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Professor Werner's book introduces psycho-analysts to an area of psychological research which bears closely upon many aspects of psycho-analytical thinking. His aim is to show how adult mentation is the end product of a developmental process. By means of a comparative study of child mentality, of the primitive, and of the mentally abnormal he demonstrates the trend towards an increasing differentiation and refinement of mental phenomena. This is accompanied by a progressive hierarchization of mental processes. When examined in detail this approach is almost identical with Freud's description of the manner in which the mind abandons the primary process in favour of the secondary process. And just as in the case of the primary process, primitive thinking remains active in the adult playing an essential rôle in adjustment to both the external environment and to the demands of the needs. Although Werner utilizes a different nomenclature, he isolates the mechanisms of condensation and displacement and points to them as representative of the mode of primitive thinking.
Like Freud, Werner looks to somatic processes for the essence of the mental. Every mental function passes through a series of developmental stages. Conceptual thought, for example, has its initial mental representation in the form of sensorimotor schemata. In this, as in many other instances, Werner's views coincide with those of Piaget. According to Werner, the developmental process, which affects all functions equally, results from a progressive differentiation of the self as a discrete entity. This hypothesis is employed to explain all the psychological manifestations which are to be encountered in young children, in pathological states, and in primitive peoples. The less developed the idea of self the more 'regressive' the mental phenomena become. There is no place, in Werner's formulations, for the concept of a dynamic unconscious. The precursors of adult mental processes are only unconsci