Choice as the basis for mentation. A dialectic approach to mental development.

Abstract

I propose to build on Robbins' new mind model for the primitive personalities a stronger base and a more clearcut development. The stronger base requires a clearer exposition of pleasure that includes the earliest choice an infant can make. Choice determines the beginning of the mind as a complex system of its own. Pleasure describes the motivational viewpoint. Taken together they will define the structure which constitutes the mind. I agree with Robbins that phenomenological psychic representation furnishes the building blocks for this developmental model but I see conflict in interstage development to be necessary to furnish the dynamism for growth and/or regression. Normal grandiosity is infantile pleasure in choice. I present pathological grandiosity from a new regressive viewpoint within the developmental framework. Robbins' case of N is used to illustrate these ideas. In addition I present some complex requirements for human object and self constancy to be achieved.