Psychoanalysis: A General Theory of Psychical Structure Formation and Pathogenesis

Theory in many instances is the microscope without which we could not grasp certain clinical states at all and assess their meaning. It is therefore decisive that psychoanalysis as a science develop a theory of structural ontogenesis as a binding basic concept and reference system. Without such a basic theory psychoanalysis will suffocate from theoretical entropy. The crucial phenomenon in any case is that the brain is giving itself a fundamental representational structure--one which directly results from the system properties of the representation-bound perception and thus from experience. Each and every study of brain function must reckon with this autonomous structure which is the structural frame within which mental functioning occurs and consciousness originates. This representational world is the field of psychoanalysis. PETER ZAGERMANN PHD is an IPA child adolescent and adult psychoanalyst living and working in Munich Germany.