: International Universities Press. Lcwin, K. (1951). Comments concerning psychological forces and energies and the structure of the psyche. In D. Rapaport (Ed.), Organization and pathology o f thought (pp. 95-153). New York: Columbia University Press. (First published 1926) Lichtenbcrg, J. (1980). Reflections on the first year o f life. Unpublished manuscript. Noy, P. (1969). A revision of the psychoanalytic theory of the primary process. International Journal o f Psychoanalysis, 50, 155-178. Noy, P. (1979). The psychoanalytic theory of cognitive development. Psychoanalytic Study o f the Child, 34, 169-215. Petcrfrcund, E. (1978). Conceptualizations of infancy. International Journal o f Psychoanalysis, 59, 427-441. Piaget, J. (1929). The child’s conception o f the world. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Piaget, J. (1937). Principal factors determining intellectual evolution from childhood to adult life. In D. Rapaport (Ed.), Organization and pathology o f thought. New York: Columbia University Press. Rapaport, D. (1950). On the psycho-analytic theory of thinking. International Journal o f Psycho­ analysis, 31, 161-169. Rapaport, D. (Ed.). (1951). Organization and pathology o f thought. New York: Columbia Univer­ sity Press.

The D evelop m ent and Loss of Self Boundaries

Irene Fast

INTRODUCTION The concepts of self or ego boundary, and boundary failure have been signifi­ cantly useful since Tausk (1933) introduced them as a way to conceptualize aspects o f psychotic functioning and experience. In a number of respects, how­ ever, these concepts have not achieved clear and agreed upon meanings. This chapter explores the possibility that event theory can provide a useful framework for understanding clinical observations o f boundary failure, and, correspon­ dingly, developmental issues in boundary formation and structure. To anticipate, the paper focuses on boundary formation and loss as it refers to distinctions between the individual and his environm ent. It will be proposed that the term self boundary— with its implication o f an object relations theory— more fully accounts for relevant observations than does the term ego boundary and related concepts. Current object relations theory, how ever, is seen to have diffi­ culty in accounting for particular phenom ena o f boundary loss for which event theory provides a framework, specifically, the individual’s loss, in boundary failure, o f a sense o f differentiation between self and the nonhuman as well as the human environment; the dissolution o f gender identity; the relationship of identi­ ty loss to world dissolution experiences ( Weltuntergang); and cognitive distur­ bances, especially the dedifferentiation of thought and its referents and illusions of omnipotence.

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THE SELF BOUNDARY

In his seminal paper “ The Origin of the Influencing M achine in Schizophrenia” (Tausk, 1933), Tausk introduces the term “ loss of ego boundaries” to refer to the individual’s loss of the ability to experience him self as “ a separate psychical entity with individual boundaries” (p. 535). This meaning o f boundary and boundary loss has remained most prom inent in the psychoanalytic literature. Searles (1965), for exam ple, speaks o f a psychotic patient as having “ no firm ego boundaries demarcating him as a human individual from the outside w orld” (p. 562). Escalona (1963), exploring infant developm ent, speaks of the boundary between the infant’s body-self and surrounding space, of the demarcation be­ tween self and mother, and of the infant’s learning o f the environment as separate from self. Landis (1970), interested in the permeability of ego boundaries, ad­ dresses him self to the boundaries that separate the phenomenal self from the world o f reality external to the person. And Rycroft (1968), in his dictionary of psychoanalytic term s, defines ego boundary as referring to a “ distinction be­ tween self and non-self,” and the developm ent o f an ego boundary as observable in the discovery that objects are not part o f the self. That is, in the clinical literature generally, whether the term used is “ self” or “ ego” boundary, the referent is the boundary between the individual and the social or physical environment. The terms self and ego boundary, however, tend to accom modate different phenomena o f boundary disturbance. The term self boundary speaks more easily to the concept of the boundary as distinguishing self from the human and non­ human environment, and ego boundary to an understanding of cognitive distur­ bances in boundary loss, especially the loss o f the differentiation between thought and its referents and the reemergence of illusions of omnipotence. The two terms tend also to refer to different developmental contexts for boundary establishment and loss. Self boundary suggests an object relations framework in which the developm ent o f boundaries occurs by differentiation o f self and non­ self out o f an original mother-child matrix. Boundary failure, then, represents a dedifferentiation in the individual’s experience o f self and nonself. Ego boundary tends to be associated with the perspective in which developm ent is seen to proceed from infantile narcissism , in which the infant is uninvolved with its surroundings, to postnarcissistic experience in which the infant is committed to interaction with “ external reality.” In boundary failure, within this framework, the individual “ turns away from ” or “ loses touch w ith” the world in narcissistic self-absorbtion. Freud provides an evocative image o f this relation to reality in his metaphor o f the amoeba, which extends its pseudopods to interact with the environment, and withdraws them to a self-contained world when danger threatens.

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Here the term self boundary will be preferred. The amoeba image o f nar­ cissistic regression seems not to apply easily to clinical observations o f boundary loss. Tausk first used the term to refer to schizophrenic patients’ beliefs that their thoughts are not enclosed in their own heads but occur simultaneously in the heads of all people. It was this characteristic that seemed to him to reflect the patients’ loss o f a sense o f themselves as distinct psychic entitities. Further clinical observation has yielded a larger group o f characteristics typically in­ cluded as evidence o f failure in the boundary between self and nonself. Zucker (1958) and Searles (1965/1962) provide succinct and vivid examples. Zucker describes her patient as believing that she transmitted her thoughts and feelings to others by telepathy and thought transference (p. 8). She might believe, when riding the bus, that she was the same person as the man opposite her. She reported that when she had passed a statue of Jesus Christ it seemed to her that it was a statue of a woman disguised as Jesus Christ and that she herself might be that woman. Searles reports, as illustrative of profound loss o f ego boundaries, that his patient (Patient A) experienced the fragility o f his own integration in terrors that the building in which he lived would fall to pieces at any time. For many months, when he was unable to become directly aware of his feelings, Patient A focused anxiously on such climatic elements as rain, wind, or sun­ shine, and felt obscurely responsible for them. Unable for a time to distinguish clearly between humans and inanimate objects, he felt Searles to be coterminous with the chair in which he sat and him self as literally one with his bed. Longing for companionship and too frightened to interact with people, he often stood outside department store windows and imagined him self in lively group interac­ tion with the m annequins inside. These clinical observations do not seem to describe a “ loss of contact w ith” or a “ turning away from ” reality. The patient Tausk described did not turn away from the world to preoccupation with him self, but imagined that his thoughts, which actually occurred only in him self, occurred simultaneously in all people. Zucker’s patient was not uninvolved with others: with a man on the bus, with a statue she passed, or with Zucker to whom she related her experiences. Her difficulty lay elsewhere, in her understanding of her interactions with her en­ vironment. And Searles’ Patient A was intensely aware o f buildings, the w eath­ er, and Searles him self. The patient’s difficulty lay in recognizing what might appropriately be attributed to him self (e.g ., his terrors o f disintegration, his own bodily self) and what must be recognized as distinct from self (the actual condi­ tion of buildings, the bed on which he lay). The object relations perspective seems to accommodate these clinical obser­ vations more fully than the idea o f narcissistic regression. It suggests that from the beginning o f life the infant is engaged with its environment. The infant’s understanding of its experience, how ever, is undifferentiated: It does not initially distinguish what is self and what is “ n ot-self.” Boundary developm ent occurs in

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the gradual differentiation o f self and nonself in the infant’s understanding. Boundary failure, then, is not a turning away from or a losing touch with the nonself world, but a dcdiffercntiation in individuals’ understanding o f their experience. The object relations framework docs seem to match clinical observation. The patients described by Tausk, Zucker, and Searles were actively engaged with their environments. It was in their understanding that the difficulties occurred. The difficulty was not a turning away from the world to exclusive self-involve­ ment. It was a ^d iffe re n tia tio n , in which what was appropriately attributed to the nonself might be included in the self (e .g ., the bus passenger’s identity was made on e’s own); what was actually an aspect o f self might be attributed to the nonself (e.g ., one’s own feelings o f disintegration were attributed to buildings); or to both self and nonself (e .g ., one’s thoughts were sensed as occurring sim ul­ taneously in oneself and in all minds). However, the application of an object relations paradigm to issues o f bound­ ary formation and loss also raises significant conceptual problems. The focus o f object relations theory has been the differentiation o f the self from other persons, out o f the developm entally early undifferentiated mother-child unit. K emberg (1970), for example, defines object relations theory as dealing with “ the interac­ tions between the internal world of objects . . . and the actual interpersonal relationships o f the individual” (p. 1); and as focusing on “ all those determ i­ nants which permit the individual to be a full person in his own right, and to relate with other human beings as full persons in their own right” (p. 2). He proposes as the basic structure o f cxperiencc a unit comprised o f a self image and an object- (other person) image linked by an affect. As Searles em phasizes, however, in severe disturbance, boundary loss occurs as well in patients’ sense of themselves as animate and human, distinct from the inanimate world. In the sense o f Z ucker’s patient that she might be the woman in the statue, and in Patient A ’s sense that he could interact socially with a m annequin, the differ­ entiation o f self as animate in relation to the inanimate is no longer operative. A more profound differentiation failure involving the sense o f one’s self as both animate and human, is represented in Patient A ’s inability to experience him self as distinct from his bed and Searles from his chair. Such observations appear to require an object relations theory which speaks to an early developmental period in which the child’s self is not only undifferentiated from its mother but also from the nonhuman w o rld .1 'T he emphasis on the exclusively interpersonal nature o f the earliest unit of experience has roots in Hartmann’s model o f ego psychology. Its conception o f two lines o f development lends itself to a formulation of affective and social development as occurring by differentiation processes out of an original mother-child matrix, and relations to the nonhuman world as occurring in the conflict-free ego sphere, not by the differentiation o f self and nonself, but by the maturation o f biologically based mechanisms. In such a model the loss o f boundaries between self and other persons can be under­ stood in terms o f dedifferentiation, but boundary loss between self and the inanimate world cannot.

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Such a model could also more fully accommodate clinical observations of the concurrent loss o f self and of the stability o f the world (the phenomenon of Weltuntergang) in boundary failure. The latter has often been understood as the consequence o f an amoebalike retreat from reality to a self-contained narcissistic world. But such a retreat cannot account for the concurrent loss o f self or identity. The object relations framework has been hampered in accounting for world dissolution experiences by its focus on the “ other” in self-other differ­ entiation as exclusively human. H ere, as in the case o f Patient A ’s failure to differentiate his self from his bed or Searles from his chair, an object relations theory— whose basic unit includes self in relation to the nonhuman “ external world” as well as the human environm ent— seems to be needed. The loss o f the sense o f an intact w orld, like the loss o f a sense o f self, might then be seen as a function of dedifferentiation between self and nonself. Further, in its intensive focus on developm entally early processes o f self-other differentiation, object relations theory has not yet attended extensively to issues ascribed in psychoanalytic psychology to the oedipal period, specifically to the processes by which individuals come to recognize themselves as sex-specific in relation to other persons o f the same or the other sex. But in boundary failure the loss of the sense o f oneself as sex-specific is not infrequently observed. Z ucker’s patient, for example, herself fem ale, believed she could be the same as a male bus passenger, or that a statue o f Jesus Christ was in fact a statue of a woman disguised as Jesus Christ and that she herself was that woman. The loss o f gender identity in boundary failure suggests that if an object relations framework is to account for boundary loss, attempts must be made to understand oedipal phe­ nomena in terms o f differentiations between self and other and the loss of gender identity as one aspect o f dedifferentiation. Finally, still more difficult problems for an object relations perspective are presented by the cognitive disturbances regularly observed to be integral to boundary failure. The loss o f differentiation between thought and its referents and the reem ergence of illusions o f om nipotence have not typically been framed in terms o f distinctions between self and nonself, and their developm ent has not been extensively elaborated within psychoanalytic object relations theory as representing boundary-form ing differentiations. Nevertheless, these cognitive disturbances are generally recognized to be integral to boundary loss. It was a cognitive disturbance (a patient’s belief that his thoughts were equally present in all minds) which led Tausk to coin the term “ loss of ego boundaries.” And in Z ucker’s and Searles’ clinical observations both are pervasively evident. The dedifferentiation of thought and its referents occurs in the patient’s assumption that what is objectively only a product o f his imagination is, in fact, so. W hen the notion occurred to Z ucker’s patient that she exchanged identities with a fellow bus passenger, she assumed uncritically that it was true. When she thought that she might be the woman in the statue disguised as Jesus Christ she did not treat her idea as a product o f her imagination but as an

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occurrence not requiring further justification by the ordinary rules that govern physical reality. When Patient A feared that the building was falling dow n, he took his thought for reality without taking into account available evidence that the building was secure. In an even more vivid example, described by Scarles later in the same paper, a female patient who, having “ made a monkey o f” a priest in a discussion o f religion, experienced as a visual perception the priest’s ears as monkey cars. In her experience, her thought (a common metaphor for making a fool o f someone) was undifferentiated from what she took to be perceptual reality (the physical characteristics of the priest’s ears). Illusions o f om nipotence are equally prom inent in these clinical examples. For example, when Z ucker’s patient believed that she had exchanged identities with another person— a m an— she assumed uncritically that her thought or wish controlled the individual identity of another person including his sexual identity. And when Searles’ patient, preoccupied by a sense o f his own disintegration, was anxiously concerned about a building falling dow n, or when he felt uneasily responsible for the weather, an illusion of omnipotence may be inferred from his uncritical belief that what were in reality his thoughts and feelings influenced physical events actually governed by impersonal forces. In sum mary, this chapter focuses on the question of boundary developm ent and loss as it refers to the relation of the individual to his world. The notion of self boundary rather than ego boundary, with its implication of an object rela­ tions theory rather than one o f an amoeba-like turn from reality to narcissistic self-involvem ent, seems more fully able to account for clinical observations o f boundary loss. Current object relations theory, however, has difficulty accom­ modating some regularly observed aspects o f boundary loss. It is the hope of speaking to these issues in event theory terms that stimulates this paper.

THE SELF BOUNDARY: AN EVENT PERSPECTIVE The conception proposed here has major precursors in T ausk’s original develop­ mental formulation relevant to boundary developm ent and in Searles’ more re­ cent one. Already in 1933, when he introduces the concept o f ego boundary loss, Tausk is moving toward a differentiation framework in which to organize his observations. He posits an early narcissistic stage of infancy before “ object finding” (p. 536), in which “ no objects in the external world exist [subjective­ ly], and therefore there is no realization that one has an ego” (p. 537). It is a time when the infant considers all sensory stimuli as “ endogenous and im m anent” (p. 537). In that state, however, Tausk suggests,there exist drives, desires and urges for mastery expressed in the infant’s interaction with its environment. The subse­ quent stage o f developm ent is “ that o f an outward projection o f the stimulus and the attribution o f this stimulus to a distant object, hence the distancing and objectivation o f the intellect, and along with this a transfer o f libido to the discovered, or rather self-created w orld” (p. 537). It is in this process that the

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self as a distinct psychical unit is established and, as a reaction to the outer world, the ego boundaries are formed. T ausk’s conception shows signs of having been influenced by the prevailing theoretical perspectives captured in Freud’s “ am oeba” image of the individual’s relation to his environment: for exam ple, in his descriptions o f the neurotic as not having “ found his way to the outer w orld” (1933, p. 532); the ego boundary as a “ reaction to the outer w orld” (p. 536); the infant’s consideration o f all stimuli as “ endogenous and im m anent” ; and the later “ projection outw ard” o f the stim ­ ulus by attributing it to the outer world (p. 537). But centrally Tausk’s formula­ tion, though only sketchily outlined, suggests a framework profoundly different from Freud’s but congruent with the parameters o f the theory proposed here. From the beginning the infant is posited to be in active and adaptive engagement with its environment. It is only in the child’s understanding that no ego (self) or outer world exists. The growth o f the (subjective) ego and o f the outer world are concurrent and interdependent developm ents. The outer world is not “ dis­ covered” but subjectively “ created,” as, implicitly, is the self. The ego bound­ ary is a function o f these developm ents. Although Tausk does not use the term, his framework seems clearly to foreshadow, if not to present, a differentiation perspective. Searles’ perspective is explicitly one of differentiation in the psychic experi­ ence of the individual. Relating his observations to T ausk’s formulation and to the egocentrism described by Inhelder and Piaget (1958), Searles (1965/1962) describes the most deeply regressed schizophrenic experience as one in which the realm of imagination is not differentiated from the realm of perception. The individual cannot be said to have thoughts at all; instead, “ the moment that something which we would call a new concoction o f fantasy, a new product of his im agination, enters his aw areness, he perceives this as being an actual and undisguised attribute o f the world around him ” (p. 574). Searles suggests that this undifferentiated experiencing reflects residues of an early period of infancy, and that out of this undifferentiated experience differentiations occur in which the self is constituted as a distinct human individual in relation to a social and physical world recognized to be nonself. Event theory also proposes a model o f self-other differentiation to account for the phenomena o f boundary loss. It posits an early infantile period in which no boundaries between self and nonself have yet been established. Self boundaries are viewed as implicit in all differentiations between self and other, and bound­ ary failure as self-nonself dedifferentiations. The hypothesized form o f the early period o f nondifferentiation and major self-other differentiations proposed by event theory appear to accom modate clinically observed phenomena of boundary loss, and to do so more com pletely than either the model of ego regression or current object relations frameworks. The form o f the earliest event experience appears to match clinical observa­ tion of the outcomes of boundary loss more clearly than does either Freud’s model of narcissistic self-absorbtion and uninvolvement with the world, or object

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relations frameworks that consider the mother-child unit a narcissistic one and the infant as exclusively absorbed in it. Each event is objectively an active engagement of the infant with its environment (infant-nurses-at-breast; infantfocuses-visually-on-ring; infant-grasps-parent’s-finger). Subjectively, however, in the infant’s own understanding, its experience (and mental representation) is of an event (in Piaget’s term s, o f an action) in which self and other are un­ differentiated. In boundary failures o f adulthood, too, individuals are not ob­ served to be objectively uninvolved with their environments in narcissistic self­ absorption. They may be actively engaged with their surrounds: in argument with a priest, in fantasied relation to a fellow bus passenger, in anxious observations of the weather. It is in the patients’ subjective experience that the absence of boundaries may be observed. This boundary failure is not experienced by patients as a disturbance in a substantive psychic structure between self and nonself that might usefully be conceptualized as a wall or barrier that has broken dow n, or as a membrane that has been pierced or become perm eable. It is not experienced, either, as a loss of some function or structure that sustains the separateness or distinctiveness o f one’s self from the outside world. The patient does not attribute thoughts he recognizes as his own to particular other persons, nor sense him self to be one with his bed, in being wooden, nor the bed to be one with him self in being sentient. Instead, boundary dissolution tends to be described by the observer rather than experienced by the patient himself. It is observed in patients’ failures to apply discrim inating differentiations to their experiences, specifically those that differentiate self and nonself. It is probably less accurate to say that when a thought occurs to the patient he believes that it occurs in all minds, than to say that the patient fails to recognize that it does not; and less accurate to say that the patient experiences him self as one with his bed, than to say that in his experience of self-in-bed he does not apply a discrim ination that distinguishes him self from his bed. That is, the patient’s experience is narcissistic in that he fails to differ­ entiate self and nonself, not in that he retreats from the world to the self; this form o f experience is caused by failure to apply discrim inating differentiations to the experience, not by the breakdown o f a psychic structure, a boundary con­ ceived o f as a mem brane o r barrier. In clinical observations loss o f boundary occurs in relation to both other persons and the nonhuman world. The notion o f an amoebalike retreat from the world cannot account for a dedifferentiation between self and w orld, and concep­ tions of object relations relevant only to human objects cannot address the de­ differentiation o f self from the nonhuman world. The event mode! proposes that from the beginning the infant interacts with both its human and its nonhuman environment (e.g ., in both nursing and visual focus on a dancing mobile). In both arenas o f experience, self and nonself are initially undifferentiated aspects o f the event. In both arenas developm ent occurs by differentiation. In boundary loss, then, self-nonself dedifferentiation may be expected in relation to both the other persons and the nonhuman world.

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As would follow, in the boundary loss o f adulthood - fragmentation or loss of self and the dissolution of the world (W eltuntergang) are regularly observed to occur concurrently. The concept of an amoebalike retreat to the safety o f nar­ cissistic self-containm ent can account for the Weltuntergang experience, but not for observations that concurrently the individual feels him self to be disintegrat­ ing. Models of object relations in which self-other differentiation occurs only in relation to other persons cannot address individuals’ experiences o f the dissolu­ tion of the nonhuman w orld, nor account for the concurrent fragmentation o f the self and of the nonhuman world. T ausk’s formulation, that self and world differentiate out of a prior state in which neither exists for the infant, can account for these phenomena; and here the implications o f event theory are altogether congruent with T ausk’s frame­ work. In a significant sense neither self nor object exists in early event experi­ ence. Objectively the infant is actively and adaptively engaged with its (human and nonhuman) environment. Cognitive organization, how ever, occurs neither in terms o f self nor o f objects, but o f action schemes. Self and nonself are estab­ lished by differentiation out o f such schemes. Each achievem ent in differentia­ tion contributes to the individual’s structure o f both self and world. In each differentiation, boundary formation is implicit. Every boundary loss, then, is a dedifferentiation of self and nonself, and a loss in self structure and in the individual’s subjective structure o f the world. No boundary loss can occur with­ out a loss in both self and world; no loss in one can occur without loss in the other. In the massive dedifferentiations o f psychotic breakdown, the individual’s experience is o f utter disintegration o f self and total dissolution of the world around. The cognitive disturbances typically observed in boundary failure, especially the nondifferentiation of thought and the objects o f thought, and omnipotent thinking, are viewed in the ego regression framework as concomitants o f the narcissistic withdrawal from the external world; in object relations paradigms they are associated with the outcomes of psychotic disorganization, but not directly related to the dedifferentiation o f self and other. Event theory proposes that the differentiation o f thought and its referents, and the differentiation of omnipotent thought into intention and causality are self-nonself differentiations; and that the confusion of thought and its referents and the reemergence of illusions o f om nipotence in boundary loss are products of self-nonself dedifferentiation. In the earliest sensorim otor events the child’s experience is limited to the immediate present. The infant can think or imagine nothing beyond the im m edi­ ately occurring event. In such experience thought and its referents are altogether undifferentiated, and the illusion o f omnipotence (that w hatever is thought is accompanied by the relevant reality) is consistently validated. Gradually in the course of self-nonself differentiation, self as thinker is differentiated from the (nonself) objects of thought, and self as center o f intention or will is differenti­ ated from matters governed by im personal causality. (See Introduction and Chapter I for extended discussion.)

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In later boundary failure the individual no longer securely differentiates self as center o f thought and will from the objects o f thought governed by impersonal causality. Then, as Searles observes., the patient perceives every product o f his imagination as undisguised reality (1965, p. 574).2 And, when Z ucker’s patient has the notion that she exchanges her identity with a man in the bus, she may assume uncritically that the reality matches her fantasy. Finally, the dissolution o f gender identity clinically observed in boundary failure is not accommodated by either the conception o f a retreat from the external world to self absorbtion, nor by current object relations perspectives. A recently elaborated differentiation theory o f gender developm ent (Fast, 1984) shows promise of accom modating gender identity dissolution in the event model. The theory proposes that children’s early gender-relevant experience is un­ differentiated in a particular way: Girls and boys typically develop in genderappropriate directions (the consequence o f their anatom y, physiological influ­ ences, and social encouragem ent), but have not themselves categorized their experience in gender terms. In identification with both males and females in their environments, they have uncritically included in the sense of their own pos­ sibilities, those attributes and capacities that they will later recognize to be the preogatives o f other-sex persons. The recognition of sex difference signals the beginning o f gender differentiation, the recategorization o f experience in which some attributes and capacities are made a part o f the self recognized as sex specific, and other attributes and capacities are recognized to belong to other-sex persons. In such a model the establishment o f gender identity is seen to be the result of self-nonself differentiation. In boundary dissolution, then, residues o f early un­ differentiated experience might be expected to recur, experience in which the individual uncritically assumes for him- or herself all sex and gender pos­ sibilities. It may be such undifferentiated experience that is observed in Z ucker’s patient who found no difficulty in feeling herself to be the same as a male bus passenger or the woman disguised as a man in a statue o f Jesus Christ.

SUMMARY Since Tausk introduced the concept o f “ loss o f ego boundaries,” it has generally been used to refer to a loss o f distinction between self and nonself in psychotic disorganization. Attempts to account for clinical observations have tended to use 2The even! perspective would differ with Searles only in his suggestion that the patient experi­ ences these “ concoctions of fantasy” as attributes of " th e world around him .” The model implies that in self-other dedifferentiation both self and the nonself world are unarticulated, and no sense of self or world occurs that permits an experience o f “ the world around h im ." The individual’s thoughts and fantasies have as much reality as the perceived world, but that world has no more reality than his “ concoctions o f fan tasy ." Experience is on one plane, undifferentiated as to its reality status.

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the term “ e g o ” boundary to account for som e observed phenom ena (e .g ., cog­ nitive disturbances) and “ self” boundary for other phenom ena (e .g ., dedifferen­ tiations o f self and other). The notion o f a self boundary and associated im plica­ tions o f object relations theories accom m odate clinical observation more fully than the model o f ego regression. H ow ever, even object relations theory has difficulty in accounting for som e observations o f boundary failure, especially those o f cognitive disturbance, the dedifferentiation o f self and the inanim ate w orld, the concurrent phenom ena o f loss o f self and o f the w orld (W eltun­ tergang), and gender dissolution. Event theory is offered as a w ay to accom m o­ date these phenom ena in an object relations paradigm .

R EFE R E N C E S Escalona, S. K. (1963). Patterns o f infantile experience and the developm ental process,. P sycho­ analytic Study o f the Child, V ol. xviii, 197-244. Fast, I. (1984). G ender identity: A differentiation perspective. H illsdale, NJ: The Analytic Press. Inhelder, B ., & Piaget, J. (1958). The growth o f logical thinking. New York: Basic Books. K em berg, O. F. (1970). New developm ents in psychoanalytic object relations theory. U npublished manuscript. Landis, B. (1970). Ego boundaries. Psychological Issues, 24. Rycroft, C. (1968). A critical dictionary o f psychoanalysis. New York: Basic Books. Searles, H. F. (1965). The differentiation between concrete and metaphorical thought in the recover­ ing schizophrenic patient. In H. F. Searles (fid.), C ollected papers on schizophrenia and related subjects. New York: International U niversities Press. (First published 1962) Tausk, V. (1933). On the origin o f the “ influencing m ach in e" in schizophrenia. Psychoanalytic Q uarterly, 2, 5 1 9 -5 5 6 . Zucker, L. (1958). Ego structure in paranoid schizophrenia: A new m ethod o f evaluating projective material. Springfield, IL: Charles C . Thom as.

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A Framework for a Theory of O bject Relations

Irene Fast

INTRODUCTION Object relations theories attempt, in various ways, formulations of psychological development and structure which take as their focus the self in relation to its environment. Within psychoanalytic psychology, interest in object relations has been stimulated primarily by clinical explorations of severe disturbances such as narcissistic, borderline, schizoid, and psychotic disorders. The aim has been to develop a conceptual framework which contributes to the increased understand­ ing of these disorders, but also to establish a general theory of the development and structure of object relations and, more ambitiously, an object relations theory for psychological development as a whole. Major contributors to such formula­ tions have included Klein (1948), Fairbaim (presented in Guntrip 1956/7), Jac­ obson (1964), Modell (1968), Kernberg (1976), Sandler and Sandler (1978), and Schafer (1968). A fairly general consensus exists within psychoanalytic psychology that the appropriate concern of an object relations theory is the relationship of the indi­ vidual to human objects, that is, to other human beings. The earliest motherchild relationship is conceived to be the matrix out of which object relations develop. It is an undifferentiated or “ fused” bond in which the infant has no recognition of self and other as distinct. Early mental representations of self and other are of part-selves and part-objects. Development occurs by the gradual differentiation of self and other, and the integration of part-selves and partobjects into wholes. It occurs in the context of feelings of pleasure and un­ pleasure. These feelings become integrated and modulated in the course of object 67

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relations development. Anxiety-based avoidance o f integration is represented in splitting, a major early mode of defense against anxiety. Conceptual formulations organizing these phenomena appear to be moving toward consensus but still vary considerably; There is general agreement that no altogether satisfactory theoretical framework has yet been achieved. For exam­ ple, mental representations of self, and perhaps of other, may be seen to occur from the time of birth (Fairbairn (presented in Guntrip, 1956/7); Sandler & Sandler, 1978) or to begin somewhat later (Jacobson, 1964; Kernberg, 1976). They may be understood simply to represent the mental registration of experi­ ence (Sandler & Sandler, 1978) or to be internalizations requiring abilities not present at birth (Kernberg, 1976). The early form of mental representation may be seen to be that of a “ unitary dynamic ego” into which objccts arc internalized (Fairbairn, presented in Guntrip, 1956/7); a myriad of self and other representa­ tions fused with one another to varying degrees (Jacobson, 1964); or units, each of which comprises a self and an objcct image (Kernberg, 1976; Sandler & Sandler, 1978). Pleasurable and unpleasurable experience may be seen in terms of biologically based libidinal and aggressive drives which are organized by the self-other units (Kernberg, 1976); o f wishes to reinstate pleasurable object rela­ tionships (Sandler & Sandler, 1978), or of pleasure as a function of good mother­ ing and unplcasurc the consequence of unsatisfactory care (Fairbairn, presented in Guntrip 1956/7). Important advances have been made in the development of concepts to de­ scribe observed phenomena (e.g., notions of self-other differentiation; of early self and object representations occurring in dyadic units; of part-objects as action-objccts or self-objects). However, the processes by which these phenomena develop have been less fully elaborated, and particular developments tend to be ascribed to such general factors as optimum doses of frustration, processes of ego synthesis, or unspecified developments in judgment and reality testing. Conceptualization has advanced particularly in those areas of object relations development salient to understanding borderline and psychotic disorders. The exploration of self-other differentiation, for example, has yielded valuable no­ tions of objcct hunger, of the use of the object as a prop for projection, and of the need-satisfying object. Much less has of now been accomplished in specifying the dimensions of the processes of differentiation involved in such phenomena. And even less has been achieved in describing allied developments such as cognition in object-relational terms; or elaborating in such terms, less primitive phenomena such as the transitions out of narcissism and oedipal developments. From the beginning attempts have been made to integrate object relations perspectives with other frameworks within psychoanalysis: with ego psychology and its implications for autonomous ego functions, with drive theory, with the concept of infantile narcissism, and with the structural model as a whole. Much remains to be accomplished, however, if psychoanalytic observations are to be accommodated fully in an object relations perspective. The more ambitious

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g o al- -to establish an object relations framework which can apply to both psy­ choanalytic psychology and psychological developm ent as a w hole— has scarce­ ly been attempted. This chapter proposes that event theory provides one potentially useful model for an object relations theory. If it continues to fulfill its present prom ise— to accommodate psychoanalytic observations in a framework based on P iaget’s formulations— it will provide a path for integrating psychoanalysis with other psychological frameworks in an object relations perspective. Here the aim is to delineate the param eters of event theory at its present stage o f developm ent as they might give shape to an object relations model o f psychological developm ent and disorder. In each case the congruence of the event formulation with Piaget’s theory is delineated and the formulation is compared with relevant conceptions in other object-relational perspectives. Some injustice is inevitably done to concep­ tualizations when they arc presented outside their context. To do so is necessary, nevertheless, for present purposes o f conceptual clarification.

THE EVENT MODEL OF OBJECT RELATIONS The Basic Unit o f Experience. The event model proposes a basic unit o f experience and mental structure which represents the self in interaction with the nonself. These units, called events, arc represented in the reflexes present at birth: infant-grasps-fingcr-of-parent, infant-nurses-at-brcast, infant-focuses-visually-on-ring. In the earliest psychic organizations sim ilar events are organized together in sensorim otor schem es. Piaget finds such schem es to be the biological base o f all psychic developm ent. In Fairbairn’s emphatically object-relational perspective the initial psychic organization docs not reflect such units. He posits the existence o f “ a whole true self” from the beginning o f life, “ a unitary dynamic ego” o f “ pristine w hole­ ness and integrity” into which objects are introjected (Guntrip, 1956/7). However, other developm ents in object relations theory appear to be moving toward the notion of an interactional unit as basic to the developm ent o f object relations and perhaps to developm ent generally. Jacobson seems implicitly to have such a view in her conception of early “ engram s” out o f which images o f self and other develop (1964, p. 34). Explicitly, however, her formulation is of an early “ prim al, structurally undifferentiated self” (p. 6), and o f early states characterized by a constantly changing series o f self images. Kernberg (1966) introduces the notion of a dyad representing a self image and an image o f the other, joined by an action, as the basic unit o f experience from which object relations develop. In his paradigm , how ever, these interactional units are not the earliest units o f experience, but are “ introjections” made possible by “ the maturation and developm ent o f primary ego apparatuses” (1976, p. 37). Sandler and Sandler’s (1978) formulations most closely match those of event theory.

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They propose as the earliest units “ constellations o f subjective experience in which self and nonself have not yet been differentiated” (p. 292, nb). All meaningful experience, they suggest, is initially registered in such constella­ tions. Affect and Action in the Earliest Organization o f Experience. 1 The earliest experience and cognitive registration o f events is of actions, not o f self as actor in relation to the object o f action. Actions arc adaptive engagem ents of the infant (self) with its environment (nonself), but self and other are initially undifferenti­ ated aspects o f actions. Mental representation occurs in action schemes (of sucking, seeing, grasping), not self schem es or object schemes. Affect is the energizer or motivating force o f actions and therefore cannot be considered apart from object relations. Affects do not occur in pure form, inde­ pendent o f self and other. They arc, from the beginning, basic to the child’s active and adaptive engagem ents with the environment. Initially, however, self and other arc undifferentiated aspccts o f affect events: Affective organization occurs in terms o f affectively motivated actions, not o f affects attributed to self and other. Events arc organized psychically in discrete schem es representing similar actions. Affect is one dim ension o f similarity. It is probable that the pleasurcpain dimension o f affect is o f particular salicnce in determining the organization o f events in discrete schemes. The event model follows Piaget in proposing that the earliest mental organiza­ tion o f experience occurs in terms o f actions o f which the subjective and the objective are undifferentiated aspects. In Piaget’s model, too, affect cannot be considered independently o f self and nonself; Affect is the energizing aspect of every action, and the differentiation o f subject and object out o f actions is central to his theory. Piaget’s own work, and the body o f investigation based on it, focus almost exclusively on developm ents in the structural or cognitive aspect of actions. It is the largely unexplored affective or energizing aspect o f actions that is o f particular relevance for the integration o f Piagetian and psychoanalytic perspectives. In psychoanalytic formulations o f object relations the notion that the earliest organization of experience occurs in terms o f affects is generally accepted. There appears to be a movem ent away from Freud’s conception o f the earliest affects as impersonal tension discharge phenomena, to one congruent with that o f the event model which sees affects occurring from the beginning in motivated interactions

'This formulation of affect development owes much to the work of and discussions with Anne Thompson and Carol Fitzpatrick, though its articulation here does not follow exactly either o f their conceptions and is the writer’s responsibility. Their work is more fully presented in later chapters of this volume.

