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This paper, which pieces together the many scattered yet far-reaching and important contributions of Schilder to the theory of thought processes, makes in essence three points.
1. In our time, dynamic psychology breaks into camps. Some camps are still spellbound by the discovery of id dynamics and will not hear about the role of ego dynamics and the dynamics of interpersonal relationships. Others, either fascinated by the new fields of ego dynamics and of interpersonal relations, forget what was learned about id dynamics; or, striking the pose of the innovator, iconoclast, or that of 'modernism', decry id dynamics as orthodoxy. This paper asserts that Schilder saw that the development of the psychodynamic theory, and particularly of the theory of thought processes, cannot but take into consideration id dynamics, ego dynamics, as well as dynamics of interpersonal relationships, and even what nowadays is called 'psychosomatics'.
2. Schilder considered the human being to be born related to his physical and social environment. By his perceptual apparatuses in particular, and by his make-up in general, he is so constituted as to be attuned to reality, including interpersonal relations. Socialization and perceptual grasp on reality are inborn potentialities which evolve but do not come about by the processes of projection, introjection, identification. By this conception Schilder anticipated the work of Hartmann, Kris, and Loewenstein—i.e., the most recent development of psychoanalytic ego psychology.
3. Schilder's conception of thought processes integrates inborn apparatuses of thought, motivation of thought and the apparatuses into which thought function crystallizes. Thought to him is not a complicated conditioned response,