Choice as the Basis for Mentation

DEAR DR HAYLEY,

It is not the fact that I disagree with Dr Linnell's interesting and original ideas about the development of pleasure, choice and conflict in normal infancy, and about the primitive personalities, that prompts this letter; rather it is Dr Linnell's choice to construct his contribution on significant misunderstandings of my work and that of others.

Linnell asserts that the model I have proposed lacks a developmental dynamic and a therapeutic principle (the concept of choice). Because he does not differentiate the concepts contingency, choice, and conflict, which, I believe, reflect different levels of mental complexity in a developmental hierarchy, he misinterprets my hypothesis—that the capacity to experience intrapsychic (neurotic) conflict does not develop until around 18 months of age—to mean that I do not believe younger infants detect contingencies and make choices. Although I have not written specifically about the therapy of primitive personalities, he is also convinced that I do not believe intrapsychic conflict develops in their treatment. Somehow he has failed to note that much of my 1981: I, and 1983 paper is devoted to explicating how the progressive autonomy of the mental apparatus enables increasing complexity of choice, beginning with the choice to be alone and reflective enabled by the unconditional symbiotic representation of pleasure in the early months, progressing to the choice to agree or disagree with the primary object during the second year. Nor has he noted that the case of N (1983) illustrates a primitive personality beginning to experience conflict.

Linnell discards my concept of pathological symbiotic bonding in primitive personalities because he believes it does not take into consideration the absence of pleasure representation. Although he contradicts himself on this point (see p. 354), this assertion is also untrue. See, for instance, 1981: II, pp. 388–390; 1982, p. 470, and 1983, p. 145, for statements that it is