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between self and other. Fairbaim (G untrip, 1956/7) is explicit in his emphasis that affects cannot occur independently o f objcct relations. Jacobson (1964) more closely follows Freud in her conception that affect is initially represented in energy diffusely dispersed in a primitive narcissistic self, but her discussion also suggests an implicit view that affect is strongly linked to interpersonal experience from the beginning. K em berg (1976) retains the concept o f affect as the psychic representation of-the drives. It appears that in his framework the expression of affect may occur in tension discharge before the internalization o f self-other units. From the time of that internalization, however, affects are organized in self-other units. Sandler and Sandler’s (1978) conception seems most closely to approach the event model. In their view the first registration o f experience is of affect states; from the beginning they occur within objcct relations and are interaction experiences. General consensus appears to exist that early experience is organized in terms of positive and negative experience. Here K ernberg’s formulation is most ex­ plicit. It proposes two discrete organizations, one o f pleasurable, the other of painful experiences. This conception is at variance with the event model im plica­ tion o f many discrete schem es, among which the pleasure-pain dim ension of dissimilarity is only one, though probably one o f particular importance. S e lf in Relation to the H uman and Nonhuman Environment. Hvent theory proposes that self-nonself differentiation is central to the individual’s developing relationship to both the human and the nonhuman environment. The “ external world” as well as the human “ other” is established by differentiation. Selfstructure is formed in differentiation from nonhurnan as well as human others (self as grasper in relation to an object grasped; as center o f will in relation to objects governed by causality; as thinker in relation to the objects o f thought). Affective experience occurs not only in interpersonal relations but also, for instance, in delight at splashing bath w ater or frustration at a box that w on’t open. Self-nonsclf differentiations in relation to both the human and the non­ human world occur in adaptive engagem ents with the environment. These implications o f the event model are altogether congruent with Piaget’s theory, though the aspects emphasized are those more immediately relevant to issues of object relations than to Piaget’s own interests. The emphasis in event theory on the self in relation to the impersonal environ­ ment is distinctly at variance with other object relations perspectives. Those which do take into account the individual’s relation to the nonhuman world— most importantly the viewpoints o f Jacobson, M odell, and K ernberg, seem explicitly or implicitly to do so in terms o f H artm ann’s model of ego psychology (1939). The child’s object relationships are seen to be based in a narcissistically experienced mother-child unit; to be affectively motivated; and to develop, ini­ tially, in the absence o f awareness o f the environment. Relations to the imper­

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sonal world, in contrast, are rooted in “ inborn m echanism s,” developed by largely unspecified processes of maturation and learning, and occur from the beginning in adaptive engagement with the nonhuman world. Unlike the event m odel, such conceptions imply that the child forms its personal constructs o f other persons by differentiation processes, but not its constnicts of the nonhuman “ external w orld.” Jacobson (1964) suggests that only well after the establishment o f self and (human) object images, does “ ob­ ject imagery gradually [extend] to the surrounding animate and inanimate w orld” (p. 53). M odell, sim ilarly, places the child’s beginning interest in the world beyond the mother at a time well past birth and makes it contingent on the internalization of the good (human) object. The self is not structured in interac­ tion with the nonhuman world. Perception and motor skills, frequently described as developing in adaptive engagem ent with the impersonal environm ent, are not seen to be integral to the self (self as one who looks, grasps, listens, runs), but rather to be impersonal functions which develop independently o f self-structure and object relations, and are only subsequently integrated with or organized by them. Affect, in these m odels, occurs only in relation to other persons. It does not develop in the context of adaptive engagem ents with, or skill development in, the impersonal world. Finally, this model, in its conception o f early self-other differentiations occurring in the context of a narcissistic unawareness of the environment, implies that all the infant’s early interactions with its mother are nonadaptive, and that only as the baby deals with the impersonal world of objects do adaptive developm ents (e.g ., in perception and motor skills) occur. This implication of the model is nowhere explicitly accepted, and, indeed, is unlikely to be found to be acceptable by its proponents. The Early Nondifferentiation o f S e lf and Nonself. In the earliest experience o f events, and in their mental representation, neither self nor nonself can prop­ erly be said to exist; both are products of differentiation. In the undifferentiated event or schem e, the self aspect is ineluctably joined to an other complementary to it in a given action (e.g ., comfortable-self-with-tender-m other; frightenedself-with-im patient-mother; self as “ grasper” with ring as “ graspable” ; self as “ seer” w'ith ring as “ seeable” ). Here the event model follows P iaget’s central focus on the early nondifferen­ tiation o f the subjective and the objective, and his repeated emphasis that all development occurs by their differentiation. In object-relations theories as well, the early nondifferentiation of self and other has been central. However, the dim ensions o f that nondifferentiation re­ main largely unclarified. The mother-child relationship is regularly seen to be the undifferentiated matrix out o f which object relations develop. The infant’s sub­ jective organization of this relationship is conceived variously. Fairbairn postu­ lates a w'hole true self into which objects are introjected whose degree o f distinc­

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tion from self is not altogether clear. Jacobson, too, seems to hold the established view o f an early narcissistic self which must gradually recognize that the love object is separate from it; but she seems also to imply, at times, that both self and other are formed in differentiation processes. Kernberg introduces the concept of dyadic units each of which is composed of a self aspect and an object aspect that are initially fused, a notion congruent with the event model. The parameters of that fusion, how ever, are not delineated with sufficient clarity to perm it exten­ sive comparison. Part-selves and Part-objects in Early Event Experience. In the event model, the self and object in early events and schem es are part-selves and part-objects. When the infant grasps a ring, the self aspect involved is only self as grasper. Self as grasper and self as seer are initially unrelated self fragments organized in discrete schemes. Sim ilarly, the ring that is grasped and the same ring that is sucked are, for the infant, not the same ring, but a graspable and a suckable organized in separate schemes with other graspables and suckables. The event model follows Piaget directly in its concept o f objects as initially unintegrated object aspects— only later objectified into more complete wholes. It is the objectification o f objects that is o f primary interest to Piaget. The com ple­ mentary “ part” character o f the self is congruent with his formulation but is of greater interest to psychoanalytic psychology than to Piaget and, thus far, to investigators exploring the implications o f his model. Generally, object relations perspectives posit early part-selves and part-ob­ jects, though conceptions o f their organizations differ. In F airbaim ’s scheme the first self organization is a unitary whole self, and part-selves result from frag­ mentation due to unsatisfactory mothering. Jacobson (1954) proposes that some time after birth but still in the “ early pre-oedipal period” (p. 52) part-selves and part-objects are formed. It is unclear how these are related, in her framework, to the original psychophysiological self and how part-selves and part-objects are related to one another. K em berg’s conception o f the earliest dyads as units in which a self aspect (part-self) is related to a complementary object aspect most closely resembles the event conception though, as noted above, he restricts the notion o f part-objects to aspects of humans. Cognitive Organization in Early Event Experience. The event model pro­ poses that the central characteristics o f the primary processes are represented in the early undifferentiated experience o f events. Events are affectively organized experiences in the present, uncritically accepted as real and not placed in such contexts as mem ory, anticipation, hypothesis, and negation. These experiences occur in active engagem ents with the human and nonhuman environm ent and are the same ones in which developm ents in perception and m otor skills also occur. Illusions o f om nipotence (that wishes are accompanied by relevant realities) and

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o f primary creativity (that all existence is a consequence of one’s experience), are functions of the nondifferentiation of self and nonself in the undifferentiated event experience o f infancy. This formulation is congruent with Piaget’s model o f the earliest base for cognitive developm ent in the actions represented in the reflexes present at birth. Like Piaget’s actions, event experiences represent affectively m otivated, adap­ tive interactions with the environm ent that achieve reality for the infant only during their actual enactment. Again, like Piaget’s actions, events arc the basis for all cognitive development. Psychoanalytic object relations theories have not, to date, attempted to con­ ceptualize cognitive developm ent as occurring by processes of self-nonself dif­ ferentiation. To the extent that issues o f cognition have been addressed, they have tended to be formulated in H artm ann’s terms. In that framework primary process cognition and the illusions of omnipotence and primary creativity are seen to occur in the context o f the narcissistic unawareness o f the environment in which object relations begin their developm ent. Adaptive developments in cog­ nition (e.g ., in mem ory, perception, and m otor skills) occur only in the child’s engagement with the nonhuman environment. Jacobson (1964) suggests that in the infant’s early experience relevant to object relations, the primary processes, unadapted to reality, prevail; and that even at the time when the child “ learns to walk and talk and acquires urinary and bowel control . . . magic animistic fan­ tasy life predom inates and remains concentrated on the m other” (p. 53). But Jacobson seems to suggest, as w ell, that adaptive developm ents in perception and so forth are, in relatively undefined ways, also relevant to developm ents in object relations. Modell (1968) more specifically proposes that in relation to the mother the child establishes “ a magical created environment that serves to mitigate the danger of the experience o f total helplessness” (p. 23), which would be occasioned by a sense of separateness between self and other. In this created world, concepts of magic and omnipotence prevail while, concurrently, in rela­ tion to the nonhuman w orld, cognitive developm ent occurs in adaptive engage­ ment with the environment. K em berg suggests a place for cognitive developm ent (the autonomous ego funcions) more intimately integrated with object relations. When the self-other dyads have been established, he proposes, they become the organizers o f the ego functions— indeed, o f psychic developm ent generally. It is not clear whether K emberg perceives such ego functions and general psychic developm ent to occur by processes of self-other differentiation. Aspects o f Self-nonself Differentiation: Objectification. Event theory pro­ poses that objectification is one process by which self and nonself are articulated out of undifferentiated event experience. Objectification occurs when two dis­ crete schemes are activated simultaneously. W hen, for example, the threemonth-old infant is able to grasp the ring it sees, the grasp and vision schemes are activated together. Heretofore the infant seer and the ring as seeable have been

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undifferentiated aspects o f a vision schem e, and the infant grasper and the ring as graspable, of the grasp schem e. Now the infant becomes a seer-grasper and the ring, a seeable-graspable. Both infant and ring are to this extent articulated, no longer undifferentiated aspects o f either the vision or the grasp scheme. In this process self and other are differentiated from one another. Every articulation o f self (as seer-grasper) is accompanied by a complementary articula­ tion o f the nonself (the ring as a secable-graspable). No objectification o f the nonself can occur (e.g ., of mother as both gratifying and withholding) without a concurrent objectification o f self (as one who may be satisfied or frustrated). Sim ultaneously, objectification also integrates self aspects and object aspects of events into increasingly complex wholes. When the grasp and vision schemes are activated together and the ring becomes for the infant a seeable-graspable, it is not only differentiated from the object aspect of the event, but also integrated into a more complex whole. The infant self, similarly, when it has achieved integration as a seer-grasper, has to that extent come closer to being a whole rather than a part self. An attempt to show empirically that in adults self-other differentiation is related to the integration of part-selves into wholes has been successful at a statistically significant level (Benjamin, 1983). The subjective self and objects so formed are not initially substantial configu­ rations o f physical components. The self is at first a growing complex of affec­ tively motivated actions. It is a “ body eg o ” in this sense rather than a conform a­ tion of body parts. Objects are subjectively constituted as complements o f the purposive actions o f the infant. They gradually become seeables, graspables, what is thought about in relation to oneself as thinker, the causally governed objects o f one’s own purposes, and so forth. Only at about age tw o, when sensorimotor intelligence is replaced by preoperational thought, does figural or imagistic thought become possible, and with it the establishment of a body image as well as substantial images o f objects. Objectification processes are central to cognitive development. The event model proposes that the major phenomena o f primary process cognition are a function of the nondifferentiation o f self and nonself in the early experience of events. Processes o f objectification (primarily those which result in the self as center o f thought and will in relation to a world of realities governed by imper­ sonal laws) culm inate at about age two in a psychological revolution. Symbolic thought (thought in the absence o f what is thought about), becomes possible: a subjective construct o f a world of realities independent o f self (the “ external w orld” ), and, therefore, the ability to test one’s ideas against reality. Develop­ ments occur in mature event-centered thought (sophisticated primary process thought or the secondary processes conceived as adaptive thought aimed at wish fulfillment) and categorical or logical thought. Event-centered thought excluded from the objectification processes by reason o f anxiety, retains, to varying ex­ tents, the characteristics o f the primitive experience o f events (archaic, primary process cognition).

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Affect is implicated in every instance o f objectification. The earliest experi­ ence of events is of affectively motivated actions. Affect, therefore, is experi­ enced globally, without attribution to self or nonself. In the course of objectifica­ tion it is gradually attributed to the differentiated and increasingly integrated self and nonself. The affective compatibility or incompatibility of schemes is a significant factor in determining the possibility of their objectification. It seems probable that schemes with dissimilar but compatible affects (e.g., disappointment and anger; pity and affection) are more readily integrated than ones with incompati­ ble affects (e.g., to welcome a returning parent and reject him; to take in food and spit it out). The relative importance o f splitting and repression as defensive modes de­ pends on the extent to which objectification has been accomplished. When the processes of objectification have resulted in a largely coherent and integrated self-structure and construct o f nonself reality, repression predominates. On the other hand when, due to the pervasiveness of affectively incompatible schemes, the psychic structure remains one of relatively discrete schemes representing disparate patterns of affectively motivated interactions, splitting— the anxietybased substitution of one scheme for another— is likely to prevail. Piaget applies the concept of objectification primarily to the differentiation of objects from undifferentiated action schemes. His focus is on the cognitive or structural aspects of objects in the objectification process. Event theory extends its application to the self aspects of schemes and to a focus on their affective or energizing aspects. The notions of the concurrent differentiation of self and object, of their integration into whole objects, and o f self and objects as con­ stellations of affectively motivated actions, are quite specifically congruent with Piaget’s formulation. The conception of cognitive development as a process of self-other differentiation is central to Piaget’s model. Its application to develop­ ments in primary and secondary process cognition is intended to be consonant with Piaget’s concepts, though the psychoanalytic and Piagetian frameworks for cognitive development are dissimilar. The focus of event theory on the affective aspects of schemes raises issues of the incompatibility of schemes and their consequent nonintegration. Affective aspects are of particular interest to psycho­ analytic psychology but not yet a focus o f attention in Piagetian explorations. Present psychoanalytic conceptions o f object relations suggest developmental outcomes similar to those proposed here as they apply to: the self in relation to other persons; the differentiation of self and other; the development from partselves and part-objects to whole ones; the replacement of splitting by repression; and the interference in these developments by too great a degree o f affective ambivalence. Object relations theory tends not to address developments in cogni­ tion and in adaptive engagements with the nonhuman world in terms of self-other differentiation. The processes by which developmental outcomes are achieved have not yet been extensively conceptualized. Developments tend to be ascribed

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to general processes or factors such as optimum doses of frustration, processes of internalization, or the maturation o f biologically determined functions.

THE EVENT MODEL AND PSYCHOANALYTIC PSYCHOLOGY The event model proposes a framework for understanding psychoanalytically guided observations of object relations. It accommodates the phenomena that have been found to be of central significance in their development and disorder: an early nondifferentiation of self and other in which self and other are partselves and part-objects; cognitive organization occuring by affect-based displace­ ment and condensation with splitting as the primary defensive mode, followed by the gradual differentiation of self and other by which self and other become whole objects; cognitive organization occuring on other than an exclusively affective base with repression largely replacing splitting. Moreover, the event model shows promise of providing an object-relational perspective for psychoanalytic psychology as a whole. Thus far it appears able to account for significant aspects of infantile narcissism and the transitions out of narcissistic experience, including primary and secondary process thought, affect development, conflict and defense, gender identity, and clinically observed pat­ terns of disturbance in these areas. Moreover, formulations based on the model are showing themselves to be amenable to empirical test, as in Benjamin (1983) and the investigations reported in this volume of Thompson (chap. 8), Fitzpatrick (chap. 5), Young and Fast (chap. 7). Finally, the event model’s foundation in, and congruence with, Piaget’s theo­ ry provides a way to integrate psychoanalytic perspectives and observations with those of psychological development as a whole. With Piaget event theory pro­ poses as a working hypothesis, that all psychological development can usefully be conceptualized in terms of the differentiation of self and nonself.

SUMMARY Event theory is proposed as a model for psychoanalytically guided observations of object relations. Conceptualizations are offered of a basic unit o f experience and mental representation, the place of affect in this experience, self and other as part-selves and part-others, cognition as a function of object relations, and objec­ tification as a process for self-nonself differentiation. In each case the con­ gruence of the event formulation with Piaget’s model is clarified, and it is compared with significant conceptualizations in other psychoanalytic models of object relations. The possibility is raised that the event model may provide a useful framework for psychoanalytic psychology as a whole and, in its con­ gruence with Piaget’s work, a link to other psychological frameworks.

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REFERENCES Benjamin, J. (1983). Two components of the process of objectification as observed on the Thematic Apperception Test. Unpublished manuscript, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (1956/1957). Guntrip, H. (1956/1957). Recent developments in psychoanalytical theory. British Journal o f Medi­ cal Psychology, 29-30, 82-98. Hartmann, H. (1939). Ego psychology and the problem o f adaptation. New York: International Universities Press. Jacobson, I*. (1964). The self and the object world. New York: International Universities Press. Kemberg, O. (1976). Object relations theory and clinical psychoanalysis. New York: Jason Aron­ son Inc. Kemberg, O. (1966). Structural derivations of object relationships. International Journal o f Psycho­ analysis, 47, 236-253. Klein, M. (1948). Contributions to psychoanalysis. London: Hogarth Press. Modell, A. (1968). Object love and reality. New York: International Universities Press Inc. Sandler, J., & Sandler, A.-M. (1978). On the development of object relations and affect. Interna­ tional Journal of Psychoanalysis, 59, 285 296. Schafer, R. (1968). Aspects o f internalization. New York: International Universities Press, 1968. Thompson, A. E. (1981). A theory o f affect development and maturity: Applications to the Thematic Apperception Test. Doctoral dissertation, University of Michigan, 1981.

C h ild re n 's D e v e lo p m e n t out o f Event-Bound C o n ce p tio n s o f T h e ir Em otion

Carol J. Fitzpatrick

Central to the study described in this chapter is the prem ise that children’s conceptions o f em otion norm ally rem ain event-bound well past infancy. To elucidate this claim , the core m eaning retained by the event concept through a continuum o f developm ent m uch m ore advanced than that accom plished in in­ fancy will be review ed. A m ong the m ost basic, com m on sense units into which adults divide their experience o f an interaction with another person are self, other, and the actions and em otions o f each. Infants do not have these divisions available but rather encode their experience o f an interpersonal interaction as a seam less blend o f kinesthetic, affective, and sensory im pressions. As a result, the units which accum ulate in the b ab y ’s cognitive store each consist o f a blend of im pressions defined by a global situation. W hen the young infant encodes such an experience segm ent, the unit encoded encom passes com ponents which will later be recognized as self, other, and the actions and em otions o f each, but arc cognitively indivisible at the tim e. It is not the thorough indivisibility o f these com ponents, how ever, w hich constitutes the event quality o f early thought. The defining characteristic o f event-based thought is the situation-specific grouping or blending o f such com ponents. A ccording to the w orking definition used in this study, an event is an encoding unit w hose character and boundaries are defined by an experiential situation, and in which self-, other-, action-, and em otioncom ponents are therefore conceived in som e inseparable c o m b in atio n .1 T o the 'W hether this definition constitutes a significant departure from Piaget’s schem a concept is an issue o f ongoing discussion betw een Irene Fast and m yself. I believe the claim that early encoding units cohere around types o f interactive situations cannot be equated with P iaget's claim that such units cohere around types o f action, for reasons which will not be described in detail here (1982). Dr. Fast has suggested that the difference between these descriptions o f the event unit is a m atter m ore of 79

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extent that it show s the lim itations inherent in such categories, a subject’s think­ ing is defined as event-bound.2 Event-bound thought is the unifying characteristic o f a developm ental con­ tinuum persisting well beyond infancy. W ithin that continuum there is a wide range o f variation in the distinctness and the richness o f the com ponents con­ ceived in som e inseparable com bination. T ow ard one end o f the continuum is the 2 month old infant’s encoding o f a crying-self-quieting-to-caretaker-approach event, whose com ponents are thoroughly undifferentiated. Entered as a unit in the infant’s cognitive store is a distinctive but seam less blend o f im pressions— what it feels like to lie w et-checked and gazing at a loom ing presence, while feeling the encirclem ent o f large arm s and experiencing a vague, grow ing sense of com fort. Further along the continuum of event-bound thought are later infant concepts in which experiential com ponents have becom e distinguishable, but remain inseparable in that they are packaged in fixed constellations whose char­ acter and boundaries are defined by given situations. T hus a 15-m onth-old’s encoded units m ight include frightened-self-flecing-to-com forting-m om , chastened-self-crying-to-angry-m om , and m ischievous-self-tiptoeing-to-sleepingmom. Through the processes o f differentiation and integration, self-, other-, action-, and em otion-com ponents within each such encoding unit have becom e distinguishable and nuanced relative to their counterparts in earlier events. There is, how ever, a distinctive “ feel” to the wowi-components, for instance, in each o f these events— each rem ains bound to a particular constellation o f feelings, actions, and a com plem entary self-sense in the child. The toddler’s conceptions of m other (and o f self) thus rem ain m ultiple and limited in that ( I) they run according to a set o f situation-specific “ sc rip ts,” so to speak; and (2) they are not yet integrated across these scripts. Beyond infancy, the continuum o f event-bound thought encom passes som e of the preschooler’s spontaneous processing o f experience. A lthough he did not frame his findings in such term s, P iag et’s early work on “ prcconccptual” rea­ soning during the 2- to 6- or 8-year period provides exam ples o f cognitive processing based on situationally defined units. Having previously seen a slug in the yard on a grey day, for instance, one 2 '/2-year-old expected to see it on a subsequent grey day, but not on the follow ing sunny one. In another anecdote Piaget recorded, a child alm ost 5 years old claim ed after m issing her custom ary

emphasis than o f substance. W hatever the significance o f this point, the definition o f events present­ ed in this chapter serves as a basis for the hypotheses and conclusions to be described. 2The concept o f event-bound thought should be distinguished from Fast’s interesting discussion of event-centered thought in chapter 3 o f this volum e. In its mature form , according to Fast, eventcentered thought has structural characteristics in common with early events, but has shed the lim ita­ tions inherent in those early concepts. Event-bound thinking, as used in this essay, covers the range o f event-centered thought which still bears limitations stem m ing from a lack o f full differentiation o f components within events and integration o f com ponents across events.

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nap, “ I haven’t had my nap so it isn’t afternoon” (1951, Obs. 112a,b). Each of these children had encoded a set o f impressions from a given situation type as an inseparable unit, and reasoned accordingly. Emotional states, however prim itive, contribute from birth to the blend of impressions the baby must organize; and conceptualization o f emotions as dis­ tinct from that blend must, like all concepts, develop through a process of intellectual construction. If the infant cannot differentiate his self from others, he must also be unable to recognize that certain experiences such as emotion occur within a self-domain independent o f other aspects o f the situations in which they occur. It seems plausible, furtherm ore, to propose that the ch ild ’s conception of emotion is one which retains event-bound qualities long past the infancy stage. Research has shown that developm ent in children’s conceptions o f other intra­ psychic phenomena continues into the school years. Piaget found that long past infancy thoughts, w ords, and dreams arc conceived in terms of a relatively undifferentiated blend o f perceptual and intrapsychic impressions (1929, 1951). Other data have been provided by Johnson and W ellman in their work on forget­ ting, knowing, and rem em bering. Their findings have suggested that during the preschool and early school years children’s conceptions o f these mental acts are closely associated with overt m otor behavior, except in situations where informa­ tion from the two sources conflicts (Johnson, 1981; Johnson & W ellman, 1980). Given these findings on other intrapsychic phenomena, it seems plausible to suggest that during the preschool years emotional states also are conceptualized in some inseparable combination with other impressions from the situations in which they occur. Because of the attention devoted in psychotherapy to the client’s emotional states and to his cognitive relationship to those emotional states, mapping the normal line of developm ent in conceptions of emotion would be useful to psy­ chotherapists. To the extent that awareness of the intrapsychic nature of emotion is indeed an intellectual accom plishm ent, it is reasonable to assume that certain clients may have lost or never achieved that awareness (see Fast, chapters 2 & 4, this volume). It would be worthwhile to gain a clear understanding o f the concep­ tions of emotion which precede a mature view and of the processes by which maturity is accom plished. Despite the evident theoretical and practical interest o f examining the devel­ opmental line in children’s understanding o f em otion as proper to a differentiated self-domain, this topic has received little attention in recent developm ental re­ search. Studies concerning emotion in preschoolers have focused primarily on children’s ability to identify and reproduce sounds and facial expressions concommitant with basic emotional states (Borke, 1971; Cam ras, 1977; Hamilton, 1973; M cCluskey, A lbas, Niemi, Cuevas, & Ferrer, 1975; Odum & Lemond, 1972), and on how that ability is affected by factors ranging from perceptual attributes of the stimuli (Paliwal & G oss, 1981), to birth rank (Kalliopuska, 1981), to teacher ratings o f emotional expressiveness (Denny, Denny, & Rust,

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1982). Other studies have examined the influence o f affect induction on chil­ dren’s display o f specified behaviors and expectations (Barden, G arber, Duncan, & M asters, 1981; Masters & Furm an, 1976). O f more relevance to the issue of event-bound conceptions o f emotion is a small but growing set o f studies focused on early conceptions o f other intrapsychic phenomena. Piaget published some interesting work half a century ago on children’s conceptions o f thoughts, works, dream s, and intentions (1929, 1951), but this work has not produced the interest generated by his studies o f children’s views o f physical dim ensions o f objects. Recently, however, a few researchers have begun again to explore early concep­ tions of intrapsychic phenomena (Broughton, 1978; Johnson, 1981; Johnson & W ellman, 1980; Johnson & W ellman, 1982; M arkm an, 1976; Selm an, 1981; W'ellman, 1981; W ellman & Johnson, 1979). Only two o f these studies touch on the issue o f children’s views o f em otions, in each case only as a small part o f a broader inquiry. Selman delineated three developm ental phases through which children pass in coming to understand the subjective nature o f thoughts, feelings, and motives. In the first o f these stages, which spans the preschool and early school years, children were found to display confusion between overt acts and underlying psychological experience, and specifically to show “ a quasi-physicalistic conception o f feelings” (1981, p. 190). In their studies on children’s conceptions o f mind and mental functions, Johnson and W ellman demonstrated that unlike specifically mental acts such as knowing, forgetting, and guessing, emotion is not usually seen as a function o f the mind during the preschool years (Johnson, 1981; Johnson & W ellman, 1982). This small but interesting set of conclusions about children’s views on emotion stands alone in a large field of research focused on other aspects o f children’s cognitive development.

HYPOTHESES Three hypotheses derived from event theory which were investigated in an inter­ view study with 37 preschool children on their experiences o f happiness and fear were as follows; (1) Early in the preschool years, children's understanding o f the nature o f their own emotional states is event-bound. Out o f the blend o f kinesthetic, sensory, emotional, and mental im pressions received in any given experience, the young preschooler has not yet crystallized a concept o f emotion fully differentiated from other types o f im pressions. The child can reliably name em otions, but what segment of the range o f im pressions received in a situation is the child delineat­ ing when she uses the word “ happy” or “ scared” ? Her concept consists not o f the distinctive properties o f emotion from an adult perspective, but rather o f an emotional state still conceptually enmeshed with other components from the situation in which it is experienced. This general hypothesis was translated into more specific predictions about children’s opinions on two issues.

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The first topic actually involves a pair o f issues: the place where emotion originates and its locus while it occurs. When asked to identify the locus and origin o f their em otion, young preschoolers were expected to refer to some event-bound conglomerate of impressions from the situation in which the em o­ tion was experienced. It was predicted that this kind o f reference would take the form of identifying the subject’s m otor action or the object with which he interacts as the locus an d /o r the origin of the emotion. This prediction is com ­ patible with available data on conceptions o f other intrapsychic phenomena. Piaget’s are the only studies in which children have been asked directly about the origin and locus o f psychological phenomena. He found that among preschool and early school age children, conceptions o f thoughts and words are intimately related. To think is closely associated with naming and so is done with the mouth. The name used in thinking, however, originates and resides in the object (1929). The locus and origin o f thought are thus closely associated with both actions (i.e., naming) and objects. Selman (1981) claims that from age 3 to 6 or 8, children manifest a confusion between psychological experience and the overt acts associated with them. Furtherm ore, studies on mental acts such as forget­ ting, rem em bering, and guessing have led to the conclusion that preschoolers’ conceptions are closely associated with overt performance (Johnson & W ellman, 1980; Wellman & Johnson, 1979; M iscione, M arvin, O ’Brien, & G reenberg, 1978), except in situations where impressions from mental acts and overt perfor­ mance are in dramatic conflict (Johnson, 1981; Johnson & W ellman, 1980). W hatever its interpretation, the prediction that preschoolers would locate their emotions in objects an d /o r actions is thus compatible with data on conceptions of other psychological phenomena. W ithin the framework o f this study, however, these responses were anticipated specifically as a reflection o f event-bound thinking. It was proposed that the event-bound meaning of these answers would be illuminated in the children’s opinions on still more specific issues. If a child were simply to identify an object as the locus o f his em otion, the event-bound quality of this response would not be immediately apparent. The child might simply be assigning the emotion to the object as a permanent and inherent attribute. He might believe, for instance, that a lion always has fear in its mouth— not that the lion is afraid, but that fear somehow resides in its jaw s. Such a belief would be both peculiar and incorrect from an adult perspective, but it would not reflect event-bound thinking. Such thinking would be reflected in a child’s claim that his emotion resides in an object, however, if he believed the emotion to reside there only in context of the situation where he interacts with the object. In that case the child’s concept would be not that emotion resides in the lion’s mouth per se, but in the lion-growling-at-frightened-me event. It was this kind of reasoning which was predicted. Similarly, if a child were to identify an action as the locus o f her em otion, such a response would not be self-evidently event-bound. The claim might be an awkward attempt to indicate that the emotion occurs within the bounds of a self appreciated apart from other aspects o f the situation. The child’s own action

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does, after all, fall within the bounds o f the self, according to an adult concep­ tion. Event-bound thinking would be reflected, how ever, in a c h ild ’s belief that she could not experience the em otion apart from the action, o r that apart from the action the em otion m ust reside in the object with w hich she interacts. In either case the ch ild ’s concept would be that the em otion resides in the self-actingtow ards-object event, and not in a self-dom ain appreciated as distinct from both actions and objects. It was predicted that this kind o f reasoning could be shown to underlie preschoolers’ claim s that their em otion resides in actions. The second topic investigated under the first hypothesis concerns child ren ’s view s on how another person, specifically the interview er, could assess their em otional state in context of the situation they described. It is notew orthy that while children’s understanding o f the em otional states o f others has been exam ­ ined in recent research, their view s on how their own states are inferred by others has not been investigated. G iven the ch ild ’s egocentrism , and the m uch more vivid and com pelling im pressions he often has of his ow n em otions than of em otion in others, it seem s unw ise to assum e that studying the form er issue yields direct inform ation on the latter. In this study on child ren ’s conceptions of their own em otion, therefore, their view s on how others learn about their feelings were investigated directly. T o the extent that their thought was event-bound, children were expected to believe that the em otional aspect o f their own experience in a situation would be as vivid and perceptible to anyone else present as it was to them selves. W ithin the fram ew ork o f event encoding units, o n e’s ow n em otional state is believed to reside in the event, pervading it like a color or flavor. A nother person would therefore be deem ed to know about the subject’s em otion upon perceiving any aspect o f the em otionally laden scene, w ithout having to perceive the subject’s behavioral expression o f em otion. It was proposed that event-bound subjects would acknow ledge explicitly that the interview er could assess their emotional state by perceiving only the object, w ithout reference to their behavior. (2) D uring the presch o o l years, children progress in a stagew ise fa sh io n out o f the lim itations o f event-bound thought a n d tow ards placing their ow n em otion in a personal dom ain differentiated fr o m the other com ponents o f any situation in which it occurs. The event-bound quality in a p erso n ’s thought is, o f course, a m atter o f degree. T hinking is characterized as event-bound to the extent that its basic categories are a conglom erate o f self-, other-, action-, and em otion-com ponents related through their occurrence together in a given situation or scenario. It was predicted that if m ore than one stage o f developm ent in conceptions o f em otion em erged during the preschool period, m ost o f these stages w ould still be characterized by som e degree o f event-bound thought. It was not assum ed that the developm ental phases articulated in this initial phase o f research w ould be culture-free, o r that they w ould constitute formal stages according to the criterion that the structures o f earlier phases are integrated

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and incorporated into later stages (Flavell, 1963). R ather, the scries o f stages envisioned was construed as a set o f regular and irreversible transform ations occurring in the ch ild ’s conception of her em otion, due to the interaction o f her m aturing sense-m aking skills w ith attitudinal and inform ational input from cur­ rent W estern culture. In this contcxt, it may be useful to com m ent on the envisioned end stage o f developm ent in conceptions o f the locus, origin, and interpersonal assessm ent o f o n e ’s ow n em otion. A ccording to Jo h n so n ’s find­ ings, adults uniform ly claim that the “ m ind” is im m aterial, but disagree on w hether this im m aterial phenom enon is located som ehow “ inside” the person or has no location at all (1981). It w as assum ed that a sim ilar diversity o f opinion about the “ insideness” o f em otion would be found am ong adults. W hat both adult view s have in com m on is assignm ent o f em otion to a personal dom ain proper to a self differentiated from the action- and object-com ponents o f any situation in w hich it occurs. A ssignm ent to this dom ain constitutes liberation from event-bound thinking and w as therefore the end-point o f interest in the envisioned study o f em otion. In the study, responses identifying “ m in d ,” “ b ra in ,” “ in m y self,” or ju st “ inside” as the location o f em otion were all considered m ature. In addition, certain other responses given by adults in an informal survey on the locus o f em otion were considered m ature (e .g ., happiness in the heart, fear in the stom ach). Like the others, these responses constitute assignm ent o f em otion to a personal dom ain differentiated from both the objectand action-com ponents o f situations in w hich they occur. (3) C hildren’s developm ent out o f event-bound thought p roceeds according to the sam e basic stages fo r p ositive a n d negative em otional states. Positive and negative states were represented in this initial study by happiness and fear. Kvent-bound thinking is a fo r m or m ode o f categorizing experience, w hich should operate in basically the sam e m anner concerning positive and negative em otion. W ithin the confines o f the formal sim ilarities articulated in the stage criteria, how ever, certain differences for positive and negative em otion were considered possible. It was proposed that the rate o f progression through the stages, for instance, or the particular type o f event-bound response chosen, m ight differ.

