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(1970). Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 18:102-123

Further Experimental Studies of Dynamic Propositions in Psychoanalysis—On the Function and Meaning of Regressive Thinking

Lloyd H. Silverman, Ph.D.

THIS PAPER WILL CONCERN ITSELF with a particular kind of ego disturbance, regressive thinking. I am referring here to thinking that is unrealistic, illogical, or losse, which alternately has been referred to in the psychoanalytic and psychiatric literature as primary process thinking, pathological thinking, archaic thinking, etc. It is most frequently associated with the "thought disorder" of the schizophrenic and it has been from such patients that most of our data have been collected, and it is thus for them that the views to be presented most directly pertain. However, since this disturbance also can be found in the so-called borderline cases and even in neurotics, though less extensively and without the breakdown in reality testing that characterizes its occurrence in schizophrenia, the formulation to be presented may turn out to hold for regressive thinking per se, regardless of the diagnosis of the patient manifesting it. Also, as shall be discussed at the end of the paper, there is reason to believe that this same formulation has relevance for the understanding of certain other ego disturbances, those which, like regressive thinking, can be understood to involve a breakdown of ego boundaries.

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