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Perceptual stimuli may be regarded as relatively structured or unstructured according to the complexity of conceptualization which they evoke. But in any conceptualization there is always an element of ambiguity. In effect one perceives not an object but a cluster of related ideas. Because the elements of a cluster vary in importance according to its context, the ego must scan the cluster for the most pertinent meanings. This implies that the ego discriminates reality in two stages.
The author confirms his description of the process by means of examples of its breakdown in patients with brain injuries. He also shows that the mechanisms of the primary process obtrude themselves into the faculty evaluations of reality which follow.
Although the scanning process must operate in the preconscious its effective reverberations must affect the unconscious. Since experimentally a visual stimulus is more quickly recognized if it corresponds to a wish, the author puts forward the hypothesis that the wished-for elements in a cluster are scanned first.
He then uses this theory to explain the phenomenon of prägnanz or 'closure' in Gestalt psychology, and conjectures that the wish on these occasions is the product of the conflict-free sphere of the ego.
Finally he attempts a partial explanation of the