METHOD The m ethod o f inquiry chosen for this study was a sem istructured technique resem bling the procedure custom arily used in diagnostic psychiatric interview s. Although a uniform questionnaire would have assured consistency in the w ord­ ing and order o f the inquiry, such a form at w ould also have restricted the depth to which any ch ild ’s ideas could be exam ined. In addition, it raised the possibility of spuriously consistent results stem m ing from the suggestiveness o f a given

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form and sequence o f questions. 3 The content o f interviews obtained through the sem istructured technique was uniform in that the same topics were covered with every subject, but the order and phrasing o f questions was not strictly standard­ ized. Q uestions were rephrased and statem ents by the child countcrsuggested in order to distinguish sincere convictions from answ ers suspected o f arising from boredom , from playfulness, or from unw itting suggestion by the exam iner. This method undoubtedly increased the variability o f responses, and thus raised the possibility o f coding difficulties in the data analysis. On the other hand, it seem ed clear that any regular form s o f thought w hich did em erge w ould con­ stitute a robust finding. In recent descriptive developm ental studies, a sem istructured form o f inter­ view ing has often been com bined with subject m atter provided by short film s or stories depicting dilem m as or other affect-laden situations (see, e .g ., Selm an, 1981). The possibility o f using such a fram ew ork was explored in the context o f informal pilot discussions with eight children aged 2 through 6 years. The two modes o f discussion attem pted with m em bers o f this group were reading a fairy tale and play with toys at their hom es. Both these m ethods elicited the ch ild ’s conception o f the em otional state not o f self but o f others, including dolls, im aginary drivers o f toy trucks, and story characters. It w as questioned w hether these com m ents could be taken as directly relevant to conceptions o f the sub­ jects’ ow n em otional states. The propensity o f children to project their own feelings onto dolls or story characters, a phenom enon o f m uch use in clinical settings, does not insure that a ch ild ’s cognitive conception o f o th ers’ em otion is the same as her cognitive conception o f her ow n. A preschooler might learn she has to sec o r hear another person in order to know how that person is feeling before she realizes others m ust do the sam e to learn about her feelings. She has had to learn to use behavioral cues from others about their feelings; but her ow n em otional state is, according to her im pressions, alw ays a striking and vivid aspect o f any em otionally charged situation. Because the cognitive equivalence of conceptions o f o n e ’s ow n em otion and that o f others could not be assum ed, and because the ch ild ’s ow n em otion was the topic o f interest, m ethods eliciting com m ents in the third person were therefore ruled out. The method chosen through the pilot w ork consisted sim ply o f asking the child to describe a time when she experienced the em otional state at issue, follow ed by a discussion o f that experience. T his m ethod elim inated the distraction o f toys and insured that ■’While the questions were not strictly standardized, an attempt was made to avoid certain phrasings which appeared to invite bias in a certain direction. The English translation of Piaget's question about origin— "W h ere does the dream com e fro m ? "— seem ed, for exam ple, to encourage a sense that the phenom enon com es to the child fro m somew here else, thus pulling for claim s of external origin. Asking where the feeling “ begins” was therefore deem ed preferable to asking where it comes from. Sim ilarly, one o f P iaget’s questions relating to locus— “ W hat do you think/dream w ith?” — appears to pull for action responses. Sim ply asking where the feeling “ is” during the experience was therefore deem ed preferable to asking what part o f him self the child uses in order to feel an emotion.

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each child w as discussing an instance w hen the em otion was clearly part o f her conscious experience.

Subject C haracteristics Thirty-seven children, including 18 girls and 19 boys, participated in the study. One other boy, a 3-year-old, w as interview ed but could not be draw n into any productive discussion o f the topics o f interest. The ages o f the subjects ranged from 3 years 4 m onths to 6 years 5 m onths. T he children were draw n from a preschool and a day care center in Y oungstow n, O hio. T hey were a racially and socioeconom ically m ixed group.

Interview Procedure Tape-recorded interview s were conducted at school, apart from the ongoing routine, in a room which was quiet but fam iliar to the subjects. A fter a friendly introduction in w hich the use o f the tape recorder was dem onstrated, each child was asked to describe a tim e when he felt happy. M ost children w ere able to think o f a situation spontaneously and those w ho w ere hesitant usually picked up quickly on suggestions offered from am ong the scenes com m only described by others (e .g ., “ How about your birthday?” or “ Do you have a favorite toy at hom e?” ). A fter being invited to elaborate on the experience the subject chose, so that both he and the interview er could picture the subject in a given place engaged in a specific activity, the topics listed in Table 5.1 were explored.

TABLE 5.1 In te rv ie w T o p ic s “ Can you (ell me a time when you were happy/scared?” 1. Locus and O rigin o f Subject's Emotion a. The origin o f the em otion (e .g ., “ W hen you were happy, where did the happiness begin?” ) b. The locus o f the em otion w hile it occurs (e .g ., "W h en you were happy that tim e, where was the happiness?") Probe Questions a. W hether the em otion located in the subject’s action could be felt without the action (e .g ., “ If you d id n ’t use your mouth that day, could you still be happy?” ) b. W hether the location o f the em otion in an object is specific to the event (e .g ., “ If that toy is in a room with nobody there, is there any happiness in the to y?” ) 2. Interview er A ssessm ent o f S ubject's Emotion How the interview er could leam about the su b ject’s em otion if she were present while it was occurring (e .g ., “ If I cam e in the room while you were happy that tim e, could I know you were happy? H ow ?” ) Probe Question W hether the interview er could leam the subject’s em otion by looking only at the object (e .g ., “ If I saw just the present and I d id n 't see you, could I know you were happy?” )

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Following the discussion about happiness, the child was asked to describe a time when he felt scared, and the procedure was repeated.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Response Types L ocus and O rigin. The sam e six response types were given for the locus and origin o f em otion, with no significant differences in proportion noted. The ch il­ dren them selves often appeared to consider the issues interchangeable, spon­ taneously talking about where the em otion “ com es fro m ,” for instance, when asked w here it “ is” while the situation occurs. A nsw ers to these topics will therefore be discussed together. “ L ocation” will be taken to encom pass both locus and origin in the discussion below. 1. The em otion resides/originates in the action com ponent o f the situation. This type o f response locates the em otion in the action or the acting m otor organ by which the subject’s em otion is expressed in the situation described. EXP: When you felt scared that time when you saw the Hulk, where was the feeling scared? ER (4-3): Is right in my, inside my mouth. EXP: When you’re playing with that wood toy and you’re feeling happy, where is the happiness? . . . Is it somewhere in the room? Or is it in you? Or on you?

(H i 13-5j points to cheek.) EXP: Where arc you pointing? BT: Cheeks do that. EXP: Cheeks do that? So where is the happiness?

(BT smiles.) EXP: Y ou’re smiling at me? Is that where the happiness is?

(BT nods, smiling.) EXP: Can you tell me a time when you are happy? GT (4-4): Happy. EXP: When is a time when you feel happy? GT: Now. EXP: If you feel happy right now, where is the happiness?

(GT points to mouth, smiling.) EXP: Where are you pointing?

(GT continues to point.) EXP: To your mouth? Why is the happiness there? GT: T hat’s where it comes from. EXP: If you’re in a room with the gorilla, is there any scared?

(KM [6-21 nods.)

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EXP: Where is the scared? KM: From me . . . EXP: Is it any particular placc? KM: On my face. EXP: Where on your face? KM: Mere. (KM points to m outh.)

2. The em otion resides! originates in the o bject com ponents o f the situation. In this ty p e o f re sp o n se th e o rig in o r lo cu s o f th e em o tio n is th e o b je c t w ith w h ich the su b ject in teracts in th e situ a tio n d esc rib ed : EXP: You remember when you went to Sea World? DW (3-10): Yeah. EXP: What did you do there? DW: 1 got a clown. EXP: If you’re happy and y o u ’re playing with that clow n, where is the happiness? DW: On my clown. EXP: If you are with a monster, and you feel scared, where is the scared? GT (4-4): From the monster . . . EXP: What if that monster is walking along and you’re by yourself in the street— where is the scared then? GT: From the monster . . . EXP: And where docs it begin? GT: From the monster. EXP: When you are in the living room and playing with your “ Match boxes” , where is the happiness? CU (4-9): In my toys . . . EXP: If you arc with a monster and you feel seared, where docs the scared begin? LL (4-8): In the monster. EXP: And where is it while it happens? LL: Urn, when the monster starts. EXP: Is it in you too, the feeling scared? Or is it just in the monster? LL: Just in the monster. 3. The em otion resides!originates in the situation as a whole. In th is ty p e o f resp o n se the ch ild in d ic ate s th e situ a tio n as a w h o le is th e lo catio n o f th e e m o ­ tio nal state: NH (4-5): Santa Claus brought all the toys and we opened all the toys. EXP: Were you happy then?

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NH: Yeah . . . And we had a party in here [interview room was where the C hrist­ mas party had been held], HXP: Where was the happiness? NH: In here . . . And we had a dress on and we got new shoes on, and Santa Claus came out. EXP: Where was the happiness then? NH: Santa Claus brought the toys. 4. The em otion resides!originates in the su b je ct's h ea d /b ra in lm in d . EXP: When you were happy that tim e, when you were sitting in the circus and saw the clowns, where was the happiness? BN (5-0): In my head. EXP: W here in your head? One particular place in your head? BN: In my brain . . . EXP: When you were happy, where did it begin? BN: in my head. 5. The em otion resides!originates in the “s e l f o r " in s id e ” . EXP: When you passed by those m onsters, where was the feeling scared then? EV (6-0): Inside. EXP: Inside— you or them? Where? EV: Inside me. EXP: Was there any feeling scared in the monsters? (EV shakes head.) EXP: Was there any scared in the air around you? (EV shakes head.) EV: Just inside. 6. The em otion resides!originates in an involuntary organ. T h is ty p e o f resp o n se is d istin g u ish e d fro m c la im s p la c in g em o tio n in the s u b je c t’s m o to r action by the fact that the o rg an is in tern al and not u n d e r v o lu n ta ry (m o to r) co n tro l. EXP: And when you’re with this dragon and you’re feeling scared, where is the feeling scared? (AN [6-0] laughs.) AN: . . . I think in my stomach. EXP: Is it anywhere outside of you? AN: No! (AN answers in a surprised, am used tone.) EXP: And when you get on that tractor, and start to feel happy . . . where does the happiness begin? CT (6-5): Hmmm. In my heart.

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Interview er A ssessm ent. F our types o f response w ere given about the m an­ ner in w hich the interview er could assess the su b ject’s em otional state on arriving at the scene described. 1. The m otor action the child p erform s in context o f the situation is d em on­ strated or described. R esponses o f this type are those in w hich the subject performs or nam es her reaction to the situation. In the absence o f further ques­ tioning, such a response m ight be interpreted as a prim itive acknow ledgem ent that the interview er must observe the subject to ascertain the nature o f her em otional state. Further conversation w ith children m aking claim s in this catego­ ry, how ever, yielded evidence to the contrary. EXP: If you are scared in your bed when a shadow is there and I come into the room, can 1 know that you’re scared? (CU I4-9J nods.) EXP: How can I know? (CU looks at me with an exaggerated sad expression.) EXP: Are you making a sad face? (CU nods.) EXP: Would I have to look at your face? What if I just look at the shadows and don’t look at your face— Can 1 know that you’re scared then? (CU nods.) EXP: How can I know if you feel happy? How can I know if CV feels happy? (CV [4-4] smiles.) EXP: What if I don’t look at you, can I know you’re happy? (CV nods.) EXP: How can 1 know then? (CV continues smiling.) EXP: What if I look over here? [Interviewer demonstrates looking away from CV|. Can I know that CV is happy? (CV whispers): That’s why. . . . Because . . . [EXP looks back to find CV still smiling as if to demonstrate). EXP: You’re showing me that you’re happy. If I close my eyes [interviewer closes eyes] can I know that you’re happy? (CV silent.) EXP: If I can’t see CV’s face, if I can't see you, can I know that you’re happy then? (CV whispers): Because. EXP: Because what? CV: That’s why. [EXP opens eyes and finds CV demonstrating broad smile] 2. The interview er perceives the em otion by perceiving the object com ponent o f the situation. In this type o f response the child suggests the interview er know s about his em otion by perceiving the object with which the child interacts. In­ terpretation o f this response type w as facilitated by asking explicitly w hether and

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w hy the in te rv ie w e r k n o w s a b o u t th e c h ild ’s e m o tio n sim p ly by lo o k in g at the o b ject and w ith o u t p e rc e iv in g th e c h ild at all.

EXF: If I come into the room when you’re there with the spider, can 1 know you’re scared? DW (3-10): Yeah. EXP: How can I know? DW: I don’t know. EXP: What would I see that would let me know that you’re seared? DW: The spider. EXP: If I just see the spider and I don’t see you, can I know you're scared? DW: Yeah. EXP: Could I know that you’re happy on that day? (NH [4-5j nods.) EXP. How could I know if I camc to your house? NH: Yeah, you could . . . EXP: Could 1 know that you were happy if I looked at the Christm as tree? NH: Yes. EXP: Would 1 have to look at you to know you were happy? NH: You could look at the presents. Um, the Christmas tree, it was pretty. 3. The interview er perceives the em otion by perceiving the situation as a whole. In this type o f re sp o n se the c h ild see m e d to b eliev e a g lo b a l d e sc rip tio n o f the situ atio n alo n e sh o u ld m ak e th e e m o tio n se lf-e v id e n t. EXP: While you were seared o f the Brontosaurus Rex, if 1 came there, could I know you were scared? (BT 13-51 nods.) EXP: How could I know? BT: Because you were upstairs . . . (where the event occurred.]. EXP: But if I were with you when you were scared, could I know you were scared? BT: Yeah. EXP: How could 1 know? BT: Because you were upstairs. EXP: If 1 came into the room while you were having your birthday party could I know you were happy? (LC (4-5] nods.) EXP: How could 1 know? LC: Because 1 had my birthday and was happy. EXP: How could 1 find out about it? (LC shrugs.) EXP: If I came to the mall while the Hulk was there and you were there, could I know you were scared?

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ER (4-3): Yeah. EXP: How could I know? ER: Bccausc I was seared. 4. The interview er can assess the su b ject’s em otion only by perceiving the subject’s behavioral expression o f em otion. EXP: If I were at the park too when you were feeling scared, would I know you were feeling scared? EV (6-0): If I was shaking my teeth . . . EXP: What if I just went and saw that ride and didn’t see you there? Would I know you were scared? (EV shakes head.) EXP: Is there some way 1 could find out that you were happy? MT (4-11): Yeah. EXP: How could I find out? MT: From looking at me. EXP: If I came in the room and I just saw the present and I didn’t see you, would I know you were happy then? (MT shakes head.) EXP: What if I couldn’t see you? Is there some other way I could find out? MT: Hear me.

CONSTRUCTION AND APPLICATION OF STAGE CRITERIA: A DEVELOPMENTAL LINE IN CHILDREN'S CONCEPTIONS OF THEIR EMOTION A lthough certain specific predictions had been m ade about the kinds o f m a­ ture and im m ature responses w hich w ould be obtained, construction o f formal stage criteria was attem pted only after exam ination o f the actual responses pro­ duced by subjects in this initial study. The criteria are listed in Table 5 .2 . The basis for com bining the response lists into stages w as the assum ption that the two topic areas provide convergent evidence for the presence o r absence o f eventbound thinking; that is, that a group o f the m ost im m ature children would show prim itive view s on both topics, w hereas a group o f the m ost m ature children would provide advanced view s on both topics. A ccordingly, the Stage 1 criteria delineate a group w ho w ould dem onstrate thoroughly event-bound conceptions o f their em otion, consistently using situation-specific categories in their discus­ sion o f the locus, origin, and interview er assessm ent o f their em otional states. At the other end o f the spectrum , the Stage 3 criteria describe a group w ho would show a thorough liberation from event-bound thought, claim ing that their em o­ tional stages originate and reside in a self-dom ain independent o f actions or objects and that another person could assess those states only by seeing or

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TABLE 5.2 Stage Criteria Stage I

Children in this stage consistently display an event-bound conception of the emotion at issue. There is a consistent failure to construe emotion as proper to a self recognized independently of specific actions or objects which accompany it in the situation at hand. 1. Locus and Origin The emotion is located in the action-component, the object- component, or the event as a whole. 2. Interviewer's Assessment o f Subject's Emotion It is indicated that the subject’s emotion is dearly perceivable to the interviewer simply by virtue of her presence at the scene of the event, and is not contingent on her observation of the subject’s behavior. Stage 2 Children in this stage are those who show some conception of the emotion in question as proper to a self recognized independent of the action- and object-componcnts of a situation. The criterion for Stage 2 is demonstration of such a conception of emotion at least once but without total consistency throughout the interview, in one or both of the following ways: 1. By identifying the self as the locus or origin of emotion independent of any object or motor action by which the emotion is expressed. 2. By claiming the interviewer could only ascertain the subject’s feelings by observing his behav­ ioral expression of those feelings, and could not learn about them simply by coming upon the scene and observing the object-component of the situation. Stage 3 Children in this stage arc completely free of event-bound conceptions of the emotion in question. The following types of response are offered for each topic: 1. Locus and Origin It is claimed that the locus and origin of emotion is a self recognized independently of any action or object which accompanies it in the situation at hand. 2. Interviewer's Assessment o f Subject’s emotion It is claimed that the interviewer can find out about the subject’s emotion only by perceiving the subject’s behavioral expression of that emotion.

hearing the child’s behavioral expression o f em otion. Between these extremes are the Stage 2 criteria, describing a group whose inconsistently mature claims would show an emergent but as yet unstable liberation from event-bound catego­ ries. Although these criteria articulated a coherent set of expectations, it re­ mained to be seen whether the opinions o f 37 children on two different em otions would each fall neatly within the bounds o f one o f the stages described. All interviews on both happiness and fear were in fact readily categorizable according to the stage criteria. Separate stage assignments for each child’s view s on happiness and on fear were made with a 92% level o f interrater reliability. In addition, the hypothesis o f an age-related progression through the stages was supported (see Tables 5.3 and 5 .4 ). Chi-square analysis indicates a significant

5.

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TABLE 5.3 A g e x S tage D is trib u tio n fo r C o n c e p tio n o f H appiness A ge in Years

Stage 1

Stage 2

Stage 3

Totals

3 4 5 6 Totals

6 5 0 1 12

0 9 6 6 21

0 0 2 2 4

6 14 8 9 37

difference betw een the 3 - 4 and 5 - 6 year-old groups for both em otions dis­ cussed. For happiness, x2(2, N = 37) = 12.57, /? < .0 1 . F or fear, x2(2, N = 37) = 13.68, p < .0 1 . Further evidence that the stages articulate an invariant, agerelated sequence o f developm ent w as provided by follow -up interview s w ith nine subjects one year later. The stage criteria w ere again applicable to all interview s, and all subjects had eith er rem ained in the sam e stage (usually Stage 2 w hich, as currently described, includes a range o f developm ent) or had progressed to a higher stage. A brief description o f each o f the three levels o f developm ent found in the 3to 6-year-old group follows: Stage J: This group, represented prim arily by younger preschoolers, con­ sistently gave event-bound answ ers about a given em otion. T hese children showed a failure to conceptualize their em otion as belonging to a self-dom ain separate from actions and objects accom panying it in any given situation. This failure was seen in their use o f the first three response types in the “ Locus and O rigin” list. The third type, in w hich the event as a w hole is identified as the location, em erged as a serious kind o f answ er because som e young children repeated this kind o f statem ent with increasing frustration when pressed for som e more specific location. T his response type cam e to be seen as a w ay o f indicating that the em otion resides in the event— the basic Stage 1 view — and in fact as a more direct indication o f event-bound thinking than the two predicted responses.

TABLE 5.4 A g e x S tage D is trib u tio n fo r C o n c e p tio n o f Fear A ge in Years

Stage I

Stage 2

Stage 3

Totals

3 4 5 6 Totals

4 9 1 0 14

2 4 6 7 19

0 1 1 2 4

6 14 8 9 37

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The first two response types in the “ Locus and O rig in ” list, locating the em otion in the action or the object-com ponent o f the situation, were the predicted event-bound responses. Y oung preschoolers were expected, for instance, to name “ me sm iling” or “ the p resent” as the location o f their happiness when discussing a sm iling-m e-opening-present event, in an attem pt to convey that the happiness is located in the even t— the current situation-specific segm ent o f selfother engagem ent which the em otion pervades and colors. T he event-bound quality o f both these response types was further explored in the interviews through specific “ p ro b e” questions (see Table 5 .1 ). C hildren who located their em otion in the action-com ponent o f a situation were asked w hether and where they could experience an em otion apart from that action. 1'his question was designed to explore the possibility that such responses were an inarticulate at­ tem pt to locate the em otion in a self-dom ain appreciated apart from overt acts. Only 20% o f Stage 1 children acknow ledged they could experience the em otion apart from the action, and they did not know where the em otion w ould then reside. Eighty percent o f the Stage 1 subjects responded either that there could be no em otion at all w ithout the action or that the em otion w ould then reside in the object-com ponent o f the situation: EXP: If you are on the floor and you are playing with your hclicopter, where is the happiness? (GT [4-4] points to mouth.) EXP: Pointing to your mouth? Is it anywhere else? (GT shakes head.) EXP: What if you can’t use your mouth that day, can you still feel happy? (GT nods.) EXP: And then where is the happiness? (GTpoints to mouth.) EXP: When you felt seared that time when you saw the Hulk, where was the feeling scared? ER (4-3): Is right in my, inside my mouth. EXP: What if you couldn’t use your mouth that day— could you still feel scared? ER: Yeah. EXP: Then where would the feeling scared be? ER: At the mall (where the Hulk was seen]. Stage 1 responses to this question thus do not support the hypothesis that locating em otion in the su b ject’s action is an inarticulate attem pt to place it within a self-dom ain appreciated apart from the other aspects o f the situation in which it occurs. They are instead com patible with an interpretation o f this re­ sponse type as event-bound. The event-bound quality o f responses locating em otion in the object-com ponent o f a situation was further explored by asking w hether the em otion rem ains in

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the o b ject o u tsid e o f th at situ a tio n . T w o k in d s o f a n sw e r w ere g iv en b y S ta g e 1 ch ild ren , both o f w h ich su p p o rt an in te rp re ta tio n o f th e ir v iew s as e v e n t-b o u n d . T h e m ajo rity o f th e se su b je cts (6 7 % ) g av e th e p re d ic ted a n sw e r, c la im in g the em o tio n is not lo cated in th e o b je c t u n d e r ju s t an y c irc u m sta n c e s, but ra th e r resides th ere o n ly in c o n te x t o f th e event: EXP: If that monster is way off in the woods by himself, and there are no children around, is there any feeling scared then? (/./. (4-81 shakes head.) LL: ’Cause he can’t find them. EXP: But is there any feeling scared then? (LL shakes head.) EXP: If you’re with a monster, and you feel scared, where does the scared begin? LL: In the monster. EXP: If you’re outside and you’re riding your bike, where is the happiness? LH (5-10): In my bike . . . EXP: If that bike is in the garage and you’re not there, is there any happiness? (LH shakes head. ) EXP: And if you come out and you start riding then, is there some happiness? (LH nods.) EXP: And then where is the happiness? LH: In the bike. EXP: W here does it begin? LH: In the bike. EXP: What if that monster is walking along and you’re by yourself in the street— where is the scared then? GT (4-4): From the monster . . . EXP: What if that monster is all by him self, way off in the woods, and there are no children there at all? Is there any scared then? (GT shakes head.) EXP: When does there start being scared from the monster? GT: When w e’re walking.

A sm a lle r p ro p o rtio n o f S tag e 1 c h ild re n (3 3 % ) g av e an u n e x p e cte d ty p e o f an sw er w hich a p p e ared to re fle c t an e v e n m o re p ro fo u n d ly e v e n t-b o u n d m o d e o f co g n itio n than that sh o w n in th e e x p e cte d p rim itiv e re sp o n se . W h en a sk e d a b o u t the o b ject a p art fro m th e e v e n t, th ey re sp o n d e d th at the e m o tio n co n tin u ed to resid e th e re , but im p o rte d the o rig in al e v e n t c o n te x t rig h t b ack into th e d is c u s ­ sion as they d id so. H av in g b e c o m e e n g a g e d w ith a g iv en ev en t in the d isc u ssio n , these c h ild ren w ere a p p a re n tly u n a b le to c o n sid e r th e o b je c t ap a rt fro m the ev e n t (p ro v id in g a nice illu stra tio n o f an e v e n t-b o u n d c o n c e p tio n n o t o n ly o f the em o tio n b u t o f the object a s w ell):

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EXP: If that Easter basket was in a room and there was no one there, would there still be happiness in it? ME (3-5): Yeah. EXP: Or would there just be happiness when you were there with it? ME: Happiness was in there. EXP: What if the basket was sitting on a shelf in a store and had no candy in it— would there be any happiness in it? ME: It just had eggs in it. Stage 1 children dem onstrated event-bound thinking not only in the locations assigned to their em otional state but also in their opinions as the interview er's assessm ent o f those states. T hese subjects used the first three response types in the “ Interview er A ssessm ent” list. In one o f these response types (# 2 ) the child spontaneously claim ed that the interview er could learn about her em otion by observing the object only. In another (# 3 ) the child responded by describing the event as a w hole, as if a description o f the situation would m ake the subject’s em otion self-evident. O ccasionally a ch ild ’s dem onstration or description o f her action was taken as an event-bound response ( # 1 ) . A nsw ers o f this type were difficult to interpret because a dem onstration or description o f action could be taken to m ean the interview er would have to perceive that action in order to assess the ch ild ’s em otional state. Such answ ers were taken as event-bound, how ever, w hen the child clearly did not consider the interview er’s direct percep­ tion o f the act to be necessary (see C V ’s com m ents, p. 91 above). In these cases, the child appeared to use the action as a way o f recreating the event for the interview er, o f which the em otion was believed to be a vivid and clearly percep­ tible aspect apart from observation o f the subject’s action. W hat these three response types had in com m on, then, was the ch ild ’s explicit indication that the interview er could indeed find out about the subject’s em otion w ithout seeing or hearing the child. EXP: If I came into the woods and I saw you with the rattlesnake, could I know you were seared? (MT I4-I1] nods.) EXP: How could I know? MT: Rattlesnakes have rattles . . . EXP: So if 1 looked at the rattlesnake and didn’t look at you, could I know that you were scared? (MT nods.) EXP: How could I know? MT: From the rattlesnake. Stage 1 children, then, are those w hose thinking is consistently event-bound concerning their em otional states. The concept to w hich the event-bound thinker

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99

refers w hen asked about his em otion is, from an adult perspective, a conglom e­ rate in which em otion is central but rem ains conceptually enm eshed with object and action elem ents from the situation in w hich it occurs. A ccordingly, Stage 1 children locate their em otion in the event and believe their feelings are percepti­ ble to anyone w ho arrives on the scene as the event occurs, w ithout reference explicitly to their behavioral expression o f em otion. Stage 2: Stage 2 children are those who show an em ergent appreciation of their em otion as proper to a self-dom ain, providing m ature responses in som e instances, but w ithout total consistency throughout the interview concerning a given em otion. Use o f any o f the response types in both lists was therefore possible for a Stage 2 child, although the entire collection o f answ ers concerning an em otion necessarily included at least one m ature and at least one event-bound claim . The m ature claim (s) could concern the location o f em otion, the inter­ view er’s assessm ent o f em otion, or both. T his initial description o f a stage interm ediate betw een thoroughly event-bound and thoroughly m ature levels o f developm ent covers a range o f developm ent that m ay be divided into m ore than one stage as further research perm its conceptual refinem ents. As currently de­ fined, how ever, Stage 2 includes subjects w hose occasional m ature claim s were the exception as well as those w ho only rarely slipped from mature thinking back into the use o f event-bound categories. D espite the range o f m aturity included in this interm ediate category, Stage 2 children as a group show ed considerable advancem ent over Stage 1 children, as is reflected in the different profile o f answ ers provided to the probe questions which follow ed event-bound claim s about the locus and origin o f em otion. Like Stage I children, Stage 2 children som etim es located their em otion in the actioncom ponent o f the event. W hile 80% o f the Stage 1 group claim ed either that the em otion could not be experienced apart from the action or that the em otion would then reside in the object, only 14% o f Stage 2 subjects m ade such claim s. The rem ainder (86% ) were stim ulated by the question to add a m ature opinion to their claim s, suggesting the em otion resides in the m ind, or self, or an involuntary internal organ: EXP: If you’re opening up a present and you’re feeling very happy, where is the happiness? NY (5-1): On your mouth. EXP: Why on your mouth? NY: Because you smile. EXP: What if you couldn’t smile, could you still be happy? NY: Yup. EXP: Where would the happiness be then? NY: In your mind. EXP: When it’s in your mouth, is it in your mind too? (NY nods.)

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Like Stage 1 children. Stage 2 subjects som etim es located their em otion in the object-com ponent o f the event. W hen asked w hether the em otion rem ains in the object apart from the situation described, they provided the sam e tw o kinds o f answ er as Stage 1 subjects, but in different proportions. It will be recalled that am ong Stage 1 subjects, 67% gave the expected response, claim ing the em otion resides in the object only in context o f the event, w hile 33% could not suffi­ ciently separate the object from the event to consider the question asked. Am ong Stage 2 subjects, the proportion giving the form er response type rose to 83% , with the proportion m aking the latter claim dropping to 17%. This shift in proportions from Stage 1 to Stage 2 supports the interpretation o f the latter response type as m ore prim itive than the form er. Stage 3: O f the thirty-seven 3- to 6-year-olds interview ed, only a small minority were categorized as Stage 3. T hree children achieved this level for both happiness and fear, one did so for happiness only, and another for fear only. Stage 3 appears to represent a level o f m aturity that is reached on average after the preschool period. Children in this sm all group expressed the belief that their em otion is located in a self-dom ain independent o f any situation-specific constellation o f actions and objects. T hey also claim ed that the interview er could learn about their em otional state only if she saw or heard their behavioral expression o f that state. T hus, Stage 3 children used only the last three response types in the “ Locus and O rigin” list and only the fourth type in the “ Interview er A ssessm ent” list. W hen presented with countersuggestions based on the theories o f children in earlier developm ental stages, these children m aintained their m ature claim s with adam ancy and som etim es am usem ent. O nly children who were never sw ayed on hearing these m ore prim itive suggestions were categorized as Stage 3. The accuracy and certainty dem onstrated by these subjects is shown in the follow ing excerpts:

EXP: When you were happy that time, when you were sitting in the circus and saw the clowns, where was the happiness? BN (5-0): In my head. EXP: Where in your head? One particular place in your head? BN: In my brain . . . EXP: When you were happy where did it begin? BN: In my head. EXP: If I came to the circus with you and i saw the clowns, could I know that you were happy? (BN nods.) BN: Because 1 had a smile on my face. EXP: . . . Is there any other way I could tell? What if I couldn’t sec you? BN: Then you couldn’t know . . . I would have to tell you.

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101

KXP: If you arc outside and you see a dragon, how do you think you would feel? AN (6-0): Scared. EXP: And when you’re with this dragon and you’re feeling seared, where is the feeling scared? (AN laughs): . . . I think in my stomach. EXP: Is it anywhere outside of you? AN: No! [surprise, amusement] EXP: . . . Where docs it begin? AN: Mind. EXP: Docs it begin in the floor? AN: No. EXP: Docs it begin in the dragon? AN: No! [laughing] EXP: And if you’re with a dragon and you’re feeling seared, can I know you’re seared if I come there? AN: No, only by asking me . . . EXP: What if I look at you ? AN: You can tell if I’m shaking my teeth. EXP: What if I just looked at the dragon? Could I know you were seared? (AN shakes head.)

The Theoretical Coherence of Stages 1 and 2 Apart from the framework o f event theory, the variety o f responses given by the youngest subjects, particularly on the location o f their emotion, would present a puzzling array. Some children located emotion in actions, others in objects, and still others in the em otionally laden situation as a whole. Event theory provides a coherent explanation for this array, and its ability to do so is one measure o f its strength. W hat all three response types have in common is their betrayal of a tendency to process experience in situation-specific units. Self, other, actions, and emotions contribute elem ents to these situationaliy defined units, but are not yet conceptualized as fully separate phenomena in themselves. While all three kinds of primitive location response show event-bound characteristics, however, the possibility remains that they arise in some developmental sequence. One such possible sequence was carefully considered in the interest o f further refining the description o f developm ent articulated in the stage criteria. The possibility examined was that locating emotion in the subject’s motor action is more advanced than locating it in an object or in the event as a whole. According to adult categories, o n e’s own actions belong to the general domain o f self as opposed to other, while objects and whole situations do not. Although placement of emotion in action bespeaks an incomplete differentiation o f motor action and psychological phenom ena, it may nevertheless be a step in the process

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o f differentiating self from nonself. O ne way in which this issue was investigated has already been described. C hildren w ho located their em otion in m otor actions were asked if they could experience the em otion apart from the action, in an attem pt to determ ine w hether they were m aking vague reference to a self appreci­ ated apart from other elem ents o f the situation. The child ren ’s answ ers indicated they were not m aking such an attem pt. 1'he m ajority o f Stage 1 children cither claim ed the em otion could not be experienced apart from the action or shifted to locating it in the objcct. A m inority replied they did not know where the em otion could reside apart from the action. Stage 2 children were often stim ulated by the question to add a m ature response, but did not indicate the mature response was what they had intended to convey in locating the em otion in their actions (see N Y ’s com m ents, p. 99 above). A pproaching the question from another angle, the proportion o f action loca­ tion responses am ong the rem aining event-bound claim s o f Stage 2 children was com pared with the proportion o f action location responses am ong Stage 1 chil­ dren. It was reasoned that if locating o n e ’s em otion in m otor actions is a stepping stone tow ards m aturity, this response type should be m ore prom inent am ong the rem aining im m ature responses o f Stage 2 subjects than in the answ ers o f Stage 1 children. 1'able 5.5 show s the num bers o f A ction, O bjcct, and Event location responses given by Stage 1 and Stage 2 children. On chi-square analysis, the difference betw een the num ber o f A ction location responses and the num ber of Event plus O bject responses in the answ ers o f Stage 1 versus Stage 2 subjects did not approach significance: x 2 (1> n ~ 126) = 1.13, p < .1 5 . In the interest o f thoroughness, the num ber o f O bject responses and o f Event responses were each com pared to the num ber o f the other two response types com bined for Stage 1 versus 2. As for the A ction responses, no significant change from Stage 1 to Stage 2 in the num ber o f either o f these response types

TABLE 5.5 B re a kd o w n o f E v e n t-B o u n d L o c a tio n R esponse T ypes A c c o rd in g to S tage an d E m o tio n Happiness

Action

Object

Event

Totals

Stage 1 Stage 2 Totals

12 10 22

8 18 26

8 9 17

28 37 65

Action

Object

Event

Totals

5 6 II

19 24 43

3 4 7

27 34 61

Fear Stage I Stage 2 Totals

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CHILDREN'S CONCEPTIONS OF THEIR EMOTIONS

103

relative to the other was found. For Event responses, x2 (1. n = 126) = .05, p < .9 1 . For O bject responses, x2 0 » n = 126) = 1.26, p < . 95. These findings support the developmental coherence of Stages 1 and 2 as described in the current criteria. In Stage 1, children give a variety o f location responses which show event-bound characteristics. Stage 2 children show an emergent liberation from event-bound thinking about their em otions, but con­ tinue at times to make event-bound claims. In the process o f developm ent from Stage 1 to Stage 2, none of the event-bound answers becomes dominant. The variety in event-bound location responses apparently does not relate to differences in developmental level. This finding does not m ean, however, that a child’s choice o f one among the various event-bound responses must be at­ tributed entirely to chance. Factors unrelated to developmental level may help account for the kind o f response chosen in any given situation. Tw o such factors will be considered in the following section.

