You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
All the life in the body is the life of the individual cells. There are thus millions upon millions of centres of life in each animal body. So what needs to be explained is…unifying control, by reason of which we not only have unified behaviour, which can be observed by others, but also consciousness of a unified experience.
The conclusion of the first century of psychoanalytic work that may be of the greatest relevance for a theory of behavior regulation is the realization that a predictable series of regulatory modes succeed each other in the course of ontogenesis. These modes … constitute an epigenetic sequence [such that] each mode persists as a potentiality throughout the life cycle and may be called upon whenever it offers the opportunity for optimal adaptation.
Gedo's developmental hierarchical model, which he and Goldberg originated (Gedo and Goldberg, 1973) and he has continued to refine (Gedo, 1993), offers clinicians and researchers alike remarkable assistance in organizing their thinking about the patterns and mechanisms of mind/brain. Most interesting to this monograph, Gedo has employed his model to explore consciousness, a subject on the boundary between the psychological and the biological (1988, 1991a, 1991b).