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They said it could not be done, but Bob Holt did it. When Holt began his empirical study of the psychoanalytic theories of thinking, he did so in the face of almost universal opinion in American psychology that (a) psychoanalytic ideas in general were insufficiently important to warrant experimental investigations and (b) psychoanalytic concepts of thinking in particular were so elusive and ephemeral that they would resist attempts at operational definitions. Some 50 years and hundreds of studies later, Holt and his research group have demonstrated that once again, received opinion about psychoanalysis has gotten it seriously wrong.
In Primary Process Thinking: Theory, Measurement, and Research, Holt (2009) recounts his and his team's efforts to understand, assess, and explore this vague concept. As one of a group of bright students working with David Rapaport, Holt was exposed to attitudes and philosophy about psychoanalysis and the Rorschach that would serve him well throughout his career. Holt credits Rapaport for heading him in the right direction, but even his mentor would have been surprised by the discipline, energy, and creativity Holt gave to the process of unraveling and studying the many aspects of thinking, particularly primary process.
Early on Holt delineates six different Freudian views of thinking: dynamic, economic, topographic, structural, adaptive, and genetic (2009, p. 5). Each of these systems deals with primary process in a distinctive way. For example, in the economic model, “the cathecting (drive)-energy is free and easily capable of discharge by condensation and displacement” (Holt, 2009, p. 5); and in the adaptive model, primary process “cannot cathect anything unpleasant; it is ruled by the pleasure principle… [and] seeks gratification by the shortest path” (Holt, 2009, p. 5). Secondary process is also defined differently in each of the six systems. To this complex, confusing situation Holt brings a superordinate conviction: theories are mos