Happiness versus Fear The stage criteria were equally applicable to the children’s discussions o f hap­ piness and o f fear, and chi-square analyses showed an equally significant agestage relation for each. In addition, comparison of Tables 3 and 4 indicates no significant difference in the rate at which children progress through the stages in their developing conceptions o f happiness and of fear. These findings suggest that event-bound thought, and the developm ental progression away from it delin­ eated in the stage criteria, do not reflect the vicissitudes of one emotional state in particular. They provide initial support instead for viewing the stages as a general developmental progression influencing conceptions of both positive and negative emotional states. Although children develop at a similar rate through the same basic stages for happiness and fear, an interesting difference in the use o f the event-bound “ Locus and O rigin” response types emerges on examination of Table 5.5. The impression that the object response is favored as the location o f fear much more strongly than as the location o f happiness in confirmed by chi-square analysis. Comparing the use of the three response types in the two emotions, \ 2 (2, n 126) = 11.92, p < .0 0 5 . W hen the issue is sharpened in a 2 x 2 design com par­ ing the num ber of object responses to the number of the other two types com ­ bined for happiness versus fear, the results reach the same level o f significance: X 2 (1, n = 126) = 10.26, p < .0 0 5 . A variety of differences in happy and scared events may account for this differential choice of event-bound location responses. Psychodynam ic and cog­ nitive developm ental theory provide interesting and instructive perspectives on this issue. From a psychodynam ic view point, a preference for placing fear in objects is fam iliar as a motivated, defensive maneuver in which an uncom fort­ able experience is externalized or projected. The possibility that placement of

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fear in the object serves a d efen sive function am ong Stage 1 and 2 subjects was supported by several o b serv atio n s. First and very sim p ly , the likelihood that discussing frightening situ atio n s evoked som e kind o f d efen siv e m aneuver w as illustrated by the su b je cts’ m anifest anxiety during the discu ssio n s. T he co n v er­ sations on fear w ere notably sh o rter than those on h ap p in ess, and o b taining answ ers to all the q u estio n s w as frequently m ore difficu lt. S eco n d , m any o f the children becam e preoccupied w ith d escrib in g how they w ould evade or m aster the frightening situ atio n , attack in g the assaultive o b ject, fleeing from it, or getting help: EXP: Suppose you were outside with a lion. How would you feel? LD(4-0): Bad . . . and I would run in the house and tell Mom. EXP. Why are you scared when that dragon’s there? AN (6-0): Becausc it’s scary. Looks scary! EXP: You’re not always scared. So why are you scared if you see a dragon? AN: But now 1 am. EXP: Now you’re what: AN: Now I'm not scared. Because if I see him then I wouldn't he frightened because now I was 6. And when I was 5 I would be, right? EXP: If you arc up in your room and the monster comes upstairs, where is the feeling scared? GT (4-4): Some, then they hit them, then they make them dead. EXP: Who makes them dead? GT: Daddies. T h ird , m any children w ere strik in g ly adam ant in their p lace m en t o f fear in the object, w hile they w ere con ten t to ack n o w led g e a variety o f p ossible locations for happiness: EXP: Can you think of an animal that makes you scared? GT (4-4): A bear. EXP: What if you are walking along the sidewalk and you see a big bear— how would you feel? GT: Sc . . . Happy . . . EXP: You’d feel happy or scared? GT: Happy. EXP: Why would you feel happy then? GT: I’d tell my dad. EXP: And what would your dad do then? GT: Hit him . . . EXP: And where is the happiness then, if you feel happy? (GT points to m outh.) EXP: . . . What if that monster is walking along and you're by yourself in the street— where is the scared then?

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GT: From the monster . . . EXP: Where docs it begin? GT: From the monster. EXP: That time when you were scared in the haunted house, where did the scared begin? LG (4-8): The dark, a comer . . . EXP: Did it begin inside of you? LG: No . . . it began in the door. EXP: Was it inside of you when it was happening? LG: No . . . EXP: That time when you were happy at the meeting, where was the happiness? LG: In my head. EXP: But is scared even in your head too: (L G sh a k e s h e a d .)

EXP: When you’re in your room at night, and it’s dark, and you feel scared, where is the scared? . . . Is it in the room? Or is it in you? Where is it? KN (5-4): In the room. EXP: Where in the room? (KH shrugs.) EXP: Is it in you too? KH: No. EXP: No? When you feel scared it’s not in you? (K H sh a k e s h e a d .)

EXP: But what about when you feel happy? . . . Is the happiness in you? (KH nods.) EXP: Where docs the scared begin? KH: It’s outside. EXP: Where? KH: In the dark. Together these observations provide strong anecdotal evidence supporting the possibility that the operation o f a defensive maneuver is one factor in the propen­ sity for locating fear in objects more consistently and more adamantly than happiness. From a cognitive developm ental perspective, purely structural factors might be sought to explain the higher frequency of object location responses for fear than for happiness. One such difference which became apparent during analysis of the interviews was the relative degree o f subject activity inherent in the two types o f event. The happy experiences that children described almost invariably involved vigorous m otor action on passive (and usually inanimate) objects: rid­ ing bikes, playing on swing sets, opening presents, or playing with dolls or toy cars. Happy experiences do not necessarily involve such activity, of course; the range of happy experiences in childhood include a variety o f quiet, cuddly, or

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peaceful moments in which the child participates with minimal motor activity. The active kind, however, were the ones chosen for discussion, perhaps because they involved less intimacy and vulnerability, and perhaps also because those are the kinds o f situation to which the label “ happy” is usually attached. In the frightening situations the children described, there was some variation in the level of subject activity described. In most cases, however, the object took on a high profile as a major actor in the scene, threatening or attacking the subject. This structural difference between the happy and scared events described provides a plausible explanation for the stronger tendency to place fear in the object-component of the event. In event-bound thought, the child conceives of his emotion as residing in the event. If he names an action as the location, he is referring not to a situation-independent act, but to the action-component of an event. If he names an object as the location, he means the object-com ponent of an event— the object in context o f the situation described, and not apart from that situation. The child’s choice between these modes of expressing his event-bound belief may rest in part on which aspect o f the situation draws and holds his attention particularly; and the relative activity levels of self and object may in turn be a major determinant of where his attention is fixed. In that case, fear would be located in objects more frequently than would happiness because o f the higher profile attained by the more active objects in fear situations. The relative activity o f subject and object cannot, of course, entirely account for the pattern of responses found. Although the subjects were often the major actors in happy events, object location responses were still fairly popular (see Table 5.5). It seems plausible that when the child interacts with an object, that object is always a significant focus o f attention. The object’s profile may be raised further, however, in situations where it is also active in its own right. (One element in the object’s profile, of course, would then be whether it is alive or inanimate.) The observed pattern of placing fear more exclusively than happiness in the objcct-components o f events probably has both structural and defensive aspects. It would be interesting to study the relative influence of each of these aspects by examining instances in which the subject takes active and passive positions within both positive and negative emotional situations. Such an inquiry has been planned as part of a larger iongitudinai study exploring preschoolers’ experiences of happiness, fear, and anger. Anger is of special interest in this context because it shares with fear a negative emotional tone possibly calling for defense, while sharing with happiness a high level of subject activity relative to that of the object.

Sum m ary and Conclusions The results o f this initial study of children’s developing conceptions of their emotion are prom ising. Event theory generated an interesting if complex set of hypotheses about preschoolers’ opinions on the locus, origin, and interpersonal

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assessment of their emotion, and those hypotheses were supported by the data. A group emerged, represented primarily by the youngest subjects, who located their emotion in actions, objects, or whole situations, sometimes shifting among these answers. Their further comments indicated that the common factor in this array o f responses was an inclination to locate the emotion not in a self-domain differentiated from actions and objects, but in a conglomerate o f aspects of self, other, and actions occurring together in the situation with which the child was engaged. What the responses had in com m on, in other words, was a basis in event-bound thought. The same group of children gave a variety of opinions on how the interviewer could assess their emotional state in the situations they described. The children’s further comments on this topic indicated they were all attempting to convey that the interviewer would know about their emotion sim ­ ply by coming upon the scene. Reference to their behavior was deemed unneces­ sary for perception of such a vivid and pervasive aspect of the event. While the responses of this youngest group showed consistent event-bound characteristics, a second group of subjects showed an emergent liberation from event-bound thought. These subjects could at times identify their emotion as proper to a self-domain independent o f other aspects of the situation, but did not do so consistently. A handful o f children in this age group displayed a third stage of developm ent, offering only adultlikc responses locating their emotion within a self-domain fully differentiated from actions and objects. These subjects also showed an understanding that the interviewer could assess their emotional state only by observing their behavioral expression of that state. Evidence that the stage criteria articulated in this initial study describe a series of coherent developmental levels was provided in an analysis counterindicating any developm ental hierarchy among the identified event-bound responses. Sup­ port for viewing the stages as an invariant developm ental sequence was found in a chi-square analysis showing a significant age-stage relationship. A small oneyear follow-up study, in which all subjects received the same or higher stage assignments than previously, provided further evidence that the stages con­ stitute a developmental sequence. The relevance o f that sequence to conceptions of both positive and negative emotional states was demonstrated in its ap­ plicability to children’s opinions on both happiness and fear. The findings described in this chapter are presented as a basis for further exploration. In addition to replicating the data and refining their interpretation, future research must expand to include other emotions and age groups if a comprehensive understanding o f children’s conceptions of their emotion is to evolve. In addition, the event-bound quality of early conceptions o f emotion must be explored from other angles. Interesting approaches might focus on children’s understanding of the intangibility o f em otion, or on their ideas about the parts o f themselves involved in experiencing emotion. Underlying the view presented here o f developing patterns in children’s con­ ceptions of emotion is the event concept, which has itself undergone a test.

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W h e n e v e r a se t o f h y p o th e s e s is d e riv e d fro m a g iv e n c o n c e p tu a l fra m e w o rk , th at fra m e w o rk is in tu rn s u p p o rte d o r u n d e rm in e d b y th e in te re st a n d c o h e re n c e o f th e re s u lts o b ta in e d . T h e c o n c e p t o f e v e n ts a s e a rly b a sic e n c o d in g u n its h as fared w ell in an in itia l e x a m in a tio n o f its a b ility to g e n e ra te an d in te rp re t e x p e ri­ m en tal d a ta o n n o rm a l d e v e lo p m e n t. It h a s g iv e n rise to a set o f fin d in g s th a t a p p e a r to m e rit fu rth e r e x p lo ra tio n .

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am cspccially grateful to Irene Fast for her enthusiastic support o f my work on the research project described. I am endebted to Irene Fast, K. G erald M arsden, D ennis D rotar, and C hristopher B achc for their thoughtful com m ents on an earlier draft o f this m anuscript.

REFERENCES Barden, R. C., Garber, J., Duncan, S. W., & Masters, J. C. (1981). Cumulative cffects of induced affective states in children: Accentuation, inoculation, and remediation. Journal o f Personality and Social Psychology, 40, 750 760. Borke, H. (1971). Interpersonal perception of young children: Egocentricism or empathy? Develop­ mental Psychology, 5, 263-269. Broughton, J. (1978). Development of concepts of self, mind, reality, and knowledge. In W. Damon (Ed.), New directions fo r child development. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Camras, L. A. (1977). Facial expressions used by children in a conflict situation. Child Develop­ ment, 48, 1431-1435. Denny, D., Denny, L. J., & Rust J. O. (1982). Preschool children's performance on 2 measures of emotional expressiveness compared to teacher ratings. Journal o f Genetic Psychology, 140, 149— 150. Fitzpatrick, C. (1982). Event theory: A perspective on infant social cognition. Unpublished manu­ script, University of Michigan. Flavell, J. H. (1963). The developmental psychology o f Jean Piaget. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold. Hamilton. M. L. (1973). Imitative behavior and expressive ability in facial expression of emotion. Developmental Psychology, 8, 138. Johnson, C. N. (1981). Acquisition of mental verbs and the concept of mind. In S. Kuczaj (Ed.), Language development: Syntax and semantics. Vol. 1 (pp. 445-478). Hillsdale, NJ.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Johnson, C. N., & Wellman, H. M. (1980). Children’s developing understanding of mental verbs: “ Remember,” “ know,” and “ guess.” Child Development, 51, 1095-1102. Johnson, C. N., & Wellman, H. M. (1982). Children’s developing conceptions of the mind and brain. Child Development, 53, 222-234. Kalliopuska, M. (1981). Influence of children’s position in the family on recognition of emotional expression. Psychological Reports, 49, 1001-1002. Markman, E. (1976). Children’s difficulty in word-reference differentiation. Child Development, 47, 742-749.

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Masters, J. C ., & Furman, W. (1976). Effects of affective states on noncontingent outcome expec­ tancies and belief in internal or external control. Developmental Psychology, 12, 481-482. McCluskey, K. W ., Albas, D. C ., Niemi, R. R., Cuevas, C ., & Ferrer, C. A. (1975). Crosscultural differences in the perception of the emotional content of speech: A study of the develop­ ment of sensitivity in Canadian and Mexican children. Developmental Psychology, I I , 551-555. Miscine, J. L., Marvin, R. S., & Greenberg, M. T. (1978). A developmental study of preschool children’s understanding of the words “ know” and “ guess.” Child Development, 49, 11071113. Odum, R. D ., & Lemond, C. M. (1972). Developmental differences in the perception and produc­ tion of facial expressions. Child Development, 43, 359-369. Paliwal, P., & Goss, A. E. (1981). Attributes of schematic forces in preschoolers’ use of names of emotions. Bulletin o f the Psychonomic Society, 17, 139-147. Piaget, J. (1929). The child's conception o f the world. New York: Hartcourt, Brace. Piaget, J. (1951). Play, dreams, and imitation in childhood. New York: Norton. Selman, R. L. (1981). What children understand of intrapsychic processes: The child as a budding personality theorist. In E. K. Shapiro & E. Weber (Eds.), Cognitive and affective growth: Developmental interaction. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Wellman, H. M. (1981). The child’s theory of mind: The development of conceptions of cognition. In S. R. Yussen (Ed.), The growth o f insight in the child. New York: Academic Press. Wellman, H. M., & Johnson, C. N. (1979). Understanding of mental processes: A developmental study of “ remember” and “ forget.” Child Development, 50, 79-88.

T h is p a g e in te n tio n a lly le ft b lank

Concrete Thinking and the Categorical Attitude

R obert E. Erard

A fundamental problem in the literature of cognitive development is how best to characterize the differences between cognitions which are relatively primitive and those which are relatively advanced. Authors who are principally concerned with concept formation tend to describe primitive ideation as “ concrete” and more mature cognition as “ categorical” or “ conceptual,” whereas those who are primarily interested in the precision and logical consistency of thinking tend to frame the distinction in terms of global or diffuse thought versus dimensional or articulate thought. Still others who focus on the consensual validity o f com­ municated thought conceive of a dichotomy between autistic or egocentric orga­ nization and rational or objective frames of reference. Yet the question of how the same thought might be conceived of as at once concrete and diffuse or egocentric and global has never been adequately addressed. If one wishes to attempt a more comprehensive conceptualization of primitive and advanced cognition, one is faced with a dilemma. One can assume that there is a single fundamental line of development from primitive to advanced thinking of which the foregoing descriptions (like those of the proverbial blind men exploring the elephant) capture various phenotypic aspects; alternatively, one might assume that to each description there corresponds a discrete line of devel­ opment such that a given type o f thinking might be primitive along one line of development (e.g., “ concrete” ), but relatively advanced along another line (e.g., objective or dimensional). In the final analysis this dilemma becomes an empirical question, but no one has yet devised any sort o f “ crucial experiment” that neatly resolves it. Nevertheless, in my opinion, the weight o f clinical evi­ dence is on the side of the hypothesis of a single line of development.

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This chapter entertains the hypothesis that this line o f developm ent can be characterized in terms o f the capacity to construct a stable, categorical frame of reference that transcends the immediate context of experience. Naturally, these terms are defined more explicitly as the chapter proceeds, but let it suffice for the moment that the term “ im mediate context of experience” may be taken to mean essentially the same thing as the term “ event” used in other chapters throughout this volume, and that the term “ categorical frame o f reference” refers to a kind of integration o f events into conceptual units. My emphasis is not on the subjec­ tive organization o f events but rather on the observable consequences of the incapacity to organize event-bound experiences within a more permanent and voluntarily accessible frame o f reference. The chapter begins with a number o f vignettes and observations drawn from the clinical and experimental literature that seem to have some bearing on the question of the nature o f the general capacity for conceptual, representational thought and its significance for cognitive experience and for personality in gener­ al. O f special interest is the question o f the nature o f so-called “ concrete think­ ing” and its manifestation in amnesic aphasia, a neurological disorder in which the capacity to maintain a categorical frame of reference is lost but the ability to use words in noncategorical fashion is largely retained. As an illustration of primitive thinking and experience unconfounded by linguistic ignorance, this disorder provides an ideal foundation for an exploration of the nature o f primitive ideation, as not only Goldstein (1933, 1946, 1960/1971) and his colleagues but also Freud (1891/1953) have discovered. From the presentation o f these examples, we proceed to a consideration o f the specific nature of the underlying “ basic d eficit.” This discussion leads to a review o f various traditional ways o f characterizing primitive cognition and how they may be reinterpreted in terms of the hypothesized deficit. Finally, we briefly consider the implications of this reinterpretation in terms o f event theory.

THE BASIC DEFICIT: CLINICAL ILLUSTRATIONS W erner and Strauss (1942/1978) compared 20 brain-injured (exogenous) chil­ dren with 20 mentally retarded (endogenous) children (all with an average mental age of 9) on a variety o f object-sorting tests. The exogenous children consistently produced significantly more unusual responses (measured against norms set by the group as a whole) than the endogenous children. In one of the tasks, the children were instructed to group a heterogeneous collection o f objects according to whether they “ went better w ith” a fire scene or a drowning scene. By and large, the endogenous children grouped each object with reference to the scene as a whole. In contrast, the exogenous children commonly shifted frames o f reference with respect to each grouping in a curi­ ously idiosyncratic manner.

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One exogenous child first placed a figure o f a doctor by one o f the pictures becausc the doctor could help the injured victim s. Shortly afterw ards, the same child placed a pair o f pliers by the doctor, explaining that the pliers w ere “ for bad te eth .” A nother placed a cart “ for carrying b ab ies” by the fire scene and then placed next to it a hose, not for putting out the fire, but “ for babies to suck milk w ith .” A container o f w ater, w hich was originally allocated “ to put out the fire,” was later sorted as “ m edicine for sick p e o p le .” It appears that the ex­ ogenous children, by and large, were unable to m aintain a stable “ set” o r fram e o f reference for their sorting behavior. G oldstein (1933/1971) reported a case o f a patient with traum atic injury to the brain cortex who was show n a penknife in various contexts. W hen the knife was located near a scratch pad belonging to a w om an doctor, the patient called it a “ w om an’s w riting se t” ; w hen it was next to a pencil, she referred to it as a “ pencil sharpener” ; in the presence o f an apple, it becam e an “ apple slicer” ; located near a piece o f bread, she called it a “ bread k n ife” ; placed by a fork, a “ knife and fork. ” In effect, the knife seem ed to becom e a different object for the patient in each new context. G oldstein’s brain-injured patients behaved in an analogous fashion when asked to nam e colors. In several experim ents, patients were given a set o f skeins o f yam dyed in various hues. W hen asked to put all the greens together, the patients typically either selected a single skein, m aintaining that it was the only exam ple, or selected several green skeins but insisted that they w ere really different colors. One patient, as he picked up each skein, nam ed them , “ Peacock green, em erald green, taupe green, bright green, egret green, bell green, baby g reen .” A nother com pared each skein to shades o f grass he had seen in various states— K entucky, V irginia, and so on. At one point he joined a brow n skein with a green one and said, “ This is the color o f the bark o f the tree and this is the color o f the leaves” (G oldstein & Scheerer, 1941, pp. 6 6 -6 7 ). Each patient refused to acknow ledge that all these shades w ere instances o f the sam e color. The fact that they m anaged to group the various shades o f green together (and not all o f G o ldstein’s patients could) m ight be explained, in the first case above, by the fact that the patient recognized the identical sound (viz. that for “ green” ) in each o f his nam es for the various shades; and, in the second case, by the fact that the patient equated the nam e “ green” with his color experience o f grass. Exam ples o f a sim ilar approach to color nam ing abound in cross-cultural linguistics. A m ong the K am ayura Indians o f South A m erica, for instance, grassgreen and indigo-blue objects are called by the sam e name: i-tsovii-m ae— liter­ ally, “ parakeet-colo r.” A s W erner (1957) puts it: “ In this instance it is clear how , through a shift o f focus, through the selection o f this or that part o f a diffuse totality in accordance w ith the context, the content o f the nam e itself undergoes apparent change” (p. 284). One o f G oldstein ’s patients, after repeated “ failures” to consider all o f a

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series of red shades under the general concept “ re d ,” finally called them all by the same name. On inquiry, the patient remarked: “ The doctors have told me that all these colors are named red. Therefore I call them all re d .” When asked whether this labeling was correct, the patient laughed and said, “ Not one o f these colors is red, but I am told to call them by this w ord” (Goldstein & Scheerer, 1941, p. 67). Commenting on this episode, Goldstein (1933/1971) writes: She had evidently established between words and things a purely external relation, which seemed strange to her, which was felt as essentially different from that which normally existed for her between words and things, in which she experienced them as proper names, closcly tied to the object. The word was not for her a means of introducing into things a conceptual order, it did not adhere to the objcct; it had a completely different relation, somewhat strange, exterior in some way. (p. 333) W hat seems to be going on in all o f these examples is the subject’s failure to employ any particular feature of his perceptual experience as a stable frame with respect to which other features of his experience might be organized, named, grouped, and so on. Thus, in the first exam ple, the fire (which, as an event, originally provided the frame for grouping and understanding the doctor, the baby cart, and the water) is abruptly submerged by the children’s completely novel and independent reactions to doctors, baby carts, and sick people, as these reactions come to determine new frames o f reference or response sets on their own. In the second exam ple, we can see that the name and, presumably, the identity of the penknife is determined entirely by the immediate action context. It retains neither its name nor (by inference) its identity when the context shifts. Once again, in the color naming exam ples, it appears that the patients’ re­ sponses to color are passively determined by an immediate experiential con­ text— namely, an immediately experienced memory of an object or perceptual situation which is called to mind by the specific hue and brightness of the skein. Among the Kamayura Indians, this approach to the organization o f color experi­ ence has been institutionalized on the linguistic plane. One might be inclined to argue here that a memory is hardly an “ immediate experience,” but it should be noted that in phenomenal terms, the images of grass, em eralds, and so on, whether produced by a mnem ic process or by external stim uli, are them selves experienced im mediately— that is to say, with­ out the mediation of any conceptual or linguistic intention. The contrast I wish to emphasize here is not that between remembered and so-called direct perceptual experience, but that between a response determined by a particular context of perception and action and one determined by the normal unification of such experiences across a variety o f experiential contexts through the use o f a concept or a semantic convention. T hus, the color of a brick I stubbed my toe on, the

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bright scarlet flash o f a fire engine that startled m e, and a shade o f lipstick worn by a woman I m et yesterday m ay all be different perceptual experiences, but all fall within the conventional boundaries o f the category “ re d .” That G oldstein’s patien ts’ procedure o f m atching colors with m nem ic im ages is irreconcilable w ith a conventional application o f color categories is dem on­ strated in the exam ple o f the w om an who was finally “ co erced ” to nam e skeins o f a variety o f shades as red but adam antly doubted the sense o f this procedure, ju st as if a norm al individual were asked to call blue, green, and orange objects all by the same nam e. For her there was no “ fram e ,” conventional or o therw ise, which reached across contexts and united her diverse color experiences within a single category. This failure to m aintain a stable fram e o f reference can occur with respect to experience o f self and others, as well as in perceptual experience. Fast (1984) reports an illustrative episode from her treatm ent o f a hospitalized borderline psychotic child nam ed G ary. G ary looked forward w eekly to his p aren ts’ visit, which occurred in the dayroom o f his living unit on the sam e day and tim e each w eek. On one occasion, G ary ’s parents m ade special plans to take him hom e with them at the regular tim e o f their visits. W hile G ary w as clearly delighted at the prospect o f going hom e w ith his parents, it becam e clear in the preceding week of his treatm ent that he was also very anxious and depressed at the prospect o f m issing his regular p aren ts’ visit. As Fast describes it: The fact that at the very time of his regular visit with his parents he would instead be snugly in the car with them and going home, could not allay his increasingly frantic sense of being abandoned. The happy boy-in-car-with-parents event could not be integrated with the boy-without-a-parcnt’s-visit-cvcnt. (p. 123) Rapaport (1957) reports the case o f a young schizophrenic patient w ho was having a variety o f feelings, ideas, and im pulses he could not consciously adm it to his therapist. Instead the patient expressed these experiences to another young patient during a series o f conversations with the latter. In the last o f these, Rapap o rt’s patient told the other that he felt intellectually inferior and was afraid he might even be a m oron. The other patient obligingly agreed. N ow , as in several previous conversations, R apaport’s patient suddenly experienced the w ords o f the other as im m ediate truth, and indeed as his ow n thought and belief. He replied to the other fellow: “ How did you find o u t?” The second patient an­ swered that he heard it from his ow n therapist who happened to be a friend o f the patient’s therapist, w ho in turn had heard it from the patient him self. R apaport’s patient reacted to this statem ent with the sam e experience o f im m ediate “ tru th .” Suddenly, how ever, there was a dram atic sh ift, w hich the patient recounted to Rapaport as follows: “ I saw you telling his therapist that I am a m oron, and in the m om ent I saw you I knew that this was not my thought but som ething I had

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just heard, som ething he tried to put over on m e, som ething that was not tru e” (p. 182). In his analysis o f this episode, R apaport suggests that w hen the therapist’s image arose in the p atien t’s m ind, the patient suddenly “ disco v ered ” a fram e of reference other than that o f identification w ith the other patient, and in this fram e o f reference, he recognized the “ hearsay” o f the other p atien t’s agreem ent for what it was. In fact, as the therapy proceeded, the patient cam e to use the therapist’s image as a “ magic d ev ice” to help him self distinguish “ h earsay” from his own thought and “ tho u g h t” from “ tru th ” (1957, p. 192). The sudden and largely passive “ disco v ery ” o f a new im plicit fram e of reference is well docum ented in the literature on brain-dam aged patients. Ilanfm ann, R ickers-O vsiankina, and G oldstein (1944), in their classic m onograph on a single patient with severe traum atic dam age to the brain cortex, describe their patient’s experience o f “ im m ediate certain ty ” in term s very sim ilar to Rapap ort’s. They write: “ It is neither conviction nor b elief based on definite criteria, but rather a ‘click in g ,’ an im m ediate experiencing o f things being right, o f their alm ost perceptual adequacy and harm ony” (p. 6). This experience o f im m ediate certainty seem s to com e about in the context o f an abrupt, spontaneous shift o f fram e o f reference. W hen sorting objects, m atch­ ing colors, judging lengths, and so forth, H anfm ann et a l.’s patient appeared to wait passively for this experience to occur: When the patient is manipulating the material in different ways, he seems merely to try to bring about a situation in which something will happen to tell him his choice was right. Since he himself lacks a definite idea of what he expects to occur, he cannot use the nonoccurrence of the effect as a criterion of falsity. (1944, p. 21) Instead of applying some kind of criterion he is passively determined by the arising impressions which might be those of similarity, or of dissimilarity, according to the momentarily prevailing aspect, (p. 17) W hat is m ost striking about this point o f shift in aphasic patients is the fact that, unlike R apaport’s patient, they cannot then unite their experience after the shift with their prior experience. W eigl (1927) writes: One might ask . . . whether and in what way the “ points of shift” are experienced by the patient. Since one can scarcely get any statements from the patient himself on this subject, one is forced to depend on observation of his behavior at the moment when his type of reaction changes. One can certainly conclude from the lighting up in his facial expression, frequently observable on such occasions, and from his joyful exclamations that something happens in the patient. It may, nev­ ertheless, be quite different from what happens in a normal adult in the same situation. A clue in this direction is perhaps to be found in the fact that the patient, after the point of shift, usually remembers nothing in his previous reaction; even

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reminders on the part of the experimenter do not help. For the patient, the organiza­ tions within one sphere evidently have nothing to do with those of other spheres. His joy on the occasion of a new reaction docs not, then, arise— as in the normal person— from the experience of having “ grasped” a new connection; it seems rather to be the expression of the experience of a new situation closer to the performance demanded of him. (pp. 28-29) In sorting tasks with these patients, the purely verbal direction to “ sort differently” was never sufficient. For exam ple, in the Color-Form Sorting Test (W eigl, 1927; G oldstein & Scheerer, 1941) the patient is given a variety of standard, geometrically shaped cutouts o f different colors. If the patient sorts them according to color, he is asked to sort them in a different way. The only means by which this shift could actually be accom plished was for the experi­ menter to tum all the cutouts on their other sides, which were uniformly white. Goldstein explains; “ Now that a phenomenal organization on the basis o f color is no longer possible, the elem ent o f form immediately obtrudes, i.e ., with the element of color which, because of the color differences does not permit homo­ geneous organization, being not effective, the elem ent of form can now become the prevailing stim ulus” (p. 124). Even after the patient was “ coerced” to shift to form, when the colored sides were turned up again, the patient was again unable to sort according to form. In a series of five experim ents with a single patient, Weigl (1927) attempted to teach the patient to sort a variety of objects according to the material o f which they were made. The experim enter presented two piles o f objects, one all wood and the other all metal. The patient was asked whether he could find “ any sense in this arrangem ent.” Despite encouragem ent, the patient remained completely puzzled. The experim enter removed a nail from one pile and the handle o f a hammer from the other and asked the patient to put them where they belonged among the other objects. The patient replaced them properly, explaining that this was where the experim enter had placed them. The experiment was repeated in such a way that the patient could not tell where the objects had come from: Uncertain and hesitating, the patient glances back and forth from the objects in his hands to the two piles. Finally he decides (still very much uncertain), and puts the nail with the wood. Immediately thereupon he evidently intends to put the hammer handle with the metal, but suddenly stops, and cries out animatedly, “ Oh, now 1 know.” Absolutely certain and clearly conscious of his purpose, he now puts the two objects on their proper piles and says “ Wood— iron” , (p. 25) Weigl comments: The entire lack of voluntary action here is very interesting. The patient does not come by himself to the point of “ wood— iron,” but this pair forces itself upon him phenomenally; he is completely surprised by it. The abruptness expresses itself

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unmistakably in the whole behavior of the patient. His features suddenly change; he strikes his head with his palm; he has an absolute need to explain his experience to the experimenter (which is made difficult by his aphasia), (p. 25) In the next experiment the objects were mixed up and the patient was asked to sort them on his own. Examining each object carefully to see of what material it was made, the patient succeeded. A new set of items of different materials (a rubber ball, a blotter, a clean piece of paper, a full inkwell) was added to those previously used to see if the patient had actually comprehended the principle of sorting according to material. Now the patient failed entirely, sorting in an evidently arbitrary and incoherent manner. Instructions to sort them as he had done just before were o f no use. After the four new objects were removed and the patient examined the set up for a short time, he suddenly exclaimed “ O h!” and with an understanding smile, promptly arranged the two piles: wood —iron. As Weigl notes, this response demonstrates that the changed reaction at the introduction o f the new objects was not a matter o f the patient’s forgetting a principle o f classification, but rather a matter o f the modification o f a perceptual context upon which the patient’s awareness o f the wood-iron distinction depended. In the final experim ent, the experim enter added only the inkwell to the origi­ nal collection of objects, and the patient again lost the wood-iron distinction. The experimenter instructed the patient to ignore the inkwell and to sort as before, but to no avail. When the experim enter finally covered the inkwell with his hand, the patient succeeded in forming the two original groups. Now the experimenter uncovered the inkwell and pointed to it with a questioning gesture. At first the patient “ was stuck” but then quite suddenly exclaimed, “ Oh, glass!” and placed the inkwell by itself. The abrupt, involuntary, irreversible character o f the “ shifts” o f frame o f reference we have considered thus far naturally has bearing on every aspcct of cognitive functioning, but most obviously on memory. According to Hanfmann et al. 1944): “ The patient can only be in one situation at a time. W henever one episode is completed or interrupted and succeeded by a different situation, it disappears from his life space and cannot be recaptured at w ill” (p. 48). For example, whenever Hanfmann and her colleagues induced their patient to put som ething in his pocket and then to continue his previous activity, he inevita­ bly was puzzled to discover the object when questioned about the contents o f his pockets a few minutes later. Long-term mem ory, even for such basic data as his last name, place o f birth, parents, and education, was also seriously impaired. However, if some striking aspect o f a current situation happened to “ click” with a recent or even very remote event, the former context would be revived in his memory (somewhat like Proust’s tea and rnadelines) in full anim ation, and indeed he began to act it out as though it were currently happening. The effortful search of m em ory to answ er the doctor’s questions was no more helpful to the patient in recalling past experiences than was thoughtful delibera­

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tion to the patients confronted with the color nam ing and objcct sorting tasks described above. The shift from experience o f som e present situation into m em o­ ry w as, like the perceptual shifts previously described, a passive, spontaneous experience. One m ay well w onder w hat sort o f “ striking asp ect” o f the current situation could produce such a shift. M ore often than not it seem ed to be som e object in the present situation that triggered an em otional response appropriate to a pre­ vious context. H anfm ann et al. provide several exam ples. The day after one o f the exam iners gave him a highly prized pipe as a present, Lanuti (the patient) still correctly rem em bered that a w om an had given it to him dow nstairs. It seem s reasonable to infer that the p atien t’s present experience o f jo y in possession o f the pipe evoked for him its original source in the actual receiving o f the gift the day before. On another occasion, w hen questioned about his work on the w ard, Lanuti vividly illustrated the activity o f sw abbing, pushing a chair around the room , and com plained about the ward attendant w ho was “ kicking all the tim e, com e on Frank, hurry up , hurry u p ” and did not give him any tobacco. In addition to the high em otional salience o f this event, it should be noted that the patient had the em pty tobacco can with him as he described the episode. O nce when som eone referred to the patient’s bandaged finger, m inim izing the extent o f the injury, the patient reenacted several scenes in w hich staff m em bers ex­ pressed sim ilar skeptical attitudes and w ent into a diatribe against the doctors. In this exam ple the bandaged finger as well as the salient em otional context presum ­ ably instigated the s h ift.1 R egarding the p atien t’s experience o f the shift itself, H anfm ann (1944) writes: His attitude is not that of a normal person who in relating past events clearly differentiates them from the actual present, and is aware of the relative positions of the two in time. The patient, in the laboratory, in talking to the observers, has difficulties in recalling the cafeteria situation, because he is altogether absorbed by the momentary real situation. When the cafeteria situation becomes actual for him, the present situation seems almost to disappear and he lives in the situation re­ called. Psychologically this is now the actual situation for him and his actions are determined by it nearly as fully as they were by the real situation a minute ago. (p. 50) T hus, ju st as in the case reported by W eigl, the new fram e o f reference (here nam ely, that provided by the context o f the rem em bered event) obliterates the patient’s aw areness o f the ju st prior fram e and takes on a com pelling im m ediacy o f its ow n. O nce again, one observes the failure to synthesize or integrate •The existence o f this type o f rem em bering has many interesting im plications for issues in psychoanalytic theory such as transference, acting out, and R apaport’s (1950) notion o f a “ drive organization o f m em ories" (see Erard, 1983). For purposes o f the present discussion, how ever, I should simply like to em phasize the continuity o f this type o f rem em bering with the general deficits in cognitive structure I have been describing thus far.

