A psychoanalyst, through training and experience, directs the enยญ tire focus of his attention to registering and internalizing the inยญ put of a patient's communications, listening intently for their implied meanings. It is only by umaveling the mysteries of an unยญ conscious realm of mental activity that it becomes possible to fully comprehend the way in which mental productions are finally obยญ servable. The psychoanalyst's total personality is the listening inยญ strument, and the messages emanating from this hidden sector most clearly heard, deciphered, and understood are those most resonant with the contents of the psychoanalyst's unconscious. It is probable that a variety of psychoanalysts adopting a listening posture with a given patient would hear and understand a mulยญ tiplicity of different meanings. Over the years, sensitive, wellยญ trained psychoanalytic investigators have formulated concepts conยญ cerning mental functioning from disparate and often opposing points of view. These contradictory ideas are offered from a baยญ sic theoretical foundation placing unconscious mental events as the most important force shaping human experience. Divergent opinยญ ions may at times appear irreconcilable and then serve as the grounds for developing a separate psychoanalytic school of thought. It is not surprising that an exploration of unseen powerful and regressive forces, by a group of scientists with unique inยญ dividual experiences, would yield insights sensitively attuned to a wide variety of important factors determining human developยญ ment and behavior
CONTENT
1. Body Ego Experience and the Nuclear Self: The Onset of Unconscious Perception -- 2. The Qualities of Perceptual Experience and Object Impressions: The Self- and Object Representational Systems -- 3. Libido as Object Seeking and the Mechanism of Splitting: An Integration of Libidinal and Object Relations Theory -- 4. Separation-Individuation: The Formation of New Psychic Structures -- 5. The Onset of Cohesiveness: The Formationand Function of the Grandiose Self and the Ego Ideal -- 6. The Pregenital Phases of Psychosexual Development: The Evolution of Focused Perceptual Functions and Boundaries and the Preconditions forthe Establishment of an Oedipal Conflict -- 7. The Oedipal Conflict as a Psychic Organizer -- 8. The Resolution of the Oedipal Conflict: The Consolidation of the Superego into an Independently Functioning Agency and the Process of Alteration inthe Fixation Points -- 9. Significance of the Latency Period -- 10. Pubescence: Relinquishing the Attachment to Primary Infantile Objects and Their Replacement with New Objects -- 11. The Final Step to Maturity: The Genital Character -- References
