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IAM GOING TO TALK ABOUT A PARTICULAR aspect of the psychoanalytic process, namely the development and integration of insight. What I would like to do today is to talk briefly about what I think are some of the theoretical implications of Piaget's work for an understanding of insight and then to illustrate what I mean with reference to analytic work with a particular patient.
On the basis of Piaget's work on "the grasp of consciousness, " which I have discussed elsewhere (Piaget, 1974), (1976) ; (Rosen, 1985) ; (Tenzer, 1983), I have suggested that insight can be seen as going through a series of overlapping stages. These stages are: unconscious behavior; working through; self-observation; and conscious thought. [In his most recent work, Piaget makes a distinction between "reflective abstraction"—a general term which may refer to either conscious or unconscious processes—and "reflected abstraction, " having to do with conscious thought. Since these terms can be confusing I have changed the term I have used in prior papers to denote the last stage of insight from "reflective abstraction" to "conscious thought."]