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cxpcricncc across various experiential contexts. T his failure has profound conse­ quences for the p atien t’s sense o f personal identity. A ccording to H anfm ann (1944): As a result of his inability to organize events in time, the patient lacks perception of his own personal past, lacks the continuous subjective life history, which in normal people functions as a frame of reference for recalling and placing of single events. His memory lacks organization and consists as it were of a series of flashes illuminating now the one now the other episode of his past. (p. 50) This instability in personal identity is naturally reflected in p atients’ experi­ ence of other people and objects. G oldstein (1933/1971) describes the sudden transform ation in a p atien t’s em otional life after her brain injury: This change of attitude in the patient with regard to the world is nowhere so apparent as in the new relation she established between her own person and her fellows in a sentimental or moral sense. She does not really know any more than herself; nothing has any value for her but that which refers to her ego; this alone exists, that is, becomes an integral part of the world which is comprehensible to her— she apprehends only that among the events which unfold around her. This egocentric attitude, as one might call it, is not explained by a special change of moral nature, it is only the reverberation of the shift that has come about in her general attitude, in the special domain of relations between self and others, (pp. 331-332— pcrs. trans.) It must be noted that there is a subtle but significant inconsistency in G o ld ­ stein’s interpretation o f his p atien t’s behavior. He im plies in his concluding sentence that the radical change in the p atien t’s relations with others is merely a special case o f a more general transform ation in the patient’s cognition and personality and thus docs not represent a change o f “ moral n ature” per se, and here he is on solid ground. N evertheless, in his description o f his p atien t’s behavior there is an unm istakably m oralistic tone, which quite plausibly stems from G o ldstein’s personal sense o f frustration and indignation at her seem ing refusal to cooperate in a consistent, task-oriented fashion with the experim ental work. This m oralisrn (w hich I em phasize here only because this difficulty is by no means lim ited to G o ld stein ’s w ritings), I believe, leads him to overlook the logical point that a patient w hose general difficulty arises from her failure to constitute a stable fram e o f reference transcending her im m ediate experiential context, is no better able to relate her experience to a “ self” that reaches across such contexts than to an “ o th e r” that exists beyond her im m ediate experience o f the other. It is not that “ she does not know any m ore than h erself” ; lacking a stable identity, she does not know herself either. R ather, she know s no more than the im m ediate total experiential context. A more apt description is provided in the m onograph on Lanuti (H anfm ann et a l., 1944):

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The valuative, emotional responses of the patient to the people and happenings were unusually strong and vivid, but they were evoked only by simple concrete situations, such as his momentary successes and failures, adequate functioning or pleasing appearance of objects, or friendly expressions and actions of other people. Yet these single emotional attitudes were never consolidated into a constant attitude independent of the momentary presence and action of another person, and conse­ quently no permanent emotional bonds could be formed by the patient. This was true even with regard to the members of his own family, (p. 70)

TOWARD A DEFINITION OF CONCRETE THINKING Thus far wc have considered how the failure or absence o f a single overall cognitive function— that of establishing a stable frame o f reference that inte­ grates aspects of self and of the world across diverse experiential contexts— can account for a broad range o f disturbed behavior in a num ber o f spheres: concept formation, object and color recognition, mem ory, sense o f identity and interper­ sonal relations, moral and aesthetic behavior. It is my thesis that “ global,” “ concrete,” and “ syncretic” thinking, as described in the literature of cognitive developm ent, arc simply different aspects o f the deficit caused by the absence o f this function, and that this deficit is the primary determ inant o f the various disturbances found in amnesic aphasia, a disorder shared by the various braininjured patients described above. “ G lobal” or “ nonanalytic” thinking refers to that aspect o f this deficit which is opposed to a dimensional or analytic approach to experience; “ concrete” thinking refers to the aspect opposed to generalizing abstraction; and “ syn­ cretic” or “ diffuse” thinking refers to that aspcct opposed to discreteness or articulateness of experience. I consider each o f these aspects in detail below. Analytic or dimensional thought involves the differentiation o f an immediate total experiential context into a set of “ dim ensions,” which may be defined as “ any discrim inable feature o f an event that is susceptible o f discrim inable varia­ tion from event to event” (B runer et a l., 1956, p. 26). These dim ensions are established, selected, and ordered by reference to some pragm atic or conven­ tional frame which transcends the im mediate experiential context. For example, an employer may differentiate his total experience o f a job interview into a number of dim ensions as he evaluates the applicant’s qualifications— education, previous experience, work attitude, interpersonal skills, and so on. The employer selects and orders these features according to a larger frame of reference: nam e­ ly, their relevance to the position the applicant is seeking. In contrast, global or nonanalytic thought involves no such differentiation. An employer who approached the interview in a global m anner might make his decision on the basis of the total quality or configuration o f the interview— Did he somehow “ click” with the applicant? Was it a pleasurable experience? How “ im pressed” is he with the applicant?

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Although the global approach has definite advantages under certain conditions (Brooks, 1978), the incapacity to use a dimensional or analytic approach under any circumstances is a major cognitive deficit. Unless one is able to establish a frame o f reference that extends beyond the immediate experiential context, it will be impossible to select and order features o f experience in an analytic fashion. Thus a general deficit in establishing a stable frame o f reference necessarily implies global cognition. Generalizing abstraction is a cognitive activity in which individual objects or features o f experience are subsumed under a larger category as instances o f that category. As such instances, they are regarded as equivalent to the other objects in the category with respect to a frame o f reference determined by the category. For example, a collection o f mystery novels, romantic novels, science fiction stories, and historical novels on a shelf all may be subsumed under the general category “ fiction.” As long as they are considered as instances under this category, they are all equivalent with respect to the stable frame o f reference it provides— namely, their veridicality as narratives; all other aspects of my experi­ ence o f them — the color o f their jackets, their size, which ones 1 prefer to read, and so on— are excluded from contem plation while I am regarding them gener­ ally as fiction. M oreover, 1 may continue to conceive of them as “ fiction” regardless o f my specific intention concerning them at any given moment. The frame of reference determined by a category is a relatively perm anent one; it remains accessible despite changes in my perceptual and motivational relation to its instances. Concrete thinking, on the other hand, does not organize itself categorically, but rather in terms of the context o f my immediate experience. Thus, in the example above, my momentary interest in the novels or stories will determine the way I experience them. W hatever aspect of the books as a group or as individual objects fits my im mediate practical objective- straightening them on a shelf, finding som ething to read, supporting the short leg o f a wobbly table— will determine my total experience o f them. The frame o f reference in concrete thinking is as evanescent or as persistent as the intention or interest that engen­ dered it and remains implicit in the total sensory-m otor-affective experience of the moment. It follows that a deficit in the ability to constitute a frame of reference that integrates elements o f experience across particular contexts obvi­ ates the possibility o f generalizing abstraction and limits one to concrete think­ ing. Discreteness or articulateness o f experience entails an organization o f experi­ ence into units which have a definite, intelligible relation to each other. Over time, articulate experience proceeds in an orderly, coherent fashion, such that each succeeding moment or unit o f experience forms a definite part o f an orga­ nized whole. This organization is made possible by a general plan or conception in which the flow o f activity or perception can be structured and channeled. In listening to a piece of music, for exam ple, articulate experience presupposes an

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aw areness o f discrete notes, m usical phrases, them es, and m ovem ents, each making its own contribution to the next higher structural level and deriving its own significance from this structure and from the piece as a w hole. Syncretic or diffuse experience, on the other hand, flows together in an indivisible unit or in a chaotic jum ble o f successive, unrelated events, in w hich each new m om ent obliterates aw areness o f the previous one. A piece o f m usic heard diffusely is m erely a series o f globally experienced aural im pressions, each in its turn subm erging the preceding im pression. O nce again, w hat is lacking in this form o f experience is the capacity to integrate successive experiences within a frame o f reference (here, nam ely, the piece as a w hole and its com posite structures) w hich reaches beyond the m om entary perceptual context. W hile the three term s discussed above ( “ g lo b a l,” “ co n crete,” and “ syn­ cretic” ) each have their specialized uses, the word “ concrete” seem s the most popular in the literature o f cognitive developm ent as a portm anteau term for describing “ p rim itiv e” thought in general. This popularity can probably be attributed to the fact that cognitive developm ent is traditionally understood as a process o f generalization from singular, “ co n crete” objects or sensory im pres­ sions to universal, “ ab stract” ideas which express the “ com m on essen ce” of the concrete objects (cf. L ocke, 1689/1965). 1 adopt the convention o f using the word “ co n crete” in a broader sense to apply generally to “ g lo b al” and “ syncretic” thought as w ell, since, as I have already argued, all three are indeed m erely aspects o f a single cognitive deficit in prim itive thought, nam ely the incapacity to establish a perm anent fram e of reference w hich transcends and integrates im m ediate contexts o f experience. In other w ords, I use the word “ co n crete” to refer to this deficit in general. H ow ever, it is im portant to distinguish the “ concrete thinking” I have just defined in term s o f being stuck in im m ediate, unintegrated contexts o f experience from a failure to abstract from “ co n crete” contents o f experience in the sense of individual, palpable, or perceptually given objects. Several authors have at­ tem pted to define concreteness in term s o f the content rather than the context o f experience, and this view point has engendered a num ber o f m isunderstandings. For exam ple, K asanin and H anfm ann (1938) rem ark that in concrete thinking: Objects are not viewed under some general category, as representatives of certain classes of objects, or as bearers of general characteristics, but rather as individuals. When these individual objects form groups on the basis of their similarity, or to use Goldstein’s term, their ‘coherence’ . . . each member of the group enters with all its aspects, without losing its individuality, and different relationships prevail between different members, (p. 37) Sim ilarly, G oldstein and Scheerer (1941) hold that reality for the aphasic patient, “ can only be defined in term s o f his being able to deal with the stim ulus figure as a thing [and that] the patient tends to m aster the stim ulus in the

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framework o f a tangible concrete realm ” (p. 142). W eigl (1927) em phasizes the dom inance o f factors “ o f a purely palpable k in d ” (p. 14) in concrete sorting behavior, and B olles (1937) goes so far as to define concrete behavior as “ that type o f behavior w hich is prim arily determ ined by sensory im pressions” (p. 48). In review ing the studies in which these view s o f concrete thinking and behav­ ior originate, 1 have concluded that it is not the data them selves but rather a “ gram m atical fiction ” (W ittgenstein, 1958) that leads to the conflation o f “ co n ­ crete thought” with “ co n crete” contents. Fiach investigator has recognized that there is som e kind of failure to abstract from im m ediate experience in the patients he has studied, and rather than convey this observation in negative term s, as a failure, each has found it convenient to express it affirm atively as a “ co n crete” kind o f thinking or attitude. At this point, as W ittgenstein (1958) has put it, “ language goes on h oliday” and the connotations o f the word “ co n crete,” including m any senses o f the w ord irrelevant to the specific nature o f the ob­ served failure to abstract (e .g ., “ co n crete” vs. “ im m aterial” ; “ co ncrete” vs. “ pliable” ; “ concrete” vs. “ insensible” ) com e into play. This linguistic slip­ page has often led to failure to consider adequately the specific nature o f the observed failure in “ abstraction” and its relation to the particular experience o f “ concrete” objects. In fact, w hen one closely scrutinizes the actual failures o f abstraction m ade by aphasics, schizophrenics, sm all children, and others, w hat is most striking is the fact that there is no m ore experience o f individual, palpable, “ thing like” objects than there is o f abstract categories or universals. W erner (1957) puts the problem thus: What is a “ thing” ? In the strict psychological and conceptually advanced sense of the word, a “ thing” is a fixed substratum supporting essential (constitutive) and non-essential properties. In the magic [read “ concrete” ) concept of a thing, however, the characteristic of having a constant immutable substratum to which arc attached essential properties as distinguished from nonessential and variable properties is more or less absent. A “ thing-category” in the scientific sense is simply nonexistent . . . (p. 346) W hy should this be so? The answ er becom es clear w hen we apply w hat has already been said about fram es o f reference in concrete thinking. If 1 am to recognize an object in its full concreteness— as a particular individual with unique properties w hich m ake it what it is— I must be able to differentiate the object as it exists in the m ultitude o f situations in w hich I m ight encounter it from my current, im m ediate experience o f it within a particular subjective context. I must have a stable fram e o f reference that I can m aintain with respect to the object despite the vicissitudes o f my momentary' attention to one or another aspect o f the object.

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The patient who experienced the penknife as a pencil sharpener at one mo­ ment and an apple parer the next could not grasp the penknife in its full con­ creteness— she could not integrate the various uses to which the knife might be put in different situations into an awareness o f a single object which retains all o f its sensory properties and capabilities in each new situation. It is only by estab­ lishing a substratum , a thing-category— what I should like to call a generic, categorical frame o f reference— integrating the various subjective contexts in which one experiences the penknife, that one can apprehend the knife as an objective, substantial entity in its own right. Lacking such a frame o f reference, the experience of objects has a shadowy, insubstantial, ephemeral quality. Searles’ (1962) observations o f schizophrenic patients suggest that the capacity to contem plate objects in their concrete totality develops hand in hand with the capacity for differentiated figurative, m eta­ phorical, and abstract thought. In one o f Searles’ exam ples, a patient found him self sitting in a chair that had a sm all, rough, bulky rug folded over it. As he started to lean back comfortably in the chair, he gave an anxious start, finally explaining: “ I don’t want the rug to get into my h air.” As Searles describes it: This was said in such a tone, impossible for me to reproduce here, as to give me the startling realization that he was afraid not that lint from the rug would get into his hair, but rather that the rug itself would do so— as if the rug, actually several feet across, were so much smaller than his hair that the whole of it could get lost or swallowed up in it. (p. 567) Several weeks later, the patient became able to recognize and express the meaning o f this experience in more differentiated terms: It was the fact that the hospital maid had thoughtlessly left the rug folded over the chair rather than replacing it on the floor that “ got in his h air” in a figurative sense— that irritated him. Analyzing this episode in terms o f “ concrete thinking” in the sense which I have given the term, it appears that the main subjective contextual determinant of the patient’s experience as he leaned back in the chair was his irritation at the maid for leaving his living quarters in such disarray and perhaps his general resentment over the shoddy conditions in which he was obliged to live, all symbolized or instantiated for the moment in his discomfort with the bulky rug against his head. This overall immediate emotional experience momentarily determined his total cognitive response, subm erging all the other objectively given, stable dim ensions of his environment such as the actual size o f the rug, the physical integrity o f his hair and o f the rug, and the distinction between the two. The rug as a subjective percept, being swallowed up in the patient’s total emo­ tional experience, lost its concreteness for the patient and became a quasi­ physical, quasi-metaphorical entity.

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It is this loss o f a sense o f concreteness with respect to the content of experi­ ence that engenders the dream like, unreal quality o f schizophrenic experience. As W em er and Kaplan (1963) describe it, the patient is “ desperately engulfed in a labile universe in which there is neither a true self, nor true people, nor true objects” (p. 72). This experience is vividly described in an autobiographical report of a recovered schizophrenic woman (Sechehaye, 1951; cited in W em er & Kaplan, 1963, p. 73): I look at her [a friend] praying to feel the life in her through the enveloping unreality. But she seems more a statue than ever, a mannikin, moved by a mecha­ nism, talking like an automaton. . . With heart despairingly empty I reach home. There 1 find a pasteboard house, sisters and brothers robots. A Rorschach study by Fast (1969)2 of 135 college students provides experi­ mental support for Searles’ contention that the capacities for thinking about abstract and concrete contents develop together out of an undifferentiated state. Following Searles, Fast hypothesized that the person who cannot think accu­ rately in abstract terms is also unable to perceive objects as stable wholes rather than as shadowy and evanescent. She predicted that persons who ascribed phys­ ical properties to abstract ideas in their Rorschach responses (e.g ., “ The green is the void of tim e” ; or, for the large red detail on Card II: “ The hearts of people joined in unity” ) would also tend to give Rorschach responses in which objects were described in a way that indicated an absence o f appropriate physical at­ tributes (e.g ., use of footprints, shadow s, reflections, and silhouettes rather than solid, whole objects or people; inappropriate transparencies; figures o f ghosts or genies; explicit descriptions of insubstantiality). The overall results confirmed her prediction at the .01 level o f significance. This loss o f true concreteness in the content of experience is as apparent in the “ concrete thinking” of aphasia as in schizophrenia and Rorschach responses. Indeed, even those investigators of aphasia cited above, who at times write as though “ concrete thinking” meant thinking limited to “ things,” observe other­ wise when closely analyzing their data. Thus, despite Kasanin and H anfm ann’s (1938) emphasis on how in concrete grouping an individual object “ enters with all its aspects, without losing its individuality” ; and despite Goldstein and Scheere r’s (1941) emphasis on the patient’s need to deal with stim ulus figures as “ things,” in their intensive study o f a single clinical case of “ extreme concretization of behavior” , H anfmann, Rickers-Ovsiankina, and Goldstein (1944) together report: “ It is doubtful w hether we may speak of recognition of objects at all, because under all circumstances things seem to be for him only parts o f a situation which he can master by action, never recognized in their relative independence and stability” (p. 9). 2Replicated by Richard Ortega (1979).

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Sim ilarly, in spite of his repeated emphasis on the “ palpability” of the contents o f thought as a fundamental characteristic in concrete thinking, Weigl (1927) observes: If we keep to the factual findings of our behavior analysis, we see that the sub­ jects— whenever they behave concretely— responded each time to a d e fin ite o r g a ­ n iza tio n w ith in a g iv e n u n re fle c tiv e ly e x p e r ie n c e d sp h e re . When this sphere changed for the subject, there were also c h a n g e s both as to the e xp e rie n c e o f the c o n te n ts and as to the experience of the congruencies among the contents of the sphere, (p. 32, emphasis added) Thus the “ factual findings” of W eigl’s experiments point to concretely, unreflectively experienced contexts or “ spheres” of experience, not concrete objects. In the same discussion, Weigl defines abstraction, traditionally under­ stood, as singling out the “ comm on partial content” from all the de facto given contents of experience. He notes that such selection requires a preceding phase in which percepts are expcricntially present as “ definite objects with a number of well-defined, given properties” (p. 32). O f course, because o f their diffuse, global, undifferentiated experience of objects, the aphasics Weigl studied could never reach this preceding phase. Owing to the fundamental instability of their “ experience o f the contents” o f the “ sphere” (i.e ., their im mediate total context of experience), there were no stable, solid objects from which to abstract in the first place. Because it is the patient’s incapacity to constitute cognitively “ definite ob­ jects” with “ w ell-defined, given properties” that is responsible for the failure to abstract in the traditional sense o f partialling out such properties from individual, palpable objects, neither the factual individuality nor the objective palpability of the object, nor the determ ination of behavior by “ sensory im pressions,” as Bollcs (1937) suggests, is at issue in the patient’s “ concrete thinking.” Rather, the problem is the indefinitencss and malleability o f the patient’s subjective construction of the object due to the incapacity to establish a perm anent frame of reference, a “ thing-category” for the object. These other features o f the objective content presented to the patient— indi­ viduality, palpability, sensorial character— are merely accidental or secondary with respect to the patient’s failure to think in abstract categories, and are by no means invariant characteristics o f the content of concrete thought. On the con­ trary, in Searles’ example of the schizophrenic patient who panicked at the thought of the rug getting in his hair, we saw that the main constitutive feature o f the content of his experience was not the rug as palpable object nor the feeling o f the rug as sensory impression, but rather his affective response o f resentment and his expression o f this resentm ent— “ it’s getting in my hair” — as concretized through the experience o f the rug. A gain, in the color naming experiments cited earlier, the main determinant o f the patients’ concrete thinking was not the direct

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sensory presentation o f the color skeins but some quite impalpable images of colored objects from remembered contexts o f experience. In conclusion, the persistent confusion in the literature between “ concrete thinking” and “ thinking o f concrete objects” rests on a syncretic conflation of the essential characteristic o f concrete thought (i.e ., the failure to establish a transcendent, stable frame o f reference and thereby constitute both perm anent, invariant categories and perm anent, concrete objects) with accidental or artifactual features o f observations o f aphasic patients due to inadequately differenti­ ated linguistic and philosophical preconceptions. Paradoxically, the investigators themselves are guilty o f the fallacy of “ misplaced concreteness” 3 (W hitehead, 1925) because of their failure to establish a stable, theoretical frame o f reference for their observations and their default to prejudices built into linguistic usage.

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF SIMILARITY IN CONCRETE THINKING As we have seen, most clinicians and researchers interested in the nature o f primitive cognition tend to focus on either the objects which figure in it or the egocentrism o f the subject that em ploys it. Immediate experiences are according­ ly thought to be associated either on the basis o f similarity o f the objects of thought (leading to “ concrete associations” ) or similarity of the subject’s needs and strivings in each case (leading to “ autism ” ). Both approaches neglect the fact that primitive thinking is incapable o f cog­ nizing either a differentiated self or an independent thinglike object. Since nei­ ther the self nor the object can stand on its own, neither can serve as the basis for similarity across experiences. Accordingly, the traditional formulations o f both concreteness and autism do not allow us to understand how even the most primitive generalizations across experiences may be formed. Is there any way out of this apparent paradox— that, on the one hand, the organism needs to establish a basis for recognition and comparison o f stimuli independent of its immediate experience, and on the other hand, it lacks the capacity to differentiate these stimuli from its immediate experience of them? The paradox disappears only when one ceases to consider the relation between subject and object from a one-sided point o f view— either in terms of an autistic subject indiscriminately imposing its needs and wishes on an indefinite, un­ differentiated object or as an inert organism passively reacting to fixed, objec­ tive properties o f the stim ulus. It is in the interaction between an active organism and an object which lends itself to various types o f manipulation that the immediate subjective context of experience and the experience o f similarity between various stimuli comes about. ■That is, confusion o f the meaning o f a term, in this ease “ co n crete," with the bearer of that

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For the developing infant, objects arc experienced as identical or sim ilar, not sim ply by virtue o f their objective properties nor by virtue o f the affective responses he m ight arbitrarily have tow ard them , but through the interaction between the specific m otives and actions o f the infant and the objective qualities o f the object that lend them selves to these m otives and actions. For exam ple, in the infant’s experience, a bottle and a breast are initially sim ilar or identical by virtue o f being “ su ck ab lcs,” a rattle and a finger by virtue o f being “ graspab le s.” The various other features that distinguish bottles and breasts o r rattles and fingers becom e part o f the content o f experience only when the in fant’s m otives and actions can begin to take them into account. T hus, the interaction betw een the subject’s conative and affective response to a stim ulus object and those objective qualities o f the object that lend them selves to this response determ ines the subjective context o f experience and provides the basis for the assim ilation o f present to previous experience. H anfm ann et al. (1944) portray this interaction quite vividly in their descriptions o f their aphasic patient, Lanuti. O ne gets the im pression that for the patient an object has m ean­ ing only as part o f the situation in w hich it appears, and that to experience a situation is to act it out. (pp. 4- 5) They cite the follow ing illustrative observations: Egg. Lanuti takes the egg, turns it, knocks it lightly on the table, shakes it in front of his ear, then makes a motion to throw it saying: “ Ball . . . Want play?” The examiner cracks the egg and returns it to Lanuti who now immediately starts shelling the egg very carefully and says, as if making a discovery: “ Egg!” Ball. Lanuti takes it, squeezes, bites into it and shakes his head with disapproval. Throws the ball on the floor and when it rebounds, exclaims joyfully: “ Ball!” Pipe (clay pipe covered with black paint which rubbed off easily). Lanuti gets hold of it, turns it in his hands, and then moves its thin end on the paper as if scribbling. The paint leaves black marks on the paper. Patient says in an uncertain, questioning tone of voice: “ Pence? . . . Black pence?” (his word for pencil).(p. 5) Hanfm ann et a l., 1944 com m ents: The situation appears paradoxical: The patient does not seem to recognize the object until he actually sees it in action and yet he himself initiates this action at least partially appropriate to the given object. Why does he start writing with the pencil if he does not already know that it is a pencil? Yet. as the examples show, the specific action is often only one among many that arc tried out. . . Objects are squeezed, thrown, brought into contact with other objects because they seem to lend themselves to such treatment, actually in accordance with their shape, size, or consistency. Even when the action suggested by the object would seem to be very specific, such as scribbling with the pencil, the behavior of the patient shows that only during the successful action itself is the object actually ‘constituted’. The characteristics of the object first determine the field of action and the action that follows in its tum specifies the object, (p. 5)

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G oldstein (1933/1971) provides corroboration in his description o f the experi­ ence o f one o f his aphasic patients: ‘ ‘This world o f action is ultim ately the only one that exists for the patient, the only which m ay be close to her; every other is foreign to h er” (p. 331; pers. trans.). Lest it be thought that this organization o f experience by action is limited to some type o f concreteness peculiar to aphasics, the follow ing statem ents o f W erner (1957) may be cited: The child’s world is above all a world o f action, a behavioral sphere in which everything is framed in terms of handiness and unhandiness, of efficaciousness and inefficaciousness. . . The childlike world, moreover, is egocentric and concrete; it is a world of nearness at hand. (p. 382) Primitive reality is characterized by its extreme pragmatism. . . Everywhere there is a tendency to isolate that which stands in some connection, useful to man, and to bundle all the rest into one indiscriminate heap. (p. 403) Piaget (1954) provides the follow ing illustration from observations o f his seven m onth-old son: Laurent . . . loses a cigarette box which he has just grasped and swung to and fro. Unintentionally he drops it outside the visual field. He then immediately brings his hand before his eyes and looks at it for a long time with an expression of surprise, disappointment, something like an expression of its disappearance. . . But far from considering the loss as irremediable, he begins again to swing his hand, although it is empty. After this he looks at it once more! For anyone who has seen this act and the child’s expression, it is impossible not to interpret such behavior as an attempt to make the object come back. Such an observation . . . places in full light the true nature o f the object peculiar to this stage: a mere extension o f action, (p. 22) Studies o f early child-language show that words are first applied to objects in accord with their im m ediate action possibilities. O bservations o f Hilde Stem at 11 months (Stern & S tem , 1928; cited in W erner & K aplan, 1963) yielded the follow ing exam ples: “ n o se” was used generally to refer to “ p u llab les,” includ­ ing noses, a handkerchief, and the point o f a shoe; “ d o o r” seem ed to refer to any obstacle to getting out o f o r at som ething, including an actual door, a high chair, and a cork; “ d o ll” was used for any object that Hilde w ished to handle affection­ ately, including an actual do ll, a toy rabbit, and a toy cart. W erner and K aplan (1963) com m ent: “ T hese illustrations suggest that the early nam es do not depict stable, circum scribed things but rather refer to global events in w hich things and the agent’s (the speaker’s) action upon things are intim ately fused” (p. 118). L uria and Y udovich (1959) studied a pair o f five-year-old tw ins w ho show ed gross degradation o f speech behavior, apparently precipitated by “ their closely knit com panionship, ostensibly so gratifying as to forestall any pressure toward com m unication with the surrounding w orld” (W erner & K aplan, p. 118).

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A m ong L u n a ’s interesting conclusions was the follow ing: As a rule, o u r tw in s’ speech acquired m eaning only in a concrete-active situation. Outside this situation, a word either did not possess any kind of permanent meaning, or only indicated what they were talking about without disclosing sufficiently clearly in what sense it was being used. (Luria & Yudovich, 1959; cited in Werner and Kaplan, 1963, p. 119) Even in norm al developm ent, postinfancy experience continues to be shaped and organized by subjective contexts o f personal interaction with objects in term s o f their action possibilities. W eigl (1927) reports the follow ing observation o f a norm al child in an object sorting test: Four-ycar-old Mo. tells us, while handing over the bicycle bell, little red candle, ctc., to go with the padlock (as object of departure), “ You can make a light in the evening when you put the lock down in the cellar.” And when the experimenter asks her what the bell has to do with this, she answers reproachfully, “ Why, that’s upstairs in the apartment!” (p. 20) A curious consequence flows from the lim itation o f language to im m ediate action-situations in concrete thinking: Just as objects are not perceived in their full concreteness but only as functional entities o r props for action, w ords them ­ selves lack definite reference. C ontrary to G old stein ’s proposal (1933/1971,cited above), that his aphasic patients experience w ords as proper nam es for objects, it appears that their use o f w ords designates neither individual concrete objects nor true general concepts, but som ething in betw een. A ccording to G urw itsch (1963): In reality, if in the eyes of the patients a word is appropriate to a certain objcct, for example to a knife, it is not that the word is appropriate only to this individual knife to the exclusion of every other. We would say that the word is appropriate to the use which can be made of the knife, hence to its generic typicality which— let it be emphasized— remains inherent in it. (pp. 204-205) Piaget (1945/1962) provides several illustrations o f this “ generic typicality” from his observations o f his ow n children. He reports the follow ing exam ples from his daughter, Jacqueline: At about 2;6 she used the term “ the slug” for the slugs we went to see every morning along a certain road. At 2;7(2) she cried: "There it is!" on seeing one, and when we saw another ten yards further on she said: "There’s the slug again." I answered: “ But isn’t it another one?” Yes. J. went back to see the first one. “ Is it the same one?— Yes— another slug?— Yes. — Another or the same?— . . . ” The question obviously had no meaning for J.

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3;3(0) J. was playing with a red insect, which disappeared. A quarter of an hour later when we were out for a walk we tried to look at a lizard, which darted away. Ten minutes afterwards we found another red insect. “ It’s the red animal again . — Do you think so?— Where’s the lizard then?" (p. 225)

Piaget comments: Classes arc less comprehensive than they will be later, a class being a kind of typical individual reproduced in several copies. Slugs . . . are all “ the slug” reappearing in various forms, and the same is true of “ the red anim al,” with the interesting addition that once it had been connected with the lizard it was expected to be accompanied by the lizard when it reappeared. These two characteristics, absence of individual identity and of general class, are in reality one and the same. It is because a stable general class docs not exist, that the individual elements, not being assembled within the framework of a real whole, partake directly of one another without permanent individuality, and it is the lack of individuality in the parts which prevents the whole from becoming an inclusive class, (p. 226)

CONCRETE THINKING AND EVENT THEORY This chapter has attempted to offer a critique o f traditional approaches to under­ standing primitive cognition and experience without directly invoking Fast’s event theory in the hope o f serving as a kind of bridge from one to the other. Bvent theory offers a com prehensive framework for understanding and applying the conclusions o f this chapter in a direct, untrammeled fashion by providing a new terminology which is free o f many o f the presuppositions and misleading assumptions of earlier terms such as "concreteness” and “ autism .” The term “ im mediate context of experience,” as used throughout the forego­ ing discussion, corresponds to F ast’s concept of the “ event” in that it involves a unit of experience in which self and object remain undifferentiated components of a whole dominated by the enactment o f an action scheme. Fast’s event lan­ guage permits one to appreciate the phenomena! quality o f primitive experience without invoking adultomorphic concepts and categories o f self and object which have yet to be formed in the child’s mind (or which may have been lost due to some pathology in the adult). Rather than positing a blindly autistic imposition o f the organism ’s desires on the world about it or a predeterm ined, mechanistic reaction to stim uli, event theory consistently assumes an interactive perspective in which self and other become differentiated components o f the organism ’s action-in-the-world. Rather than assuming that concepts are formed by generalization from concrete particu-

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la r s , it h o ld s th a t c o n c e p ts e m e r g e f r o m d if f e r e n tia tio n a n d in te g ra tio n a c ro s s a v a rie ty o f e v e n ts s u c h th a t n o t o n ly r e p r e s e n ta tio n s o f o b je c ts b u t a ls o r e p r e s e n ta ­ tio n s o f s e l f a n d o f o n e ’s a c tio n s a n d th o u g h ts w ith re s p e c t to o b je c ts b e c o m e d if fe re n tia te d a n d in te g ra te d in to m o re m e a n in g fu l w h o le s . F in a lly , a n d p e rh a p s m o s t im p o r ta n tly , r a th e r th a n p r e s u m in g th a t m a tu re th o u g h t in v o lv e s a n a b a n ­ d o n m e n t o f a c tio n a n d a f f e c t, e v e n t th e o r y p la c e s k n o w le d g e o f o n e ’s a c tio n s a n d a ff e c ts a t th e v e r y c e n te r o f c o g n itiv e d e v e lo p m e n t s u c h th a t th e s e lf - k n o w le d g e p riz e d b y p s y c h o a n a ly s is a n d k n o w le d g e o f th e w o rld e m p h a s iz e d b y P ia g e t b o th b e c o m e o u tg r o w th s o f a c o re a w a r e n e s s o f w h a t o n e is d o in g .

