Closing Comments

Perhaps the most effective brief method of responding to these extended discussions is to reiterate and elaborate upon the major purposes and implications of the essay. To do so may clarify some of the major issues raised by the three discussants. Let me express in advance my indebtedness to the discussants for the careful consideration they have given to the points made in the essay.

My major thesis is that certain aspects of individuality of personality organization can now be conceptualized in terms of controlling structures, and that these structures (i.e., these enduring patterns of mental operations) can be viewed as the principal means by which the human organism carries out an evolutionary edict to maintain overall equilibration within certain adaptive limits. These proposals are intended to embed the theory in an organismic framework, to raise the level of explanation of certain phenomena to a more abstract level, and to increase the parsimony of the theory. In offering these suggestions, I have argued that the complex energy-structure duality understandably employed in earlier conceptualizations can now be recast in terms of a more unitary conception—that of controlling structures governing the facilitation-inhibition of mental processes that may vary in level of activation. In support of this argument, I drew upon recent developments in neurophysiology that seem to provide further knowledge of the kinds of neural mechanisms involved in facilitation-inhibition. These new findings—which will require extensive, careful replications in addition to the initial attempts referred to