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In this interesting paper the author attempts to validate some important analytic constructs, namely, the models for primary and secondary process thinking, by employing Helen Keller's recollections of her perceptual world in childhood as a natural experiment. The author points out that Helen's early childhood behavior described in her book, The World I Live In, supports Freud's and Rapaport's primary model of affect: drive at threshold ® absence of drive object ® affect discharge. He provides samples of her later behavior to illustrate the shift from primary process to secondary process thinking, emphasizing that the first important step toward the development of secondary process thinking results from 'structuralized delay'.
Emphasis is placed on the distinction between self and non-self in Helen's development as an important step in her capacity to attain the level of abstract thinking. He suggests two requirements for the experience of self-consciousness or awareness: 1, that the self as an object have a name; 2, that this object, self, have a function—the ordering of thought and behavior. Under these conditions attention cathexes can then be deployed in the service of the concept, self. He concludes that the study of Helen Keller's behavior fits the main requirements