REFERENCES Bolles, M. (1937). The basis of pertinence: A study of the test performance of aments, dements and normal children of the same mental age. Archives o f Psychology, No 212. Brooks, L. (1978). Nonanalytic concept formation and memory for instances. In E. Rosch & B. B. Lloyd (Eds.), Cognition and categorization (pp. 170-216). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Bruner, J. S., Goodnow, J. J., & Austin, G. A. (1956). A study o f thinking. New York: Wiley. Erard, R. E. (1983). The structure of cognitive representation in psychic development. Doctoral dissertation, University of Michigan, 1983. Dissertation Abstracts International, in press. Uni­ versity Microfilms No. 84-02273. Fast, I. (1969). Concrete and abstract thought: An alternative formulation. Journal o f Projective Techniques & Personality Assessment, 33, 331-335. Fast, I. (1984). Gender identity: A differentiation model. Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic Press. Freud, S. (1953). On aphasia. New York: International Universities Press. (Originally published 1891, Trans. E. Stengel) Goldstein, K. (1971a). I/analysede I’aphasie et dc P essence du langage. In A. Gurwitsch, E. M .G . Haudck, & W. E. Haudck (Eds.), Kurt Goldstein: Selected papers!Ausgewaehlte schriften (pp. 282-340). The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. (Originally published 1933) Goldstein, K. (1971b). Concerning the concept of “ primitivity.” In A. Gurwitsch, E. M. G. Haudck, & W. F. Haudek (Eds., pp. 485-403). (Originally published 1960) Goldstein, K. (1971c). On naming and pseudonaming. In A. Gurwitsch, E. M. G. Haudek, & W. F. Haudek (Eds., pp. 400 508). (Originally published 1946) Goldstein, K ., & Scheerer, M. (1941). Abstract and concrete behavior: An experimental study with special tests. Psychological Monographs, 53 (2, Whole No. 239). Gurwitsch, A. (1963). On the conceptual consciousness. In K. M. Sayre & F. J. Crosson (Eds.), The modeling o f mind: Computers and intelligence. New York: Simon & Schuster. Hanfmann, E., Rickers-Ovsiankina, M., & Goldstein, K. (1944). Case Lanuti: Extreme concretization of behavior due to damage o f the brain cortex. Psychological Monographs, 57 (4, Whole No. 264). Kasanin, J., & Hanfmann, E. (1938). An experimental study of concept formation in schizophrenia, I. American Journal o f Psychiatry, 95, 35-52. Locke, J. (1965). An essay concerning human understanding. London: Collier Books, 1965. (Origi­ nal work published 1689) Luria, A. R., & Yudovich, F. I. (1959). Speech and the development o f mental processes in the child. (O. Kovasc, Trans., J. Simon, Ed. and Trans.) London: Staples Press. Ortega, R. J. (1979). An attempt to replicate Fast's "Concrete and abstract thought (1969).” Unpublished manuscript, University of Michigan.

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Piaget, J. (1950) Play, dreams, and imitation in childhood. New York: International Universities Press. (M. Pcrcy and D. E. Berlyne, Trans.) Piaget, J. (1954). The construction o f reality in the child. (M. Cook, Trans.). New York: Basic Books. Rapaport, D. (1950). Emotions and memory (rev. ed.). New York: International Universities Press. Rapaport, D. (1957). Cognitive structures. In Contemporary approaches to cognition: A symposium held at the University o f Colorado (pp. 157 -200). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Scchchayc, M. A. (1951). Autobiography o f a schizophrenic girl. (G. Rubin-Robson,Trans.).New York: Grunc and Stratton. Searles, H. F. (1965). The differentiation between concrete and metaphorical thinking in the re­ covering schizophrenic patient. In H. F. Searles (Ed.), Collected papers on schizophrenia and related subjects. New York: International Universities Press. Stern, W., & Stem, C. (1928). Die kindersprache [Children’s Speech]. Leipzig: Barth. Weigl, E. (1941). On the psychology of the so-called processes of abstraction. (M. Rioch,Trans.). Journal o f Abnormal and Social Psychology, 36, 3-33. (Original work published 1927) Werner, H. (1957). Comparative psychology o f mental development. (E. B. Garside,Trans.).New York: International Universities Press. Werner, H. & Kaplan, B. (1963). Symbol formation. New York: Wiley. Werner, H., & Strauss, A. A. (1978). Disorders of conceptual thinking in the brain-injured child. In S. S. Barten & M. B. Franklin (Eds.), Developmental processes: Heinz Werner's selected writings. New York: International Universities Press. (Original work published 1942) Whitehead, A. N. (1925). Science and the modern world. New York: Macmillan. Wittgenstein, L. (1958). Philosophical investigations (G. E. M. Anscombe>Tians.). New York: Macmillan. (Original work published 1953)

7

O m n ip o te n c e and Primary C reativity in Rorschach Responses: Tow ard a Replacement of Rapaport's "D is ta n c e " C oncept

Linda Young and Irene Fast

Disturbance in the individual’s ability accurately to perceive and interpret reality is generally recognized to be a major indicator o f clinically salient psychological pathology. Since 1921 when Rorschach published his Psychodiagnostiks, the Rorschach inkblot test has been recognized as a particularly useful instrument for assessing this ability. Form level, a measure of the degree to which the subject’s interpretation matches the configural characteristics o f the blot, has been the most widely used indicator o f reality testing. Rapaport, G ill, and Schafer in 1946, elaborated additional aspects of re­ sponses (The Fifth Category) that further illuminated subjects’ relations to exter­ nal reality. These aspects, according to Rapaport et al. reflect disturbance in the balance o f perceptual and associative processes underlying Rorschach responses. This imbalance takes two forms, and can be seen either in responses in which subjects’ associational processes fail to be regulated by their perceptual pro­ cesses, or in responses in which the perceptual processes are given too much significance or “ reality value” and subjects make insufficient use of their im agi­ native processes. Implicit in their discussion of associative and perceptual pro­ cesses is an identification o f associative properties as pertaining to the individual and an identification o f perceptual processes as pertaining to the external reality of the blot. Fifth Category Responses which reveal imbalance in these processes, or an overem phasis on either process, are consequently further conceptualized as being the result of an overem phasis on either the individual’s thought processes (the self) or the blot (the nonself), which Rapaport et al. describe as the indi­ vidual’s increase or loss of distance from the blot itself. Using distance as a conceptual yardstick for measuring disturbed thinking, Rapaport et al. evaluate deviant responses in terms of “ the regulative effect of 135

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the perceptual reality [of the inkblot] upon the subject’s thought processes” (Rapaport et al. 1946, p. 328). G enerally, those responses characterized by an individual’s overem phasis on association and imagination and by insufficient acknowledgement of the card’s actual configuration are seen as indicative of a subject’s increased distance from the card. In contrast, those responses seen as indicative o f the subject’s failure to utilize imaginative, associative skills and overemphasis on perceptual characteristics o f the card are seen as being indica­ tive of the subject’s loss of distance from the card. In Rapaport et al.’s. view, the subject in these responses has “ mis-estimated the reality significance of the inkblot” (p. 113) and “ is attending too much to the inkblot” (p. 327). There­ fore, though Rapaport et al. do not put it precisely in these terms, optimal distance reflects an appropriate interplay of the subject’s associational processes with the perceptual givens of the inkblot. Too great distance refers to his immer­ sion in his imaginative processes to the neglect of the inkblot, with the result that his interpretation is not substantiated in the reality o f the inkblot. Too little distance refers to his inappropriate attribution of reality to the blot, and, by implication, too little use of his interpretive processes. This Fifth Category of responses has been found to be a clinically useful tool for differentiating individuals on the basis of the presence or absence of disor­ dered thinking (Blatt & Ritzier, 1974; Friedman, 1953; Pope & Jensen, 1957; Powers & Hamlin, 1955; W atkins & Stauffacher, 1952). However, the formula­ tion of the underlying dimension of reality relatedness as one of distance between the subjects (and their interpretive processes) and the perceptual realities of the inkblot, presents at least three significant problems. First, the notion of distance implies a linear dim ension, with too much distance from the blot at one pole, too little at the other, and an optima! distance at a point between the poles. But as Rapaport ct al. (1968) point out. a response scored in The Fifth Category typ­ ically has aspects representing both too great and too little distance. For example: Card V Two people lying down, tired, resting [side figuresj. . . . somebody helping them [central figure]. . . . nature might be helping them . . . might be God. (p. 433)

In this response, Rapaport et al. argue, increase of distance is represented in the subject’s description of the figures as “ tired” and “ resting” because these characteristics are not substantiated by the blot itself. Loss o f distance is evident in the response as well, in the subject’s interpretation of the central figure as “ helper,” because the subject identifies the central figure on the basis o f its spatial position between the two “ tired” figures. Finally, increased distance is evident again, in the description of the central figure as “ G o d ,” a description not justified by the blot itself. The description o f an individual as being sim ul­ taneously too distant from and too close to the blot in an interpretation is contra­ dictory. That such a phenomenon is so frequent as to be recognized as typical,

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suggests that a new formulation replacing that of distance from the blot is needed to accommodate Rapaport et al.’s observations. A second problem with the distance concept is that it has not been possible to define the poles in a sufficiently unambiguous way so that an individual aspect o f a response can unequivocally be characterized as being representative o f either loss or increase of distance. Several o f Rapaport et al.’s response examples can equally well be characterized as reflecting one pole or the other. In the response above, for example, they evaluated “ som ebody helping them ” as representing loss of distance because o f the overem phasis on positional or spatial relationships in the blot. But, using their own definition o f increase o f distance, this response could equally well be categorized as reflecting increased distance because the notion of the figure as “ helping” is not substantiated by the blot itself, and can be seen instead as a product o f the subject’s excessive use of his im agination. A third problem with Rapaport et a l’s. formulation concerns their definition of loss of distance. This definition appears to subsume two distinct groups of responses, one which follows the definition closely but is instanced only rarely as an example of loss of distance, and the other, more typically referred to as loss o f distance which is, however, arguably contrary to the definition. The first, which conforms most exactly to their definition o f loss o f distance as a subject’s adherence to the actuality o f the blot itself with little or no interpretive contribu­ tion, consists in its most pure form, o f blot description responses, referring to the ink blot’s colors, conform ation, and so on. W hile Rapaport et al. include these as instances o f loss o f distance they are referred to only rarely in their citation of Fifth Category responses. The second, more typical, form o f loss o f distance seems not to meet their definitional criteria. It is represented in such responses as the one above in which the subject suggests that the central figure “ might be helping them ” or “ might be G o d .” It is even more vividly expressed in another of their examples, “ It isn’t a shoelace, is it?” (p. 430 1968). In both these responses, the patient is not restricting him self to the perceptual characteristics of the blot at all. Instead, he is ascribing to the blot a reality it does not have. To say that the figure “ might be” helping or to ask whether a blot configuration “ is” or “ isn’t ” a shoelace implies that the patient believes that the blot is representa­ tional and that it is intended to be a portrayal o f an actual object or scene rather than an ambiguous stim ulus devoid o f inherent identity. The patient’s cognitive error is not that he actually deals with the perceptual characteristics of the blot alone. Rather, it is that he makes a subjective interpretation, and, not recognizing it as such, believes him self to be responding to objective meanings inherent in the blot. While Rapaport et al. (1946) might describe subjects who provide these responses as giving the blot “ too much reality-value” (p. 339) they are in fact, failing to recognize the real reality of the blot as an impersonally or accidentally created configuration. That is, contrary to Rapaport et a l’s view , the subject, in this form of response most typically characterized as loss o f distance, is not adhering to the perceptual actuality o f the blot without interpretive contribution.

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Rather, he is ascribing to reality (the perceptual actuality o f the blot) what is actually his interpretation. In sum, Rapaport et al. identified a clinically significant group o f Rorschach responses in which a disturbance could be observed in the relationship of the individual (his interpretations or associations) to reality (the perceptual givens of the Rorschach inkblots). They identified two forms o f this disturbance; one in which the individual elaborates his interpretation but is too little constrained by the actualities o f the blot configuration; and the other which seems most typically to reflect the subject’s ascription to the blot of a reality it does not have. Howev­ er, R apaport’s conceptualization of these disturbances in terms o f distance from the blot, appears to have serious weaknesses. This study is based on an alternative conceptualization of the individual’s disturbed relationships to reality as they are represented in R apaport’s Fifth Category responses. It derives from event theory, a recent attempt to integrate Piaget’s developm ental theories with those of Freud and psychoanalysis gener­ ally. It proposes that the individual’s relations to reality develop by processes of differentiation. The infant’s earliest experience is hypothesized to occur in active and adaptive interaction with its environmental realities. The infant’s under­ standing of its experience, however, is global, without differentiation of self and reality external to self. That is, the infant is engaged with the external world, but does not know that it is external. Psychological differentiations between self and world occur in a number of areas, represented as transitions out of narcissism (Freud) or as developm ents from adualistic to dualistic experience (Piaget). The two areas immediately rele­ vant to this study concern the replacement of the illusions of primary creativity and omnipotence with mature thought in which self and nonself are appropriately distinguished. Primary creativity, in which thought and its referents are un­ differentiated, is replaced by a recognition of the separation between thought (attributable to self) and what is thought about (reality external to the self). Omnipotence, an illusion in which intention and impersonal causality are un­ differentiated, is replaced by a recognition of the distinction between intention (a characteristic of the self) and impersonal causality (a characteristic o f the exter­ nal world.) If disturbance in these developm ents could be shown to underlie a significant proportion of the responses characterized by increase and loss o f distance in Rapaport et a l’s formulation, a num ber o f purposes might be served. First, the clinically useful Fifth Category responses would be framed in a new concep­ tualization replacing the unsatisfactory one of distance from the blot. Second, if the proposed formulation could provide guidelines for operational definitions of the two kinds of disturbance, reliable coding for them might be established to replace the current, unsatisfactory “ distance” coding. Third, the proposed for­ mulation would provide a direction for integrating Fifth Category responses with psychoanalytic and Piagetian thought, an integration o f considerable conceptual value. Fourth, a developm ental hypothesis might be proposed to predict rela­

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tionships between the two forms of disturbance. This would alleviate the implied theoretical problem o f simultaneous occurrence o f the two phenom ena, for rather than necessarily being mutually exclusive by virtue o f their occurring at opposite poles o f a linear distance dim ension, they would be viewed as separate, indepen­ dently defined phenomena. The limited aims o f the present study within this larger framework are three­ fold. First, an attempt is made to define in operational terms which permit reliable and independent coding, the differentiation failures o f primary creativity and omnipotence hypothesized to be represented in a major subset o f the re­ sponses characterized by increase and loss o f distance respectively. Second, the differentiations out o f primary creativity and omnipotence are hypothesized to be two concurrently occurring aspects o f the establishm ent of relationships between the self and realities external to the self. Therefore, the hypothesis is tested that a positive relationship exists between the occurrence o f disturbances in these two aspects o f differentiation. T hird, an attempt is made to show that the proposed definitions do capture the underlying factors that integrate the two groups o f Fifth Category responses in ways congruent with R apaport’s focus on the individual’s relation to reality, though with a different model for that relation.

Method Subjects. The sample included 50 adult patients randomly selected from a population of 231 subjects tested in an outpatient clinic during its 25 years of existence. The clinic is located in a university tow n, and is oriented toward intensive psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy. It is likely that the majority o f patients are middle-class and well-educated. In the course of the clinic’s history, the policies concerning referral o f patients for testing have varied. At those times when it has not been the policy to refer all patients for testing, those patients who were seen by the evaluator as being relatively disturbed, were more likely to be tested. W hile the difficulty o f securing reliable diagnostic categoriza­ tion o f patients is well-known, it is probable that those patients who were re­ ferred for testing fell within the more severe range o f neurotic and character disorders. The 50 subjects chosen (18 m ales, 32 females) had a mean age of 25. Since no sex-related differences were expected and later inspection of the data revealed no such differences in the total number of responses, in the number o f responses scored for Primary Creativity or for O mnipotence, or in the relationship between the two variables, the male and female subjects were treated as one group.

Scoring Categories Primary Creativity. This term was used by W innicott (1971) to represent the young infant’s sense that all existence is a function o f its own experiencing. Whatever the infant experiences it uncritically accepts as real. Residues o f this

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illusion are hypothesized to persist in later life in individuals’ too great accep­ tance as real whatever they experience (in thought, perception or fantasy), w ith­ out adequate distinction between their thoughts and the reality independent of themselves, and without, therefore, adequate constraint o f their thought to match the relevant realities. The persistence o f such illusions is hypothesized to be observable in Ror­ schach responses in which individuals do not attempt to justify their responses or aspects of responses by reference to actual configurations o f the blot. For pur­ poses of this study, the relevant question does not concern the quality o f the integration of the response with the blot (i.e ., Form l^ v e l), but only the subjects’ commitment to making that integration, as in this example: Card V This looks like a bat. It’s got horrible feelers. It looks dirty. What made it look dirty? I don’t know. I just don’t like to look at them. I think of the bat as dirty. Was there nothing on the card to make it look dirty? No, it was just the association.

Here the subjcct is hypothesized to be accepting too fully that only his im agina­ tive production stimulated by the inkblot need be taken into account. Although Rorschach instructions request the patient to offer interpretations of the inkblots shown him, the patient, in such responses, includes as having equal validity, well-justified percepts (the bat) and ones to which he just had an “ association” (the bat as “ dirty” ). Primary Creativity is scored:' 1. When in the Performance section the subjcct introduces objects or people not located in the blot. Often in these cases, on the basis of a clear impression of only part of the object, the subjcct elaborates upon extended aspects o f the object without reference to the blot. Card IX At the bottom, two human hands. Probably a conductor conducting a symphony. (Mayman, I960)

In this exam ple, as pointed out by M aym an, the subject elaborates a complete person with a clearcut identity, an activity, and a life setting on the basis o f a clear impression of only a pair o f hands. 2. When in the Free Association the subject introduces objects, people, and so on, which apparently are located in the blot, though in a global, nondescript way. These are typically described by Rapaport et al. as DW responses. In these 'A more complete listing of all the scoring categories can be obtained upon request from Linda Young, The University o f M ichigan, Department o f Psychology, 580 Union Drive, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109.

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percepts, details in one area are generalized to a larger area brought in to give form to the fantasy but lacking the perceptual elements needed to validate the response, such as: Card III And over here reminds me of two chickcns . . ./How much is the chickcn?/ . . . About right here. And this piece, no, let me sec. I think the whole thing, I’ll make the whole thing the chickcn. (Holzman & Johnson, 1979, p. 231)

In this exam ple, part o f the blot is included in the percept merely as a way of elaborating the interpretation although it lacks the physical characteristics to make its inclusion warranted. 3. When in the Free Association or Inquiry the subject elaborates a percept with specific details, affects, or attributes for which there is no perceptual ju stifi­ cation in the blot. For example: Card IV, Tip o f the “boot” area This could be the form of an old man or an old woman all hunched up standing in the snow with heavy winter clothes on . . . in the cold. (Mayman, 1960)

In this response the subject is elaborating a percept with the details “ co ld ,” “ hunched,” “ winter clothes” which he does not justify in the card. 4. When in the Inquiry the subject responds to the tester’s queries about what made the percept look the way it did, with such statements as; “ I just said that because I was thinking o f it” ; “ It’s on my mind because o f a biology lecture I heard yesterday” ; or “ I didn’t really see it” . These statem ents suggest that the individual is offering his imaginative production as an interpretation of the reality of the inkblot without sufficiently recognizing that his interpretation must meet standards external to his own thought in order to be valid. These responses have to do not so much with the actual percept and its location on the blot but with the justification offered by the subject. Primary creativity is not scored when the absence of justification for a percept is due to the tester’s failure to properly inquire aboutapercept. The only exception to this rule exists for those cases in which the subject offers a quite atypical response which would be extremely difficult if not impossible for an average viewer to recognize. With these responses, it is expected that the subject offer justification; if he fails to do so, his responses are scored, for example: Card VI The light object there, is like the sun setting through an opening in the trees. It’s seen at a distance as if you were looking at it from a beach onc-half mile away. Perhaps it’s someone going out for a midnight serenade. The weather’s been so lousy lately I haven’t been able to afford a canoe.

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The subject is offering as percept, an elaborate fantasy which would be im possi­ ble for the average viewer to recognize on his own. Therefore, even in the absence o f appropriate inquiry, Primary Creativity is scored. Omnipotence. The illusion of om nipotence, too, is hypothesized to origi­ nate dcvelopmcntally in the infant’s early sense that all existence is a function of its own experience. Objects come into (subjective) existence when they are involved in the infant’s experience and subside from existence when its attention moves elsewhere. Therefore, the distinction between those things that the infant can and cannot control is not appreciated (or known) to the infant. G radually, self as center o f intention, and nonself as subject to impersonal causality are differentiated out of this primitive experience mode. In later life the persistence o f illusions of omnipotence may be reflected in incomplete differentiation of intention and causality, especially in the individual’s attributing intention to the production of som ething that is in fact the result of impersonal causality. In Rorschach responses omnipotence is hypothesized to be represented in indications that the individual does not accept the fact that the card is actually an inkblot whose configuration is the consequence o f im personal forces. His sense is not o f making an interpretation of an ambiguous stimulus. Rather, he attributes to the blot a reality it does not have, an intentional design whose meaning he must discover. Omnipotence is Scored 1. When the subject refers to the inkblot as a design, a drawing, a painting and so forth; when he indicates that he believes he must “ figure ou t” what the card represents; or when he comm ents that his response “ m ight” or “ might not” be correct. In such verbalizations the subject indicates that he is viewing the inkblot as a portrayal by someone o f som ething actual which the subject must discover, rather than as an inkblot whose configuration is the product o f imper­ sonal causality and whose interpretation as a figure or scene must be provided by the subject. 2. When the subject interprets one aspect o f the blot as an objective blot characteristic and uses it to justify his interpretation o f another aspect. For example: Card X This is a flower. /W hat makes it look like a flower?/ The petals. /W'hat makes it look like petals?/ What else would a flower have?/

Here the subject is using his interpretation (a flower) as an objective fact to justify his interpretation of another blot aspect (petals). Another example is:

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CardX The crabs might well be feeding on this, the pink piece of meat here./ What makes it meat?/ Meat is pink, the crabs wouldn’t be gathered around nothing; it would be something they’re eating on.

Here the subject is treating what is his interpretation (crabs) as an actual repre­ sentation o f crabs, and uses this “ reality” to justify his subsequent interpretation (as meat). In such cases the subject, having made an interpretation, assumes that his percept represents an objectively present figure or design in the card which may validly be used to justify another interpretation. 3. When the subject expresses puzzlement about the card— som ething seems “ m issing,” he docs not know “ how ” or “ w hy” parts o f the blot are connected or related to one another, or he feels that he needs to account for part of the card. The implication o f such remarks is that the blot itself has been designed by someone to represent an actuality or integrated composition whose parts are juxtaposed for a reason, and from which a part might be “ m issing.” When scoring O m nipotence, measures were taken to avoid including remarks the subject intended as interpretive despite the fact that their form might suggest otherwise. Therefore, remarks such as, “ It could be . . “ It might look like . . “ This is a. . or “ Those are . . were not scored O m nipo­ tence because it was generally not possible to tell whether the subject intended them to be interpretive or not. Reliability and Scoring. To avoid inflated reliability figures likely when a relatively infrequently occurring phenomenon is being scored, two samples o f ten responses each were selected from protocols for testing reliability. In select­ ing the samples of responses from the protocols, the first scorable response (using the principal investigator’s scoring as the criterion) in the first randomly selected protocol was matched with the first nonscorable response in the second protocol. This procedure was followed until ten responses of which five were scorable and five not, were selected. They were presented in random order to a coder who was generally fam iliar with the study and who had available only the written Scoring Instructions for Omnipotence and Primary Creativity for guid­ ance. For both samples the coder’s agreement with the criterion scoring was 100 %.

Subsequently, the principal investigator scored all 50 experimental protocols (a total of 1707 responses; X responses per protocol 38.3). To keep scoring bias to a minim um, a time period o f two weeks was interposed between the scoring o f Omnipotence and of Primary Creativity, and rather than scoring each protocol as a whole, Card I o f all protocols was scored first, then Card II, and so forth.

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Omnipotence and Primary Creativity were scored I (present) or 0 (absent) by card. The total possible score for an individual, therefore, was ten for each category. Results. The primary hypothesis of a direct positive relation between sub­ jects’ scores for Primary Creativity and Omnipotence was supported. The Spearman-Rho correlation was .6 6 5 1 (p < .01). Length of protocols did not affect the distribution o f scores ( tt2 = 4 .5 6 p > . 1). No significant differences between the sexes were found. Roughly half of the protocols (26/50) had one or more examples of both kinds of disturbance. Roughly lA (18/50) had one but not the other, and roughly '/« (6/50) showed neither disturbance in the protocol. Thus it can be seen that the incidence of both kinds of disturbance in the protocols was not a rare phenome­ non.

D ISC U SSIO N

From a developmental formulation integrating psychoanalytic and Piagetian the­ ories, a hypothesis was derived concerning two aspects of the individual’s rela­ tion to reality. Appropriate distinctions between self and reality independent of self were hypothesized to occur in a number o f concurrent differentiations out of prior experience in which self and nonself are undifferentiated. The differentia­ tion o f thought (pertaining to self) and the objects of thought (pertaining to nonself), and of intention (pertaining to self) and causality (pertaining to nonself) are two of these. Incomplete differentiation between thought and objects of thought was hypothesized to be reflected in an aspect of Primary Creativity, namely the overreliance on one’s thoughts in making an interpretation, to the neglect of relevant objective parameters: Incomplete differentiation— between intention and causality was hypothesized to be reflected in an aspect of Omnipo­ tence, namely the attribution o f intention to phenomena governed by impersonal forces. The theory predicted the co-occurrence of incomplete differentiation in the two areas. The strength of the obtained relationship between Primary Creativity and Omnipotence suggests that the conceptual model is potentially useful and worth pursuing. To further assess the validity o f these results, the responses scored Primary Creativity and Omnipotence were examined to see how well the concep­ tual meanings o f the terms were preserved in their operationalized form. Primary Creativity was defined operationally as Rorschach responses which, despite the fact that the subject was asked to give interpretations o f the blot ( “ what could it be?” ), included one or more aspects for which the subject had not attempted to find any substantiation in the blot. A survey of the responses scored Primary Creativity suggests that they did reflect such thought processes.

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Card X Subject: Two men around a big vat. Looks like they're off on a pink cloud. Examiner: Big vat? (Subject points to the space between the men and says that the vat is not really seen.) Still sec the vat? (on location chart). Subject: Not really. The vat was only something to be in the story. I guess I didn’t see the vat there.

This response was scored Primary Creativity because the subject included as an aspect of his response, “ a vat” for which he had felt no need to find a justification in the blot. To do so appears to reflect the cognitive phenomenon conceptualized as Primary Creativity. The task requires that the subject provide an imaginally constructed understanding of an extant reality (the blot configura­ tion). The subject gave as an interpretation of the blot, an experience stimulated by it (an image o f two men around a vat) which, however, is invalid as an interpretation o f the blot. In the subject’s imaginal interpretation the vat had validity equal to that of the figures; in the reality o f the blot the figures can be seen to exist, but the vat cannot. Such interpretations do seem to preserve the conceptual meaning of Primary Creativity, that is, the individual’s tendency to take uncritically his experience as reality without sufficiently taking into account relevant actualities. For purposes of Rorschach scoring, the illusion of Omnipotence was defined operationally as subjects’ verbalizations which indicate that the subject believes the inkblot configurations to be meaningful patterns deliberately designed, rather than the result of causal forces governing the action of ink dropped on paper. Card VI Subject: This looks a little bit like a totem pole on top of a rock formation of something. Examiner: Rock formation? Subject: Well, it has to be on something. It can’t just be standing right there while the rest o f it can’t be nothing. . . . It has to be something. . . It has to be accounted for.

This response was scored Omnipotence for two reasons, each of which would have been sufficient by itself. First, the subject’s insistence that a portion o f the blot was a rock formation because the totem pole “ had to be” standing on something reveals his mistaken assumption that the inkblot configuration is an actual representation o f a totem pole. Second, the argum ent that the rest o f the blot “ can’t be nothing . . . It has to be accounted fo r,” is not valid for the task of interpreting an inkblot which lacks intrinsic meaning. It would be valid only if the pattern as a whole were deliberately designed to be representational. This operationalization o f omnipotence, therefore, does appear to reflect an aspect o f its conceptual meaning: the individuals’ im perfect differentiation of intention and causality out o f primitive undifferentiated experience, and their

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consequent attribution o f intention to events actually governed by im personal forces. The further questions o f the adequate clarity o f the definitions o f these two categories and o f their independence from one another were evaluated by a test o f inter-rater reliability in scoring and by an exam ination o f the actual scoring o f the protocols. Evidence that the concepts can be defined with sufficient specificity to perm it their reliable coding is provided by the fact that a coder only generally fam iliar with the aim s o f the project and using the w ritten C oding Instructions was able to code with 100% accuracy tw o groups o f ten responses, h alf o f which were scorable for the tw o disturbances. This suggests that with limited further refinem ent the instructions m ight be sufficiently com prehensive to perm it reli­ able scoring w ihtout extensive coder training beyond the written instructions them selves. The question o f the independence o f the two coding categories was not an­ sw ered by the reliability scoring, because reliability was established only be­ tween scorable and nonscorable responses, and not betw een the scoring o f O m ­ nipotence and o f Prim ary C reativity. T herefore, the final sam ple data were exam ined for evidence o f overlap in the scoring o f the tw o concepts. In the 1707 responses in the 50 protocols, 184 scores o f O m nipotence and Prim ary Creativity were assigned (O m nipotence, 96; Prim ary C reativity, 88). In 142 (77% ) cases, O m nipotence and Prim ary C reativity responses did not occur in responses to the same card. O f those 42 cases in which both Prim ary C reativity and O m nipotence were found on the sam e card, only 15 (33% ) were based on verbalizations concerning the sam e response. These verbalizations, which were scored for both disturbances, m ade up 17% o f the Prim ary C reativity and 15% o f the O m nipo­ tence scores. An exam ination o f this group o f 15 responses show s that w hen both O m nipo­ tence and Primary C reativity were scored in the same response, scoring was based on different aspects o f the response. Card II (Subject) It looks like you’re inside of a cavc, and you’re looking out . . . Out there, there’s sunlight and marvelous things, and inside the cave it’s dark, and the redness means there’s hope in the cave. I’m not sure . . . what the red means. I ’m not sure . . . and I’m sure there’s an ocean outside o f the cave and a lovely beach and nothing else, and it stretches for miles and miles . . . It’s very antisocial, isn’t it?

In this response, Prim ary C reativity was scored for “ an ocean o utside” which the subject m akes no attem pt to ju stify by reference to a blot characteristic. O m nipotence was scored for “ not sure w hat the red m eans” and for “ I’m sure there’s a ” , each o f w hich is scorable by itself, because the subject expresses a

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conviction that the red does mean som ething, and that aspects of an actual scene are represented in the card. This examination o f the pattern o f scores, thus gives no evidence of overlap in the conccpts themselves and in the scoring o f the operationalized categories. Next, a question arises as to the potential clinical usefulness o f these catego­ ries as indicators of disturbance in the individual’s relation to reality. It might be argued that gross disturbance in the individual’s relation to reality is so severe and encompassing that measures of the sort elaborated here add little that is needed for making clinical judgm ents. H owever, the sample for this study was obtained from an outpatient clinic where patients with disturbances of such severity are unlikely to be seen. M oreover, within that sam ple, the incidences of Omnipotence and Primary Creativity are widely distributed. Out o f 50 protocols, 44 had at least one scorable response and the range o f scorable responses (with a limitation o f one score in each category per card) was 0 - 9 Primary Creativity, and 0 - 6 Omnipotence, with a mean o f 1.8 and 1.9 per protocol, respectively. It appears, therefore, that the categories of Omnipotence and Primary Creativity developed here represent relatively subtle cognitive disturbances not readily detected in the absence o f tests particularly attuned to their presence. The present study does not further investigate the relation of these scores to severity of disturbance, though informal examination of the protocols suggests that greater frequency o f scorable responses is associated with other indicators o f distur­ bance. A more formal study o f this issue is anticipated as a next step. In sum, the operational definitions o f Primary Creativity and Omnipotence do appear to reflect the incom plete differentiations postulated by the theory. Their scoring can be shown to be independent o f one another and to be satisfactorily reliable. The relation between this formulation of the individual’s relationship to real­ ity and Rapaport et a l.’s concept of increase and loss o f distance cannot be specified precisely. Rapaport et al. (1968) delineate twenty-three categories of response behavior which they describe in terms of increase and loss o f distance (pp. 4 31 -4 5 8 ) (e .g ., Fabulized responses, Confabulation, Fabulized Com bina­ tions, Autistic Logic, Symbolic Response, Symm etry and Relationship Ver­ balization, Peculiar and Queer V erbalizations, Deterioration Color Responses). However, in almost every case, responses included in a single category are variously described as reflecting too great distance, loss o f distance, or both. Moreover, the lack o f reliability discussed earlier in scoring either category adds to the uncertainty o f any comparison o f Rapaport et al’s system with another. Although it has been suggested that primary creativity has greater congruence with increased distance, and om nipotence with loss of distance, the conceptual formulations in each case differ sharply. To say that individuals accept as equally valid, imaginal constructs which have or do not have reality referents in the card, is not the same as to find them to be excessively distant from reality. Similarly,

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to dcscrihc a person as inappropriately attributing personal intention to a circum ­ stance governed by impersonal causality is different than to describe him as giving the card “ too much reality.” If we look at their operational implications, however, the two modes o f categorization appear to have more commonality. In fact, close examination shows that in the case o f each o f the two disturbance modes, the proposed categories are similar to those of Rapaport et al. though both are more restrictive. Responses scored Primary Creativity may be seen as a subset o f those Rapaport includes as reflecting Increased Distance. It is difficult to imagine any response scored Primary Creativity (that is, one in which the subject elaborates a response aspect with no attempt at substantiation in the blot) which would not be scored Increased Distance (an overem phasis on association, and insufficient acknowledgment of the card’s configuration). However, not every response scored for increased distance (most frequent among them are fabulized responses and confabulations) is scored for Primary Creativity. For example, the response to Card V described above, in which the two side figures are described “ tired, resting” , is scored as confabulation with increased distance because o f Rapaport et a l.s’ judgm ent that the subject had unduly elaborated the original percept. However, a score o f Primary Creativity would be given if, and only if, the subject did not justify his perception (e .g ., by the prone position of the figures or by the suggestion in the card that the eyes arc closed). The clearest difference between the two modes of categorization lies in the stringency and type of scoring criteria. In the scoring o f Increased D istance, Rapaport et al. accept as sufficient, percepts which have been “ unduly elaborated” and which “ exceed the givens o f the b lo t,” while the scoring o f Primary Creativity focuses not on the degree o f elaboration but rather on the explicit substantiation o f the elabora­ tion in the blot. Responses scored O mnipotence may be seen as a subset o f one o f the two groups o f responses Rapaport et al. score Loss o f Distance. The first g ro u p ,“ blot descriptions,” which meet their definition o f Loss o f Distance would not be scored Omnipotence. The second group, comprised o f the more typically scored responses which they describe as reflecting Loss o f Distance, a subject’s “ em o­ tion-laden conviction” that “ this is what it really is” (p. 332), are scored O mnipotence. Any indication that the subject believes the blot actually to repre­ sent a figure or scene designed by som eone, is scored Omnipotence and would also be scored Loss o f Distance. A significant group o f responses, Fabulized Com binations, seen by Rapaport et al. as most vividly exemplifying Loss o f Distance, and typically included in the second subset o f such responses, are not now scored Omnipotence. Example: Card X, A rabbit . . . worms coming out o f his eye (p. 332). In this example they suggest, “ A spatial relationship in the inkblot is taken as an immutable ‘real’ relationship” (p. 333). Although without further inquiry an analysis o f this response in terms o f Om nipotence cannot be more than conjectural it may

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be that the subject is producing this response because he is viewing the card and its parts as an intentional representation of actual objects. If so, it would be this mistaken assumption which underlies those cases in which “ spatial rela­ tionships” are treated as “ real” ; i.e ., objects which are juxtaposed are seen as intentionally placed and consequently “ related” to one another. While the per­ cept itself may be illogical or bizarre, the person nonetheless may feel the necessity o f identifying what he sees as a purposely constructed identity inherent in the card itself. If further research can show that fabulized combination re­ sponses do reflect this form o f reasoning, such responses may be scored O m nipo­ tence in the future. In sum, the categories o f Primary Creativity and Omnipotence provide the­ oretically based, independent, and reliably scorable modes o f assessing two aspects of individuals’ relationships to reality. They accommodate to some ex­ tent response aspects found by Rapaport ct al. to represent problems in indi­ viduals’ reality relatedness and conceptualized in terms of Distance from the blot. Responses scored Primary Creativity form a subset o f those Rapaport et al. include as representing Increased D istance, and those scored Om nipotence, a subset o f the Loss of Distance responses.

