Metamorphosis

On the Conflict of Human Development and the Development of Creativity

Ernest G. Schachtel

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780881633535
• eBook ISBN: 9781135061241
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Applied Psychology
• Index: Psychology

First published in 1959, Metamorphosis remains one of the great works of developmental psychology of the past century. From his thoughtful meditation on the assumptions of classical Freudian psychoanalysis, among them the pleasure and reality principles, the relations of drive and affect, and the nature and causes of infantile amnesia, Schachtel moves on to profound reflections on the senses considered both in terms of their evolving relation to one another during maturation and as variable ingredients in the perception and cognition of the adult.

Index

abstractive seeing, rationality and, 106–107

action, affect and, 20, 22–33

(see also activity-affect)

active perception, phylogenetic development of, 155

activity, vs. memory, 281

activity-affect, 8, 25–26, 34

concept of, 76

vs. conflict theory of emotions, 31

“eager” nursing and, 30

ego-strength and, 31

emergence from embeddedness and, 77

emotions and, 123

in growing child, 73

infant object-interest and, 33

obstacles and frustrations in, 36

pleasurable sensory stimuli and, 123

predisposition toward, 45

purposive activity and, 73

sexual desire in, 73

vs. traumatic theory of emotions, 32

walking and, 48

world-openness and, 53

act of interest, totality of, 225

Adam, naming of animals by in Genesis, 202

adaptation, in autocentric senses, 95

addiction

as escape from empty life, 211

jaded appetite and, 210–211

(see also drug addiction)

adolescent, limiting views of, 188

adualistic consciousness, 150

adult

interest-capacity of, 27

misinterpretation of “aggressive” behavior in infant by, 134

ontogenetic past in development of, 7–8

pleasure studies in, 62

adult forgetting, childhood and, 305

adult memory, 287

changed character of, 284

shift from proximity to distance senses in, 300–301

(see also memory)

advertising

body odor in, 95

conventional phrases in, 288–289

customers as objects-of-use in, 174

idiom of, 191

aestheticist attitude, 230

affect

action and, 22–33

communication role of, 21

conflict theory of, 24

as congenital hysterical attack (Freud), 20

as discharge of tension, 24

Freud’s view of, 19–21, 32n.

function of, 69

infancy and, 5

positive vs. negative functions of, 20–21

safety-valve function of, 24

two types of, 29

(see also activity-affect; embeddedness-affect)

affirmativeness, 221

aggression

as adult misintepretation in infant, 34

as approach to reality in infant, 135

nonaggressive motivation in, 134

aggressive energy, ego and, 12

alarm reaction

in change from familiar, 150–152

darkness and...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Frontmatter
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Foreword to this Edition
• Foreword
• Contents
• Metamorphosis
• Introduction
• On Affect, Anxiety, and the Pleasure Principle
• Freud's View of Affect
• Affect and Action Embeddedness-Affect and Activity-Affect
• Analysis of Specific Emotions: Hope, Joy, Anxiety, and Pleasure
• Conclusion
• On the Two Basic Perceptual Modes: Autocentricity and Allocentricity
• The Two Basic Perceptual Modes
• Objectification and Pleasure-Unpleasure-Boundedness in Different Sense Modalities
• The Ontogenetic Development of the Two Basic Perceptual Modes
• Secondary Autocentricity
• General Attitude, Perceptual Mode, and Their Shifts
• Perception as Creative Experience Critique of the Concept of Regression in the Service of the Ego
• On Attention and Memory
• The Development of Focal Attention and the Emergence of Reality
• On Memory and Childhood Amnesia
• Index