SUMMARY This study attempts to test a conceptualization of the individual’s relation to reality in terms derived from an integration o f Piagctian and psychoanalytic theories. It focuses on two aspects hypothesized to be central to an individual’s relation to reality, Primary Creativity and Omnipotence. These concepts have been operationalized in coding categories suitable for application to Rorschach responses. The categories are shown to have advantages over Rapaport et a l.’s distance concept in providing a theoretical context for understanding deviant verbalizations, in being conceptually separable, and in allowing for reliability and precision o f scoring. The theoretically based prediction of a relationship between the two concepts showed strong statistical support, thus adding confir­ mation to the theory from which they were derived.

REFERENCES Blatt, S ., & Ritzier, B. (1974). Thought Disorder: Boundary Disturbances in Psychosis. Journal o f Consulting: Clinical Psychology. 42. No. 3, 370-381. Fast, 1. (1984). A differentiation model o f identity development, in Cetuler Identity: A Differentiation Model. Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic Press. Friedman. H. (1953). Perceptual Regression in Schizophrenia. Journal o f Projective Techniques, 17, 171-185.

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Holzman, P. S., & Johnson, M. H. (1979). Assessing Schizophrenic Thinking. San Francisco: JosscyBass Inc. Mayman, M. (1980). Measuring introversiveness on the Rorschach test, unpublished. Pope, B., & Jensen, S. R. (1957). The Rorschach as an index of pathological thinking. Journal o f Projective Techniques, 21, 54-62. Powers, W. F., & Hamlin, R. M. (1955). Relationship between diagnostic categories and deviant verbalizations on the Rorschach. Journal o f Consulting Psychology, 19, 120-125. Rapaport, D., Gill, M., & Schafer, R. (1946). Diagnostic Psychological Testing, (Vol II). The Menninger Clinic Monograph Scries No. 4. Rapaport, D., Gill, M ., & Schafer, R. (1968). Diagnostic psychological testing. Rev. ed., edited by Robert R. Holt, New York: International Universities Press. Rorschach, H. (1942). Psychodiagnostics. Berne, Switz: Vcrlag Hans Huber (originally published, 1921). Watkins, J. G ., & Stauffacher, J. C. (1952). An index of pathological thinking in the Rorschach. Journal of Projective Techniques, 16, 276-286. Winnicot, D. W. (1971). Playing and reality. New York: Basic Books.

The Nature of Emotion and Its Development

A n ne E. T h o m p so n

Any model of the development o f em otion1 depends centrally on the particular view of emotion it espouses. Psychoanalytic theory has lacked a clinically rele­ vant theory of affect and its development— in part because of the tenacity o f the cncrgic model of affect. More recently, however, new theories and research within both psychoanalytic and developmental psychology (for example, Arlow, 1977; Basch, 1976; Brenner, 1975; Izard, 1977; Lewis & Rosenblum, 1978; Sroufc, 1979) have converged to support a conceptualization of affect in cog­ nitive terms. This new approach to the conceptualization of affect allows us to integrate psychoanalytic views with cognitive developmental theory and em­ pirical findings, and, I believe, points the way to a clinically relevant theory of affect and its development. This chapter begins by presenting a brief conceptualization o f the nature of affect in cognitive, intensional,2 and constructivist terms (Thompson, 1980, 1982a/1981, in press). This conceptualization is then used as a framework for a comparison o f Freud’s and Piaget’s theories of affect. The remainder o f the chapter sets forth a cognitive, intensional, and construc­ tivist model of affect development integrating views from psychoanalytic, Piage­ tian, and contemporary cognitive developmental psychology. Although it is commonplace to think o f affects as the most “ subjective” of human phenomena, this chapter takes the view that the ability to attribute affects to the self and to conceptualize affects as “ internal” psychological states of the self is a central 'The words “ emotion” and “ affect" are used interchangeably in this chapter. 2The spelling of “ intensionality” follows Kenny (1965) in order to distinguish this concept from the sense of intentionality that refers to agency or goal-dircctedncss of action.

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and difficult developm ental accom plishm ent, one that is achieved only with the decline o f infantile narcissism and w ith the successive “ d ecentrations” through­ out developm ent that gradually transform the human child from egocentricity to cognitive objectivity. The corollary o f this objectivity is the subjectivity o f affect.

A COGNITIVE-INTENSIONAL-CONSTRUCTIVIST VIEW OF EMOTION Before 1 go on to explain the term s “ co g n itiv e,” “ inten sio n al,” and “ construc­ tiv ist,” a few caveats arc in order. First, this discussion is m eant to be a limited undertaking, that o f providing a description o f som e necessary features o f em o­ tion, not a com prehensive theory or a definition o f em otion. Second, these features arc m eant to apply to the conceptualization o f em otion, not to an intro­ spective or phenom enological analysis o f em otional states. In other w ords, to say that em otions have intrinsic cognitive com ponents does not entail that we are alw ays aw are of these cognitive com ponents in the em otions that we experience. T hird, this conceptualization is m eant to apply to adult, “ m atu re,” standard cases o f em otion. I am not claim ing that in very young children em otions arc “ intensional,” or that their em otions are “ cogn itiv e” in the sam e sense as those o f a mature adult. T o explain how em otions develop into their mature form is a task o f this chapter. In saying that em otions are intensional (follow ing B rentano, 1973/1874), I want to em phasize this aspect o f em otion, nam ely, that em otions are “ o f” som ething, that em otions are “ d irected ” to objects. If one is fearful, one is fearful o f som ething (though one may not be able to articulate just what that is); if one loves, one loves som eone or som ething; if one is angry, one is angry at som eone or som ething. L eeper (1970) and Averill (1980) are two psychologists who have held this view explicitly, although im plicitly it seem s to underly m uch recent research in the cognitive developm ental psychology o f the em otions. In saying that em otions are cognitive, 3 I am suggesting that em otion has cognition as an intrinsic part, that em otions and their cognitions are not conceptually separable. (C ertainly we may be aw are o f an em otion w ithout aw areness o f its cognitive aspects. As m entioned above, this paper is intended to be a conceptual analysis o f em otion, not an introspective on e.) I see these two aspects as being related— it is via their cognitive aspects that we can explain the “ directedness” •'This statement is not meant to imply that em otions are “ o n ly " cognitive. A lthough in this chapter I focus on the cognitive aspect o f affect, my discussion elsew here (Thom pson, 1981) refers also to the differentiation o f action, expression, and somatic com ponents out of the original affect event and to the integration o f these elem ents into the affect system. 1 would like to leave open the question o f w hether these aspects o f the affect should be considered in purely cognitive terms or not

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of emotion. In saying that this account is constructivist (see also Averill, 1980; Fast, Introduction to this volume; M andler, 1982; Piaget, 1981/1954) I am suggesting that emotions arc not “ given” as internal subjective states at birth but rather arc constructed as such within the context o f cognitive developm ent and self and other differentiation.

THE NATURE OF EMOTION: A COMPARISON OF FREUD AND PIAGET Freud is often taken to hold a noncognitive view of emotions in which affects merely provide the energy for “ id eas,” so that affects and ideas have only a contingent relationship. Indeed, Zajonc (1980, 1984; Zajonc, Pietrom onaco, & Bargh, 1982) has recently argued provocatively for a noncognitive view of affects, claim ing to have “ rediscovered” Freud’s view o f the “ separability” of affcct and cognition. Elsewhere (Thompson, 1980, 1982b), I have proposed that Zajonc’s arguments do not support his thesis o f separability of affcct and cogni­ tion, and Lazarus (1981, 1982, 1984) and others have argued against this non­ cognitive formulation of affectivity. In particular, I have suggested that Z ajonc’s arguments at best support the possibility that some affective reactions may take place without the presence of associated conscious judgm ents, and so do not provide evidence for a thoroughgoing noncognitive conceptualization o f affects. Freud’s metapsychological statem ents in his early writings do suggest such a noncognitivc (cncrgic) view o f affects (Rappaport, 1967/1953). For exam ple, in his essay The Unconscious (1 9 5 9 c /1915) Freud says that “ affectivity manifests itself essentially in m otor (i.e., secretory and circulatory) discharge resulting in an internal alteration o f the subject’s own body without reference to the outer world” (p. 111). A sim ilar formulation can be found in The Interpretation o f D reams (1953/1900), in which Freud not only presents a radically noncognitivc view o f affects, but also presents affects as essentially narcissistic phenomena. In order to relate affects to objects, Freud had to resort to the awkward and ultim ate­ ly unsatisfactory notion o f the “ cathexis o f objects” (Thom pson, 1980, 1981). However, I have suggested (Thompson, 1980, 1981) that a careful reading of Freud’s early writings (Breuer & Freud, i 9 6 ! / i s m ; Freud, l 953/i* > o o , 1959a/1894, 1959b/1915, 1959c/1926) in which most o f his metapsychological theory of affects is set forth, in fact reveals a tension between his theoretical (m etap­ sychological) formulations and his clinical discussions of emotion in these same writings; and that while his theoretical statements seem to postulate a separation of cognition and em otion, his clinical insights seem better served by a cognitiveintensional view of affect (in which emotion has intrinsic cognitive content, which provides reference to the object o f the em otion)— indeed, they require such a view. The phenomena (e .g ., repression, and displacem ent o f affects in dreams) that motivated Freud to postulate the “ separation” o f cognition and

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affect seem to require only phenomenological or introspective separability, that is, the separation o f affect and cognition in aw areness, and not to require the conceptual or theoretical separation o f cognition and affect. In fact, Freud’s contention that the affect o f the manifest dream often seems inappropriate to the manifest content and that the “ real” content (the latent content) can be retrieved seems to require that the connectedness be retained between the affect and its “ real” cognitive content. Sim ilar considerations apply to his assertions that repression can be undone. Indeed, that we can judge an affect to be appropriate or inappropriate seems also to require that emotions have intrinsic cognitive content (Pitcher, 1965). The buildup or discharge o f energy per se does not provide the basis for such judgm ents. A lso, Freud in his clinical discussions of affects refers to qualitatively differentiated emotions that have content and ob­ jects. For example, in Repression (1 9 5 9 b /1915) Freud describes the transform a­ tion o f emotion that takes place in the obsessional neurosis, and says that “ a sadistic trend has been substituted for a tender one. It is this hostile impulse against a loved person which has undergone repression” (p. 95). It is difficult to see how “ hostility toward a loved person” could be constituted out of “ dis­ charge resulting in an (internal) alteration . . . without reference to the outer world” (19 5 9 c /1915, p. 111). In general I think that Freud was influenced by two quite different philosoph­ ical views— the philosophy of associationism and British em piricism , and the philosophy of phenomenalism and intensionality as represented by Brentano, which emphasized that mental acts (including emotions) are intrinsically directed to objects. His theoretical statem ents seem more influenced by the associationistic view and his clinical discussions seem more influenced by the intensional view. In this regard it is interesting to note that Boring, in A H istory o f Experimental Psychology (1957) suggests that Brentano may have directly influ­ enced Freud, who took six philosophy courses from him from 1874 to 1876. In The Problem o f Anxiety ( 1959c/1926), Freud made a radical revision in his theory of affect with the introduction of the concept o f signal anxiety. With this reformulation o f anxiety and other affect states, Freud opened the door to the theoretical view that affects themselves are representational— that is, that they have cognitive content, that they are “ about” something. What Freud did in The Problem o f Anxiety was to undermine further his earlier conceptual separation of affects and ideas and to move closer to a cognitive-intensional view' o f emotion. However, this view remains largely implicit in his theory, and he never explicitly rejected the associationistic account. In Piaget’s writings on affect there appears to be a similar tension between his theoretical and his clinical views. In his Sorbonne lectures (1981/1954) Piaget, unlike Freud, emphasizes the “ indissociability” o f affect and cognition; by this term, however, he seems to mean only that they bear a contingent functional relationship to each other that is manifested in each piece o f behavior. In fact his theoretical position is very similar to Freud’s. Piaget suggests that affect is

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related to cognition in that affectivity plays “ the role o f an energy source on which the functioning but not the structures o f intelligence depend” (p. 5). He likens the role of affect to that o f “ gasoline, which activates the m otor of an automobile but does not modify its structure” (p. 5). (Gouin Decarie, 1965, suggests that Piaget was trying to coordinate Freud’s insights about emotion with his own views about cognitive developm ent, which may partly account for why he adopted som ething close to the Freudian view o f em otion.) Piaget’s major theoretical position on the relationship between cognitive de­ velopment and affective developm ent appears to be parallelism , suggesting two parallel developm ent paths. Cicchetti and Hesse (1983) suggest some of the difficulties with this view, especially if the theory of affect-as-energy-only is maintained. For exam ple, if affcctivity becomes more complex in developm ent merely by virtue o f the energy being associated with more complex cognitions or with more complex cognitive judgm ents about the emotions, then it is difficult to see what developm ental model or path Piaget would assign to the domain o f affect p er se. That is, there is no theory o f how affect-as-energy would develop. Cicchetti and Hesse suggest as an alternative that it “ seems likely that Piaget wants to ascribe structural properties to at least some o f the later-developing em otions” (p. 159) and they present as one possible version of parallelism the view that “ emotions actually undergo a transformation and become cognitive to the extent to which they develop structures or organization” (p. 159). However, I feel that Piaget’s “ clinical” descriptions of the stages of affective development, as opposed to his theoretical statem ents on the relation o f affect and cognition, suggest a stronger thesis— that the affective domain is itself structured (schematized), and has cognition as an intrinsic com ponent virtually from the earliest stages o f developm ent, and that affect itself develops via pro­ gressive differentiation of the self and the object world. This view is consistent with Piaget’s criticisms of Freud’s view o f the transition out o f narcissism (fur­ ther developed by Fast in Chapter 1). Piaget says that “ narcissism is affcctivity corresponding to the lack o f differentiation o f the self from the non-self” (1981/1954, p. 38) and he suggests that “ the child initially inhabits a universe without objects. Object choice would then imply construction o f the object” (p. 39). Piaget further suggests that “ it is only when the external world is structured that consciousness of the self, consciousness of others, and consciousness of analogies between the self and others simultaneously appear” (p. 41). The infant’s move out o f narcissism involves a “ restructuration of the entire affective and cognitive universe” (p. 41). Thus Piaget also sees affect as constructed in accordance with the cognitive-developm ental capacities of the child, within the context of self and object differentiation and the increasing integration o f the self and the object world. As Cicchetti and Hesse point out, Piaget refers to the developm ent of specific, qualitatively differentiated affect states, which would be difficult to account for on the basis of the affect-as-energy thesis. Differentiated affects are a problem

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also for Freud’s metapsychological theory which is unable to explain the exis­ tence o f the specific affect states to which he refers in his clinical discussions o f emotion. There may be another reason why Piaget took such a strict noncognitive view of affects in his theoretical statem ents. Although there are many exceptions throughout his work, in general he tended to take a “ hom ogeneous” view (Flavell, 1982) o f the child’s mind— that is, to sec the child as acquiring a generalizable set o f cognitive capacities that could be applied across diverse domains. This view may make it seem redundant to talk of schem atization or the development o f some particular capacity (for exam ple, decentration) in the affec­ tive domain. The homogeneous view leads naturally to a stage view o f cognitive and affective capacities, with parallel developm ent in each because each reflects the same underlying developing capacities. H owever, this homogeneous view has increasingly been called into question in contemporary cognitive develop­ mental psychology (Fischer, 1980; Flavell, 1982; G elm an, 1978; Keating, 1980). The child’s mind may appear homogeneous because o f limits on its information processing capacity at different ages, comm unalities o f childhood experience, or artifactual elem ents introduced by common experimental tasks (for example, these often present novel situations to the child). W hen, for exam ­ ple, external aids to the child’s information processing capacity or differential familiarity with stimulus materials are introduced, the child’s mind may appear quite “ heterogeneous” with respect to different content domains. Flavell (1982) has sum marized many o f the argum ents pro and con the “ hom ogeneous” and “ heterogeneous” positions. It seems possible and even likely, for exam ple, that a child may develop faster or slower in the affective as opposed to the cognitiveperceptual realm , reflecting his natural talents and particular experiences in these areas. However, I believe that resolution of this issue depends both on acquiring further empirical data and on resolving certain theoretical issues. At least keep­ ing this issue in mind should alert us to the possibility o f introducing artifactual “ hom ogeneity” and apparent “ incom petence” in the affective realm through the use o f tasks that strain the child’s information processing capacity or his capacity for verbalization. Piaget in his Sorbonne lectures presents an account o f the very early develop­ ment of affects but does not elaborate this description in much detail past the sensorimotor period with respect to emotions per se. Rather he considers the development o f “ moral feelings” in the postsensorimotor period. While the examination o f the role o f “ feelings” in moral behavior is interesting and has been relatively neglected in developm ental psychology (in favor o f studies of “ moral reasoning” ), it takes us away from what we commonly would consider to be the domain o f affectivity. This chapter attempts to extend Piaget’s discus­ sion o f the early developm ent o f affect and to build on his insights with respect to their relevance for the psychoanalytic view o f the transition out of narcissism and affective developm ent. H owever, it departs from both Freud’s and Piaget’s “ of­

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ficial” theoretical statements about the nature of affect and affective develop­ ment, and tries to remain closer to their clinical empirical views in presenting emotions as cognitive, intcnsional, and constructivist in nature.

THE NOTION OF A DEVELOPMENTAL LINE OF EMOTION Consistent with Piaget’s empirical observations of affective development, I am suggesting that emotions can be seen as having a developmental line of their own. Schmale (1964), Krystal (1975), and Yorke and Wiseberg (1976) are psychoanalytically oriented authors who have expressed a similar view. By the notion of a developmental line, Anna Freud (1965/1963) means a conceptualiza­ tion of some aspect of functioning (in this case affect) that itself is not a function of any unitary facet of biological or psychic development, but involves interac­ tion among numerous facets (pp. 245-246). This psychoanalytic view is very close to the currently predominant view in developmental psychology o f the development of emotions— the organizational or systems approach. One major proponent of this view is Sroufe (1979), who has emphasized that emotional development itself is organized, and indeed, central to the infant’s functioning and early development. 1 suggest that the various elements of affect (cognition, representations of self and other, expression, and so forth) arc gradually differ­ entiated and integrated into a hierarchically organized affect system. The level of differentiation and integration of this system will in the case o f an individual child (or adult) determine the particular form of the affect that the individual experiences. Thus children at different developmental levels might experience the same emotion, for example, anger, but it would take different experiential forms depending on the child’s affective developmental level. It may be the case that certain emotions (for example, pride) may require a degree of development before they can emerge at all (Piaget, 1981/1954), but the central idea here is that specific affects do not emerge fully formed, but that each undergoes an extensive period of development. Given the possibility of the “ heterogeneous m ind,” it may even be that different affects may develop at differential rates, given the constraints imposed by the child’s temperament and social, cultural, and interpersonal milieu on the construction of individual emotional states.

THE DIFFERENTIATION AND INTEGRATION OF EMOTION It has become relatively common to say that affects “ differentiate” out of an original “ undifferentiated” state or matrix, and also that affect development involves progressive differentiation and integration. The “ original undifferenti­

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ated m atrix” has become a rather conventionalized way of describing early affect states, especially in the psychoanalytic literature (e.g ., K em berg, 1976; Krystal, 1975). Early affect states are also often said to be “ all-or-none” in nature, and this phrase is som etimes used as if it were roughly the equivalent o f “ g lo b al,” “ diffuse,” or “ nonspecific.” H owever, this view of the infant’s affect states as “ global” seems at odds with the reports of identifiable specific affect states in very young infants (Sroufe, 1979), with highly differentiated facial expressive responses present even in the neonate (Ekman & Oster, 1979; Emde, Gaensbaucr, & H armon, 1976), and with the finely tuned mutual responsiveness of mother and infant affectivity (Beebe, in press). It is clear that many elem ents of the affective system are in a way highly differentiated in the very young infant. What sense, then, can be given to the notion that infant affect states are “ global,” “ all-or-none,” and “ undifferentiated” ? W erner’s (1948) elaborations o f the Piagetian notion o f differentiation of the subjective and objective worlds seem particularly germane to the discussion of affect. W erner em phasizes that differentiation always involves integration and organization. Thus early affect states may involve parts or elements that are themselves highly differentiated (such as a given facial expressive pattern) with­ out these parts being integrated or organized into a hierarchical structure. Thus the affect state as a whole is undifferentiated and unintegrated. The elements o f the early affect states would thus be “ things o f affect,” borrowing from W erner’s interesting concept of “ things of action.” “ Filings of action” arc “ intrinsically formed by the psychophysical organization o f which they constitute an integral part, by the whole vital motor-affective situation” (p. 59). W erner introduces the concept of the “ dynamic event” as representative of the child’s early perceptual experience, and 1 suggest that both early affective states and their associated elements have such an experiential quality for the infant. As W erner says, “ things as constituent elements o f a dynamic event must necessarily be dynamic in nature” (p. 67) Thus “ things of affect arc wholly dependent upon the particular dynamic affect event in which they occur” (p. 67). W erner’s view suggests that such early affect states arc “ rigid” yet “ ephem eral” : rigid in that no change is possible within the affect event; ephemeral in that any change in the elem ents results in a new affect state and the total disappearance o f the fonner state with its associated “ things o f affect.” It is now possible to tie W erner’s conceptualization to F ast’s description o f the event as the primary unit o f infantile narcissistic experience. I am proposing that early affect experience has this quality o f a dynamic event, and that the infant’s developing self and object representations within the realm o f affect are eventdependent “ things of affect.” True attribution o f an affect to the self and true directedness o f an affect to an object can only occur after the self and object representations are each integrated and are differentiated from the affect itself. These notions o f “ things o f affect” and “ event dependence” seem related to the notion o f segregation in systems theory (Averill, 1980; Bertalanffy, 1968;

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Hall & Fagan, 1968). Essentially, segregation refers to a “ system” in which the elements are not hierarchically organized, but rather arc loosely connected and independent. The opposite of segregation is systematization, that is, hierarchical organization of elements. In terms of the present discussion, early affect experi­ ence is depicted as highly segregated in nature. Avcrill (1980) points out that a system which initially is highly segregated has considerable biological advantages in terms of flexibility, and that “ individual experience and social custom assume greater importance as systematizing fac­ tors” (p. 30). However, such flexibility brings with it several liabilities: First, since systematization requires maturation and experience, unfavorable condi­ tions for infant development may result in failures o f organization. Second, later unfavorable conditions may result in regression and loss o f organization. As Averill points out, “ any system will undergo progressive segregation in the absence of maintenance inputs” (p. 30); and it seems likely that organization can be lost under other conditions as well. Thus affect events carry within themselves the potential both for the wonderful variety and richness of human affective experience and for the forms of psychopathology that result from incomplete transitions out of narcissism in the realm of affect.

THE EARLY DEVELOPMENT OF EMOTION In the present model there seems to be little sense to the question of when “ true” affects emerge (Spitz, 1968/1963, for example had placed this inception at the third month with the development o f the social smile, while more recently Lewis and Brooks [1978] have placed it at the dawn of self awareness during the first year o f life). Rather, it is assumed that from birth there are elements o f affect present (such as facial expressions), although these are conceptualized here as highly segregated. As development proceeds, new segregated elements are dif­ ferentiated (such as self and other representations), and these are gradually systematized. With progressive systematization comes progressive differentia­ tion, as the “ affect itself” becomes a separate identifiable entity within the affect system, so that true attribution of the affect to the self and true directedness o f the affect to an object can take place. Following Werner and Piaget, differentiation and integration are seen as correlative processes. To make it easier to follow the discussion, the sequences of affect develop­ ment are presented within the age ranges associated with Piaget’s stages of cognitive development (consistent with the “ homogeneous” view). However, these are best viewed as sequences through which a child will progress, and the relationship of these to his or her development in the perceptual-cognitive realm should remain a matter for empirical investigation. At present we have remark­ ably little information from systematic empirical investigations about the emer­ gence o f affective capabilities in the child, although recently there has been a

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burgeoning o f research in this area, particularly in infant developm ent (Izard, 1982; Lewis & M ichalson, 1983; Lewis & R osenblum , 1978; Plutchik & K ellerman, 1983). In P iaget’s m odel, the im portant achievem ents o f the earliest period o f devel­ opm ent (birth to 2 y e a rs )- -the sensorim otor period that have relevance to the developm ent o f affect are the attainm ent o f object perm anence and the begin­ nings o f representation. Piaget points out that recognition begins in stages one to two o f the sensorim otor period, but that this does not imply that the infant has any im age o f the object or any degree o f object perm anence. T his early object recognition seem s closest to w hat would be the purest form o f a “ thing of affect,” in which the object has no integration outside o f the sensorim otor situation, but in w hich repetition of a chain o f responses and reflexes determ ined (innately or by prim itive learning) by the situation constitutes a prim itive form of “ recognition” of the situation. Stages three to six o f the sensorim otor period see the progressive differentiation o f the object from the sensorim otor event (see Fast, C hapter 1). Piaget him self (1981/1954) places “ the beginning o f affective deccntration” in the second half o f the sensorim otor period. H ow ever, we cannot assum e that the concept o f the object is independent of the sensorim otor situation in the fullest sense by the end of the sensorim otor period. A lthough there m ay be differentiation w ithin the affective event, the object is not differentiated fr o m the affective event. T he objcct is still a “ thing of affect.” It is interesting to speculate w hether objcct perm anence (the indepen­ dence o f the object concept from a specific sensorim otor action sequence) in fact may be m ediated by an affective event (such as the em erging affect o f “ in­ terest” ). Such affect events could render the concept o f the object independent of particular sensorim otor events, w hile still leaving it dependent upon the exis­ tence o f the affect state. W e w ould then expect that the accom plishm ents of stages four to six o f the sensorim otor period (active search for an object, which then takes into account visible, then invisible displacem ents) would be disrupted if the sustaining affect event were disrupted. That is, the infant would not return to his or her search if the current affect state were replaced by another. T o my know ledge, such research has not been carried out. If this hypothesis is so , then affect events w ould serve a vital ontogenetic role, acting as a bridge to sustain the infant’s em erging intentionality (here m eaning the “ goal-directedness” of ac­ tion) and em erging cognitive representations so that they can extend beyond the narrow confines o f the sensorim otor act. A lthough recent developm ental research (e .g ., B eebe, 1983; Lewis & Brooks, 1978) provides evidence that self and object differentiation begins to take form very early in infancy, perhaps earlier than Piaget suggested, the pre­ sent model proposes that such early representations o f self and other are “ things of affect,” w hich are w holly dependent upon the particular affect event in which they occur. T hat is, they do not have independent existence outside the affect event and rem ain segregated elem ents w ithout hierarchical structure. T hus at­

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tribution o f the affect to the self or directedness o f the affect to the object cannot occur— rather self and object are immersed “ in” the affect event. Thus early affect states color all representations o f self and other and indeed all reality for the experiencing infant. Any primitive attribution that does take place may be global or indiscriminate with respect to the elements o f an event (such as to an expression or to an external object) rather than necessarily to elements that are self-representations. Therefore there is no reason to believe that cvcntlike affects would disappear around age 2 years. The preoperationa! child (age 2 to 7 years in Piaget’s model) remains largely under the sway of sensorim otor representations (Flavell, 1963). This period represents a transition from sensorim otor to internalized symbolic thought. The child is still “ egocentric,” that is, he or she cannot conceptualize things independently o f his or her own perspective. The preoperational period is also characterized by “ centration,” that is, one isolated feature o f the objective situation may capture the child’s attention and determine his or her entire concep­ tualization of the situation. Thought is still “ rigid” and “ ephem eral,” in W erner’s terms, resulting in the child’s cognitive life being an “ unstable, dis­ continuous, m om ent-to-m oment one” (Flavell, 1963, p. 158). Most important, preoperational thought is “ irreversible,” that is, the child cannot carry out transformations in thought (as represented in the perceptual realm by conserva­ tion of volume, and so forth). These features have many implications for the nature of the affect states experienced by the preoperational child. Along with Greenspan (1979), Harter (1977, 1982) and Cowan (1978), 1 suggest that the concept o f “ reversibility” has central importance to the developm ent of affects. In the affective realm , we may call an affect irreversible when, while in one affect state, the child cannot conceptualize his or her relationship to other affect states or to other evaluations o f the object (Thompson, 1980, 1 9 82a/1981, in press). Thus other feelings toward the object cannot modify the present feeling and other evaluations o f the object. In other words, we may say that when affects are irreversible, the object is coordinate to the affect. The child cannot concep­ tualize how the object is, when he or she is not in the grip of the affect— for example, a hated object is a hateful object and cannot be evaluated independently of that feeling. The continuing eventlike character o f affect means that true attribution of the affect to the self has not been accomplished. There may be considerable differ­ entiation o f self and object within the affect, so that it may appear that there is genuine attribution, but the present model suggests that this is not so. As Cowan (1978) points out, the preoperational child who says “ I hate y o u ,” may really just be conveying “ hateful feeling n o w .” The self may be “ in” the feeling or “ have” it somehow, but the feeling is not understood as a psychological state o f a differentiated self. The self-representations associated with a given affect state are still event dependent— only when self-representations can be associated with a hierarchical organization of diverse affect states can genuine attribution of the

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current affect to the self occur. The lack o f an event-dependent self-representa­ tion also m akes for an inability to differentiate betw een the affect and its ex­ pressive com ponents, and the latter continue as event-dependent elem ents o f the affect state. T hus there m ay be a tendency to “ read o ff” affects from facial expressions, and to have difficulty in understanding a discordance betw een affect and expression (such as in feigning an affect), so that a sm iling child “ m u st” be a happy child and a crying child a sad one. The present model also suggests that a further im pedim ent to the developm ent o f self-attribution o f affcct is a developm ental tendency tow ard the externalization o f affcct. That is, as em otions develop, the child may at first be prim arily aware o f changes in his or her perceptual evaluations o f objects, as for exam ple, their seem ing “ g o o d ” o r “ b a d ,” and it may be a developm ental advance o f some difficulty to relate these evaluative attributes o f the object to the current internal affect state. This phenom enon is what Sartre (1948) called the “ unre­ flexive” character o f em otions: The subject tends to view the em otion as caused by an external object and tends not to reflect on the contribution of the self to his or her current em otional evaluation o f the object. Piaget talks o f the developm ent o f “ agency” as involving the attribution o f “ cau se” to the self and “ e ffect” to the object. In contradistinction to this pattern, the present model suggests that the natural developm ent in em otion may involve the attribution o f “ cau se” to the object and “ cffect” to the self— one source o f the sense o f passivity in em otion. These attributions may add to the difficulty o f perceiving affect as an internal state o f the self and o f reality testing the self’s causal contributions to the affect state. M cA rthur (1972) found (with adult subjects) that actions were more often causally attributed to persons than were em otions, while em otions were more often causally attributed to stim uli than were actions. M cA rthur suggests that “ em otions . . . are com m only regarded as being elicited by stim uli, as opposed to being em itted by p erso n s” (p. 186). This perception would reinforce the tendency to view the object in term s coordinate to the affect and increase the difficulty in assessing the self’s contribution and in achieving reversibility. A further im plication o f the irreversibility o f affect during this period would be the inability o f the child to understand the possibility o f “ m ixed-’ or “ contra­ d ictory” em otions; rather, the introduction o f a new feeling represents a new irreversible affect event. A t the sam e tim e, a new coordinate view o f the object is introduced so that affectively com plex view s o f the sam e object are not possible. The existence o f these lim itations does not imply that an enorm ous am ount o f affective developm ent has not gone on during the preoperational period. The child has learned to differentiate and label a num ber o f em otions (B orke, 1971; Brody & H arrison, 1983; H arter, 1982; T hom pson, 1984). Som e evidence sug­ gests that the differentiation o f affects is better developed than is verbal labeling (Brody & H arrison, 1983). The child has learned to identify com m on situational causes o f m any em otions (e .g ., that birthday parties m ake people happy, that dentists m ake people afraid) and can infer from many nonstereotypic situational

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descriptions what affect a child is likely to experience in that situation. It seems reasonable to assume that the child is also learning about the social desirability of various affect states, and the social expectations for the display of affect (Saarni, 1978) as well as some defensive strategies for the avoidance o f affective experi­ ence (Cramer 1983; Franko, Powers, Ziroff, & M oskowitz, 1982). Research is just beginning to docum ent the affective capabilities o f the preoperational child.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF REVERSIBILITY OF EMOTION The period o f concrete operations in Piaget’s model (extending from about age 6 to early adolescence) has the developm ent o f reversibility as a central aspect (Inhelder & Piaget, 1958). A concrete operation is a cognitive structure involv­ ing the mental representation o f a transformation which is reversible. The present model assumes that the child acquires reversibility o f affect, and begins to realize that an affect experienced now can change (Cowan, 1978), and begins to evalu­ ate the situation or object independently of the affect currently being experi­ enced. In other words, the objcct of the affect and the affect itself are now being differentiated from each other, allowing the differentiation between “ how one feels about the object” and “ how the object really is” to begin. This differentia­ tion allows for the beginning o f the reality testing o f emotions them selves, that is, judging emotions to be appropriate or inappropriate, as justified by the real characteristics o f the object or not. It is not simply the case that self and object representations become more independent o f the affect event, but that affect states themselves are differentiated out o f the event, and begin to be concep­ tualized as differentiated mental states. Along with the ability to reality test the appropriateness of emotions goes the emerging ability to understand the self’s contribution to these states. The reversibility o f affect thus leads to further conceptualization o f and differentiation among “ se lf,” “ inner experience,” and “ external reality.” Thus the beginnings o f true attribution of affects to the self (in the sense that a unified self is seen as the subject o f a variety o f different, changing affects, understood as internal psychological states) is seen in this model as directly related to the developm ent of reversibility. By im plication, another important advance of this period is the developm ent of “ mixed” or “ contradictory” emotions toward the same object. Indeed, the emergence o f “ m ixed” emotions may be one important developmental marker of affective reversibility. Harter (1982), who has studied the understanding o f mixed emotions by an interview method, found that children could conceptualize simultaneously occur­ ring mixed emotions at about 9 years, but that they mentioned mostly “ same valence” mixed emotions (e.g ., “ mad and sad” feelings) rather than “ opposite valence” ones (e.g ., “ happy and sad” feelings). H owever, it is possible that interview studies may underestimate children’s competencies, or may tap re­

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sponse preferences rather than competence. In contrast, Harris (1983) in an experimental study found that 10 ten-year-olds were superior to 6-year-olds in identifying “ positive and negative’' mixed emotional situations (although even the 10-year-olds did rather poorly), but that both groups were able to identify relatively few “ same valence” mixed emotion situations. However, the descrip­ tion o f his experimental tasks suggests the possibility that cues for the “ same valence” responses may have been less obvious, so that the poorer performance may have reflected task difficulty or degree o f perceptual salience rather than differences in affective organization. Preliminary results of a study from our laboratory currently being analyzed (only “ happy and sad” mixed emotions were investigated), which included an adult control group, suggest that 7- to 8-year-olds can identify simple “ opposite valence” mixed emotion situations with the same accuracy as adults, and while there was some improvement across the age range, 3- to 6-year-olds performed rather poorly on this task, with a marked improvement occurring in the 7- to 8year-old group. The greater competence found in our study may reflect the selecting and pretesting of simple stories depicting situations (presented with pictorial, nonaffective cues so that the recall capacity of even the youngest children was not taxed), as well as the use of a nonverbal (pointing) response process. We have noted that stories in which the “ happy” element occurs last ( “ sad and happy” ) seem to make it easier for children to identify the mixed emotional state than do stories in which the “ sad” element is last ( “ happy and sad” )— as if the affect of sadness retains more eventlike properties. Within age groups, the ability to identify mixed emotions appears to be generally indepen­ dent of verbal ability. Most amusing were the reactions o f children when we asked them a preliminary question: “ Can a little boy (girl) ever feel happy and sad at the same tim e?” As Harter found also, the younger children expostulated “ N o!” and indicated that we were dumb or silly to ask som ething so impossible; most of the 7- to 8-year-olds said “ Y es!” and reacted as if we were dumb or silly to ask something so obvious! Further work is underway comparing the identifica­ tion of “ same valence” and “ opposite valence” emotional situations and the relationship of these to other aspects o f reversibility. Although there is undoubtedly much affective developm ent that takes place in the preadolescent years, our empirical knowledge of how extensive it is is rather scanty. Most studies to date have used rather simple materials, in order to tap children’s basic com petencies. We have little information, for example, about how children react to more complex tasks, how they react to naturalistic situa­ tions, what happens under the press o f strong affects, or how different stimulus objects affect the nature and structure of the affect elicited. As mentioned earlier, the eventlike, unsystematized character o f early affect states allows great indi­ vidual variation in developm ent. We have as yet little systematic information about individual differences in children's affective capacity. In fact, few studies have been carried out with children (M asters, Barden, & Ford, 1979, and Under­

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wood, Fram ing, & M oore, 1977, are among the exceptions) in which experi­ mentally manipulated affects or individual differences in affect are employed as the independent variable, so that we know little about how these differences might affect the rest o f their lives— for exam ple, their interpersonal relations, school learning, behavioral control, and so forth. Also, latency is a period when social desirability pressures on affect expression and experience (Saarni, 1978) would be expected to be strong, and would provide another source of individual variation. Certainly our knowledge of the wide variations in affective functioning in adults suggests that even in some adults reversibility may not be obtained or may be only tenuously established. Thus although it seems a reasonable hypoth­ esis to see the latency period as important in dim inishing the eventlike character of affects, we are not in a position to say how far this is accom plished, even in the modal child. Some authors (for exam ple, Greenspan, 1979) have emphasized the im por­ tance of the adolescent period in affect developm ent, pointing out that the ability to think hypothetically extends the capacity for reversibility beyond the concrete representations o f the latency period. Other features o f the adolescent period that Piaget describes (Inhclder & Piaget, 1958) are the ability to think beyond the present (widening time perspectives), and the developm ent of “ second-order” thoughts or reflectiveness, that is, thoughts about thoughts. Flavell (1979) has greatly elaborated the concept of “ reflectiveness” in the realm of cognition, calling it “ m etacognition.” Applying Flavell’s concepts to affect developm ent, reflectiveness would involve, inter alia, the ability to “ step back” from one’s affect and m onitor it. The child would develop some understanding of self and others as “ affective experiencers,” both universally and in terms of individual differences in how people react. However, it seems possible and even likely that for many children the more basic processes o f affect organization, including the development o f reversibility, that begin in latency and earlier, remain as central developmental tasks through adolescence and even adulthood.

"POSITIVE" AND "NEGATIVE" EMOTIONS The terms “ positive” and “ negative” here refer to the commonly accepted division o f affects according to valence (Schlosberg, 1952; W oodworth, 1938). However, I do not mean to imply an evaluation of the affect states— certainly both positive and negative affects can each have positive and negative functions in the personality (Izard, 1977). Russell and Ridgeway (1983), in factor-analytic and multidim ensional-scaling studies, have shown that children show a classifi­ cation of affects very similar to adults along a positive-negative dimension. Psychoanalytic theorists (for exam ple, Brierley, 1937; Kernberg, 1976; Riviere, 1936) have postulated the central importance o f affect valence in affec­ tive development. These authors have recognized the early tendency for an affect

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o f one valence to be associated with an object o f coordinate valence: As Riviere (1936) says, “ A good feeling created toward an object signifies . . . a good object; a bad hostile feeling a bad object” (p. 418). Each author, but Kemberg especially, has struggled with the issue of the emergence o f “ m ixed” feelings or “ am bivalence” toward the same object. Expressed in drive theory term s, mixed emotions take the form o f “ the mutual compenetration o f libidinal and ag­ gressive drive derivatives” (K em berg, 1976, p. 40). The developm ent o f mixed feelings toward the same object and the mutual modification of mixed feeling states is seen as the central characteristic o f the transition from narcissistic partobject relations to genuine object rclatedness. The present model has expressed this change in terms o f the hierarchical organization of affect states and the development o f reversibility. Brierley (1937), Kernberg (1976), and Fast (Chapter 4) postulate that the earliest organizations o f self develop from the integration of positively valenced self-affect-other units. Kernberg (1976) then sees the differentiation o f “ self” from “ other” representations as proceeding primarily within these positively toned units, while the negatively toned events are kept separate both from the developing self-representations and from the developing object-represcntations. We might then expect that positive and negative affect states would show differential developm ental patterns in young children. While the empirical evi­ dence so far is rather slight, there are some studies supporting such a thesis. With respect to the differentiation of individual affect states, several studies (e.g ., Borke, 1971; Brody & Harrison, 1983; Harter, 1982) suggest that even for children as young as 3 or 4 years, happy feelings arc readily differentiated from sad and angry feelings, both in interviews and in experimental studies requiring the identification of affccts from situational cues. The evidence for the ability to differentiate negative affect states, especially anger and sadness, at such a young age is more equivocal. B orke’s classic study (1971) suggested little developm ent of this differentiation between 3 and 8 years, although all age groups performed somewhat above chance level in identifying these emotions. In a study from our laboratory (Thompson, 1984), on the other hand, both sadness and anger identi­ fication showed definite developmental trends across the ages 3 to 8 years, with the 7- to 8-year olds performing at about adult level in each case. In the case of “ happy” affect identification, the 3-year-olds performed at close to the adult level. This study also gave some support to the view that positive and negative spheres of affect developm ent differentiate first in a somewhat global manner, with “ sad” first meaning “ not happy” or “ bad” (and so including anger and other negative feelings) with subsequent differentiation within the negative realm changing the meaning o f sadness as well as o f anger as the two become more differentiated from each other. To “ angry” situations, 3-year-olds frequently erred by responding that the protagonist would feel “ happy” or “ sad” (that is, they made “ opposite-valence” errors as well as “ sam e-valence” errors). In the

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4-ycar-old group, the incorrect “ happy” responses dropped out almost entirely, but there was a great increase in the number o f incorrect “ sad” responses (that is, they made “ sam c-valcnce” errors, but not “ opposite-valence” errors). In the 5-year-old group, there was a decrease in the incorrect “ sad” responses, and correct “ angry” responses began to increase. Also, the rationales given for “ sad” and “ m ad” responses are virtually indistinguishable for the 3- and 4ycar-olds, the 5-year-olds are a swing group, som e giving differentiated ra­ tionales and some not, with greater differentiation between “ sad” and “ angry” rationales being given by the 7- to 8-year-old group. A study by Brody and Harrison (1983) found that children from 3 to 11 years were able to differentiate better among positive affects than they were able to differentiate among negative affects. This difference did not disappear with increasing age. H arris, O lthof, and Terwogt (1981) found that 6-, 11- and 15year-olds were less likely to identify negative affects than positive affects by means o f internal mental cues— they tended to identify negative affects by means o f situational cues. This suggests the possibility that negative affects may be “ externalized,” that is, causally attributed to the object, to a greater extent than arc positive affects. There is also some evidence that young children are more likely to attribute “ positive” affects to the self than they are “ negative” affects. Glasberg and Aboud (1982) found that kindergarten children attributed more happy affects to themselves than they did sad or angry affects, while second-graders attributed more happy than angry affects to the self, with sad affects occupying a middle position. Brody and Carter (1982) found that children from grades one to five attributed more sad affects to the “ other” than to the “ self” in a projective task, and more happy affects to the self, although they did not find a difference with respect to anger. Although such results may in part reflect social desirability considerations, nevertheless they do suggest some support for the differential development and attribution patterns o f positive and negative affects.

INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN THE DECLINE OF EVENTLIKE AFFECT STATES As mentioned above, we have as yet little empirical information about individual differences in children’s affect developm ent or about the implications o f such differences for a child’s adjustment. But the model presented here suggests that the implications for the functioning o f children and adults may be considerable, in particular, with respect to the ability to reality test emotions and the ability to show affect tolerance. Irreversible eventlike affects may well be frightening as they bring all-or-none changes in self- and object-representations, and as they seem “ global” and all-encom passing to the subject. The author (Thompson, 1982a/1981; in press) has constructed a scale of affect developm ental levels

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based on the present model for application to Them atic A pperception T est sto­ ries. The scale so far has been applied only to sotries given by adults. The five scale levels4 cover the span from purely eventlikc affects w ithout attribution to persons (Level O ne); to externalized attributions o f affects to part-objects (Level T w o); to beginning attributions o f still largely irreversible affects to persons (Level Three); to attribution o f more reversible affects as internal states of persons, with m ixed or contradictory feelings tow ard the object now being possi­ ble (Level Four); to attribution o f fully reversible affects to persons who have enduring inner dispositions that play a role in their em otional responses, and who are capable o f affective self-reflectiveness (Level Five). C lincial judges were able to rate T A T stories (five stories from each of 30 male and 30 fem ale subjects w ho covered the range o f psychopathology from psychosis through borderline and narcissistic disorders through neurotic and adjustm ent reactions through nonpaticnts) using a detailed coding manual for the scale, with fair reliability. They agreed within one scale point 89.3% and 93.3% of the time for individual story ratings and for total protocol ratings (five stories from each subjcct) respectively, and reached absolute agreem ent 53.3% and 50% o f the tim e respectively. The ratings w ere independent o f m easures o f verbal fluency and verbal ability.

CONCLUDING REMARKS Although the approach taken to affect in this chapter is described as “ construc­ tiv ist,” this is m eant to apply only in the sense that the form o f em otion is constructed during individual developm ent, especially within the context o f the differentiation and integration o f the subjective and objective w orlds. T hus em o­ tions arc constructed as subjective, “ inner” states that arc attributed to the self and directed tow ard objects. The preceding account is not m eant to be “ con­ structivist” in another sense, one that is som etim es used by Piaget (1981/1954), which im plies that affect is constructed de novo in consciousness on each occa­ sion o f its experience in accordance with the ch ild ’s or ad u lt’s perceptual-cog­ nitive structures. Such a view is more closely allied with one that takes em otion and cognition to be separate conceptual entities, especially one that takes an energic view o f affect. The present view takes the position that em otions are them selves schem atized and as such, they can be unconscious, for exam ple, repressed, split off, or dissociated. 1 do not mean to imply that no construction o f the affect, no change whatsoever in its form , w ould take place when an affect enters consciousness, but rather that affect schem as that reflect an individual’s affective developm ental level exist as persisting structures that represent im portant ego capacities. This 4For a complete description o f the scale, see Thom pson. 1981

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constructivist approach coupled with a view of the infant’s initial affect “ sys­ tem” as highly segregated —that is, unsystematized— suggests that both inter­ individual and intra-individual differences in affect development are to be ex­ pected. In saying that affects have intrinsic cognitive components that represent the objects of emotion, I do not mean to imply that the object representations associ­ ated with affects are “ inner” cognitive “ objects.” Rather, they are analogous to meanings, which refer to external real objccts and through which our experience of external real objccts is filtered (Mandlcr, 1975; Thompson, 1980, 1982a/1981; Wilson, 1972). The infant and young child, of course, do not make such a differentiation between representation and reality, and the development of such a differentiation in the realm o f affective experience is another way of looking at the transformation that takes place as affective reversibility is achieved and the ability to reality test affects comes into play (Thompson, 1980). Anger, for example, may elicit an object representation o f “ someone who has done me a wrong” ; indeed, this may be one of the ways in which anger is distinguished from other affects (Kenny, 1963), but the ability to distinguish representation from reality and the ability to locate this affective object representation in a hierarchical organization of other object representations and other affect states enables the subject to reality test the appropriateness o f the current affect. To confuse the “ meaning” with “ reality” is to lack a fundamental differentiation, which, of course, is the case with individuals who experience eventlike affects. Saying that affects have intrinsic cognitive components is not meant to sug­ gest that affects necessarily involve linguistically encoded cognitions (Thompson, 1980, 1982b). That affects could draw on other forms o f cognition (such as sensorimotor or imagistic encoding) that are faster and more implicit than linguistically encodcd cognitions surely would be adaptive (Zajonc, 1980). But such a form of encoding need not imply that cognitions that arc part o f affect are “ primitive” nor that they necessarily retain the earlier ontogenetic form of these types of encoding (Thompson, 1982). Of course, in some cases they may do so, and it is possible that the earliest ontogenetic forms are never completely lost but remain, though transformed by the increased systematization in which they become embedded. The forms in which affective cognition may be encoded and the relation of these cognitive forms to each other in development remain as important areas of future empirical and theoretical investigation. The account o f affect development presented in this chapter suggests other areas for empirical investigation. Our normative understanding of the child’s affective capacities at each age level is still limited, especially in the postinfancy years. We know little about the successive steps throughout childhood that transform eventlike affects into mature reversible affects. Affective development in adolescence remains almost wholly uncharted territory. The relation between affective development and perceptual-cognitive development, and the degree of “ homogeneity” of affective development remain to be explored. We do not

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k n o w w h e th e r a “ s e n s itiv e p e r io d ” fo r th e d e v e lo p m e n t o f a ffc c tiv ity e x is ts . N o r do w e k n o w m u c h a b o u t th e k in d s o f fa m ilia l, s o c ia l, a n d e d u c a tio n a l e x p e rie n c e s w ith e m o tio n s th a t fa c ilita te o r im p e d e a ffe c tiv e d e v e lo p m e n t. W e a lso n e e d to u n d e rs ta n d c ro s sc u ltu ra l a n d s u b c u ltu ra l d iffe re n c e s in w h a t c o n ­ s titu te s m a tu re a ffe c t. A s a lre a d y m e n tio n e d , w e k n o w little o f th e c o n s e q u e n c e s o f an in d iv id u a l’s a ffe c tiv e d e v e lo p m e n ta l lev e l fo r th e re s t o f h is o r h e r e x p e rie n c e , in c lu d in g c o g n itiv e an d s o c ia l d e v e lo p m e n t, m o tiv a tio n , a n d p e rs o n a lity sty le . E s p e c ia lly th e lev el o f a ffe c tiv e d e v e lo p m e n t s e e m s to h o ld p ro m ise as a p ro g n o s tic in d ic a ­ to r fo r p s y c h o th e ra p y a n d as a m e a s u re o f p s y c h o th e ra p e u tic c h a n g e . T h e v is ta o f a reas to b e e x p lo re d in th e re a lm o f e m o tio n p re s e n ts o p p o rtu n itie s to c o n trib u te to th e e x p a n d in g e m p iric a l b a se o f p s y c h o a n a ly tic th e o ry an d p s y c h o a n a ly tic p ro c e s s.

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Thompson, A. (1982a). A theory of affect development and maturity: Applications to the Thematic Apperception Test. University of Michigan, Dissertation Abstracts International, 42, 3836B. Thompson, A. (1982b, August). Affect and cognition: An examination o fZ a jo n c’s views. Paper presented at the American Psychological Association, Washington, D.C. (ERIC Document Re­ production Service No. ED 227415) Thompson, A. (1984). {The development of differentiated and mixed same-valencc and oppositevalcnce emotions in thrce-to eight-ycar-old children] Unpublished raw data. Thompson, A. (in press). An object-relational theory of affcct maturity: Applications to the Thema­ tic Apperception Test. In M. Kissen (Ed.), Exploring object phenomena through psychological tests. New York: International Universities Press. Underwood, B., Framing, W ., & Moore, B. (1977). Mood, attention, and altruism: A search for mediating variables. Developmental Psychology, 13, 541 542. W'erner, H. (1948). Comparative psychology o f mental development (2nd ed.). New York: Interna­ tional Universities Press. Wilson, J. (1972). Emotion and object. New York: Cambridge University Press. Woodworth, R. (1938). Experimental psychology. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Yorke. C ., & Wiseberg, S. (1976). A developmental view of anxiety. Psychoanalytic Study o f the Child, 31, 107-135. Zajonc, R. (1980). Feeling and thinking: Preferences need no inferences. American Psychologist. 35, 151-175. Zajonc, R. (1984). On the primacy of affcct. American Psychologist, 39, 117-123. Zajonc. R., Pietromonaco, P., & Bargh, J. (1982). Independence and interaction of affect and cognition. In M. Clarke & S. Fiske (Eds.), Affect and cognition: The I7th Annual Carnegie Symposium on cognition (pp. 211-227). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Eribaum Associates.

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Author Index

Italics denote pages with bibliographic information.

A A boud, F ., 167, 171 A lbas, D. C ., 81, 109 A rlow , J., 151, 170 A ustin, G . A ., 120, 133 A verill, J ., 152, 153, 158, 159, 170

B B asch, M. F ., 32, 53. 151, 170 Barden, R. C ., 82, 108. 164, 172 Bargh, J., 153, 173 Beebe, B ., 158, 160, 170 B enjam in, J., 77, 78 Bertalanffy, L ., 158, / 70 Blatt. S ., 136, 149 Bolles, M ., 124, 127, 133 Boring, E ., 154, 170 Borkc, H ., 81, 108. 166, 170 Brenner, C ., 151, 170 Brentano, F ., 152, 154, 170 Breuer, J., 153, 170 Brierly, M ., 165, 166, 170 Brody, L ., 162, 166, 167, 170 Brooks, J., 159, 160, 172 Brooks, L ., 122, 133

Broughton, J ., 82, 108 Bruner, J. S ., 121, 133

c Cam ras, L. A ., 81, 108 Carter, A ., 167, 170 Chethik, M ., 20, 30 C icchetti, D .. 155, 170 Cowan, P ., 161, 163, 171 Cram er, P ., 163, /71 Cuevas, C ., 81, 109

D Denny, D ., 81, 108 Denny, L. J ., 81, 108 D eutsch, H ., 18, 20, 22, 23, 30 Duncan, S. W ., 82, 108

E Edelson, M ., 32, 53 Ekm an, P ., 158, 171 Ekstein, R ., 20, 30 Em dc, R ., 158, 171

175

176

AUTHOR INDEX

Erard, R. E., 119, 133 Escalona, S. K., 56, 65

F

Hamlin, R. M., 136, 150 Hanfmann, E ., 116, 118, 119, 120. 123, 126 129, 133 Harmon, R., 158, 171 Harris, P., 164, 167, 171 Harrison, R., 162, 166, 170 Harter, S ., 161, 162, 163, 164, 171 Hartmann, H ., 1, 3, 5, 14, 32, 34, 37, 38, 40, 47, 51, 54, 58, 74, 78 Hesse, P., 155, 170 Holt, R. R., 32, 34, 38, 47, 54 Holzman, P. S., 141, 150

Fagan, R., 159, 111 Fast, I., 20, 23, 30, 64, 65, 80, 115, 126, 133, 149 Fcnichcl, O., 31, 34, 53 Ferrer, C. A., 81, 109 Fischer, K., 156, 171 Fitzpatrick, C\, 70, 78, 108 Flavei, J. H., 85, 108, 156, 161, 165, 171 Fliess, R ., 31, 53 1 Ford, M., 164, 172 Franko, D., 163, 171 Inheldcr, B., 61, 65, 163, 165, 171 Freud, A., 157, 171 Izard, C\, 151, 160, 165, 171 Freud, S ., 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14. 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30, 31, J 33, 40, 41. 43, 44, 45, 46, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 56, 61, 70, 112, 133, 138, 151, 153, Jacobson, E., 67, 68, 71, 72, 73, 74, 78 154, 155, 156, 170, 171 Jensen, S. R., 136, 150 Friedman, H., 136, 150 Johnson, C. N., 81, 82, 83, 85, 108 Frijling Schrocder, E. C. M., 23, 30 Johnson, M. H., 141, 150 Froming, W., 165, 173 Jones, E., 31, 34, 54 Furman, W., 82, 109

K G Gaensbauer, T ., 158, 171 Garber, J., 82, 108 Gelman, R., 156, 171 Gill, M. M., 54, 135, 136, 137, 138, 140, 147, 148, 149, 150 Glasberg, R., 167, 171 Goldstein, K., 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 120, 123, 126, 130, 133 Goodnow, J. J., 120, 133 Goss, A. E., 81, 109 Gouvin Decarie, T ., 155, 17! Greenacre, P., 18, 20, 30 Greenberg, M. T. (a QS(a. QS Greenspan, S. 1., 2, 7, 14, 161, 165, 171 Greenson, R. R., 18, 23, 30 Guntrip, H.. 67, 68, 69, 71, 73, 78 Gurwitsch, A ., 131, 133

H Hall. A., 159, 171 Hamilton, M. L., 81, 108

Kalliopuska, M ., 81, 108 Kaplan, B., 126, 130, 131, 134 Kaplan, S., 18, 30 Kasanin, J., 123, 126, 133 Keating, D., 156, 171 Kellerman, H., 160, 172 Kenny, A., 169, 171 Kernberg, O., 18, 20, 21, 30, 58, 65, 67, 68 69 , 71, 73 , 74 , 78, 158, 165, 166, 171 Khan, M. M. R., 18, 23, 30 Klein, M., 67, 78 Kris, E., 23, 30, 34, 35, 37, 47, 54 Krystal. H., 157, 158, 172

L Landis, B.. 56, 65 Lazarus, R., 153, 172 Leeper, R.. 152, 172 Lemond, C. M ., 81, 109 Lcwin, K., 36, 54 Lewis, M., 151, 159, 160, 172 Lichtenberg, J., 18. 30, 38, 54

AUTHOR INDEX

Lockc, J., I23. 133 Luria. A. R., 130, 131, 133

M Mandler, G ., 153, 169, 172 Markman, E., 82, 108 Marvin, R. S., 81, 109 Masters. J. C., 82, 109, 164, 172 May man, M ., 140, 150 McArthur, L., 162, 172 McCluskey, K. W., 81, 109 Michalson, L., 160, 172 Miscine, J. L., 83, 109 Model I, A., 67, 71, 72, 74, 78 Moore, B.. 165, 173 Moskowitz, D., 163, 171 Murphy. L. B., 17, 30

N Niemi, R. R.. 81, 109 Noy, P.. 31, 34, 35, 38, 46, 47, 54

0 Odum, R. D., 81, 109 Olthof, T ., 167, 171 Ortega, R. J., 126, 133 Oster, J., 158, 171

P Paliwal, P., 81, 109 Peterfreund, E .t 18, 30, 38, 54 Piaget, J., 1, 2, 3. 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 14. 19, 21, 22. 24, 25, 26, 30, 32, 40, 41. 44. 49, 50, 52, 54. 61, 62, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74. 76, 77, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 86, 109. 130, 131, 132, 133. 134, 138, 151, 153, 154, 155. 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 165, 168, 171, 172 Pictromonaco, P., 153, 173 Plutchic, R., 160, /72 Pope, B., 136, 150 Powers, T ., 163, 171 Powers, W. F., 136, 150

R Rapaport, D.. 1, 15, 32, 36, 37, 38. 48, 54. 115, 116, 119, 134. 135, 136, 137, 138, 140, 147, 148, 149, 150, 153, 172

177

Rickers-Ovsiankina, M., 116, 120. 126. 133 Ridgeway. D., 165, 172 Ritzier, B., 136, 150 Riviere, J., 165, 166, 172 Rorschach, H., 135, 150 Roscnbluin, L., 151, 172 Rosenfeld, S., 23, 30 Russell. J., 165, 172 Rust, J. O., 81, 108 Rycroft, C ., 56, 65

S Saarni, C., 163, 165, 172 Sandler, A.-M ., 67, 68, 69, 71, 78 Sandler, J., 67, 68, 69, 71, 78 Sartre, J. P.. 162, 172 Schafer. R., 67 , 78, 135, 136, 137. 138, 140, 147, 148, 149, 150 Scheerer, M., 113, 114, 117, 123, 126, 133 Schlosbcrg. H., 165, 172 Schmale, A., 157, 172 Searlcs, H. F., 56, 57, 58. 59, 60, 61, 64, 125, 127, 134 Sechahaye, M. A ., 126, 134 Seim an, R. L., 82, 83, 86, 109 Smith, H. T ., 17, 30 Spitz. R.. 159, 172 Sprincc, M. P., 23, 30 Sroufe, L ., 151, 157, 158. 172 Stauffacher. J. C , 136, 150 Stechlcr, G ., 18, 30 Stem, C , 130, 134 Stem, W ., 130, 134 Stone, L. J., 17, 30 Strauss, A. A., 112, 134

T Tausk, V., 55, 56, 57, 58, 60, 63, 64, 65 Terwogt, M., 167, 171 Thompson, A. E., 5, 15, 70, 78. 151, 152, 153, 161, 162, 167, 168, 169. 172

U Underwood, B.. 164. 173

W Watkins, J. G ., 136, 150 Weigl, E., 116, 117, 118, 119, 124, 127. 131, 134

178

AUTHOR INDEX

Wellman, H. M ., 81, 82, 83, 108, 109 Werner, H., 112, 113, 124, 126, 130, 131 134. 158, 159, 173 Whitehead, A. N., 128, 134 Winnicott, D. W ., 24. 30. 139, 150 Wittgenstein, L., 124, 134 Wolff, P., 2, 7, 75 Wilson, J., 169, 173

Wiseberg, S., 157, 173 Woodworth, R., 165, 173

Y,Z Yorkc, C ., 157, 173 Yudovich, F. I., 130, 133 Zajonc, R., 153, 169, 173 Ziroff, D., 163, 171 Zucker, L., 57, 58, 59, 60. 64, 65

Subject Index

Action, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9. 22 -2 4 , 27, 28, 40, 41, vs. discrete articulated experience, 122, 123 43, 63, 70, 83, 84, 87, 88, 89, 101, 102, vs. generalizing abstrction, 122, 123 114, 129, 130, 131, 132 see also Primary progresses; Event-bound affective component, 8 thought and creation 23, 24 Differentiation and integration, 3, 4, 5, 71, as interactions with environment, 8 72, 73, 138 origins in reflexes, 7 as fundamental in mental development in Affect, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 70, 71, 72, 76, 81 event theory, 3 activity-passivity, 105, 106, 162 in Piaget's theory, 3, 4 as intensional, 152, 154 in boundary development and loss, 55-65 as noncognitive, 153, 154, 155 in gender experience, 59, 64 cognitive aspects of, 2. 4, 5, 8, 154, 155, in object relations theory, 67 169 in the primary and secondary processes, 31, development of, 5, 81, 84, 85, 93-101, 54 151, 152, 155, 156, 168 of affect and action. 83, 87-89 developmental stages in, 157, 159-163, of affect and object, 163 163, 164, 165, 167, 168 of emotion, 157-159, 167, 168 in interaction schemes, 5, 70, 71, 76, 157, of intention and causality, 11, 26, 138, 144 168 see also Omnipotence positive and negative, 67, 68, 76, 85, 103of self and nonself, 3, 4, II , 61, 67, 71, 106. 163, 164, 165, 166, 167 72, 75, 144, 160 reality testing of, 163, 167, 169 of thought and action, 40, 41, 45, 83 reversibility of, 161, 163, 165 of thought and its referents, 9, 11, 24. 26, see also, Event-bound emotion 45, 52, 59, 63, 75, 138, 144, see also Borderline disorders, 18-30, 67, 68 Objectification and action disturbance, 22-24 Distance in Rorschach Responses, 135-158, and centrality of self, 21, 22 147, 149 and narcissistic unawareness of world, 20 and omnipotence and primary creativity, 24, 25 Concrete thought, 112-121 and incapacity for concrete content, 124— 128 and passivity in frame of reference shift, 117 and unstable frame of reference, 112-121 as context vs. content of experience, 123, 124 vs. analytic or dimensional thought, 121, 122

Ego psychology. I, 2, 3, 4, 5. 38, 58, 74 and autonomous ego functions, 3, 4, 5, two lines of development, 1, 2, 5, 7 Event, 7, 8. 20, 40, 69, 70, 83, 84. 101-103. 112, 132, 138, 166 as active engagement with nonself, 8, 20, 30, 138 as affectively motivated, 8, 84 as basic unit o f experience and mental repre sentation, 7, 8, 20, 21, 40, 41, 61, 62, 69, 70, 79, 80, 138 as concrete thought. 112, 132-33

179

180

SUBJECT INDEX

(cont.)

as egocentric, 21, 25, 61, 120. 138, 161 as interaction, 8, 20, 69, 79 -8 0 , 128 as primary process cognition, 40. 41. sec also Primary processes as situation-specific, 79. 83, 101-103, M r 121, 122, 123, 160 cognition and affcct in, 7 initial nondiffercntiation in, 8, 70, 72, 72, 79, 101-103, 128, 137-139 representation in schemes, 8 , see also Narcissism, Primary processes, Action, Event-bound thought. Primary creativity, Omnipotence Event-bound emotion, 81, 82, 95, 96 as situation specific, 83, 95-99, 119, 121, 160, 161 developments beyond, 84, 85, 93-103 origin and locus in, 83. 84, 86, 87-93 other’s assessment of. 91-93, 162, sec also Affcct Event-bound thought, 77, 80, 112 categorical frame o f reference, 112-115, 1 2 0 , 121

see also Primary processes. Concrete thought Narcissism. 6. 17-30, 61, 62, 155 and infant centrality, 9. 10, 21, 22 and infancy research, 17, 18 and unawareness o f environment, 6, 7, 18. 20, 21, 38, 61, 62, 37, 38 developments out of, 6, 7, 8, 12, 13, 2529, 138 primary narcissism and egocentrism, 6-10, 19, 20, see also egocentrism Objectification, 8, 10-12, 25, 26, 44-46, 7 4 77 Objects, 4, 26, 75, 113, 114, 124-128, 155, 158, 160, 162 construction of. 4, 12 defined by motives or experiential context, 1 2 9 -132 human and nonhuman. 4, 55, 58, 59, 62, 63, 71, 72 part vs. whole objects, 9, 11, 41, 42, 67 73, 75 permanence of, see also Objectification, Differentiation and integration, Narcissism Omnipotence, 10, 24, 25, 42, 59, 60, 63, 64, 72, 73. 138, 142-143, 146, 147, 148 Piaget-Freud integrations Greenspan and. 2

Hartmann and, 1, 2 Rapaport and. I Wolff and, 2 Primary creativity, 10, 24, 25, 42, 72, 73, 138, 139-141, 144, 145, 148 Primary processes. 9, 31, 40, 41, 43-45. 73. 74, 75 and engagement with environment, 38-40, 43, 44, 51 as archaic vs. sophisticated, 31, 32, 34, 35, 37, 39, 50-52 as drive-organized, 36, 37 as event experience, 9, 4 0 -4 9 , 52 displacement and condensation in, 9, 35, 36, 46, 47 in infancy, 33, 37, 38. 40-43 relation to secondary processes, 36, 37. 4 9 51, see also Concrete thought. Eventbound thought. Secondary processes, Cat­ egorical frames o f reference Reality testing, 13, 28, 45, 52, 59, 60, 138, 147-149, 163 Schemes. 8, 9, 79 Secondary Processes, 31, 33, 34, 36, 49 -5 1 , 75 and developments beyond primary pro­ cesses, 44, 45, 46-48 as categorical thought, 33, 36. 48. 49 as sophisticated primary process thought, 33, 35, 36, 37, 39, 4 5 -5 1 , see also Categorical frame of reference, Primary processes, Concrete thought. Event-bound thought Self, 3, 4, 26, 68, 75 and nonself development complementary, 4. 59. 62, 63 and nonsclf differentiation, 5, 11, 67 and nonsclf in Piaget's psychology. 3, 4, 72 and nonsclf undifferentiated, 5, 72, 73, 83, 84 part vs. whole self. 9, 11, 41, 42, 67, 73, 75, 115. 120, see also Objectification, Differentiation and Integration, Narcissism Self boundary, 55-65 and gender differentiation, 59, 64 cognitive disturbance in. 56. 57. 59, 60, 6 2 -64, dediffcrentiation vs. withdrawal, 56-58, 60, 61. 62 vs. ego boundary. 55-57. 61 Splitting. 42, 68, 76