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Discussion. Lawrence Friedman. Pp. 339-348.
Conscious and Unconscious. Gilbert Voyat. Pp. 348-358.
Piaget's theories of cognitive development concern the acquisition of knowledge through mechanisms that become equilibrated via a hierarchical integration of schemes. These schemes interact with external objects and concomitantly are modified by the growing individual. The awareness of these schemes, the understanding of them that leads to the regulation of behavior, had been termed by Piaget the grasp of consciousness. In psychoanalysis the understanding of one's self is termed insight. To achieve a closer correlation between Piaget's cognitive theories and clinical psychoanalysis, Tenzer suggests that the process of discovery in psychoanalysis is analogous to the child's discovery of his world. Integrating some of Piaget's experimental work with some well recognized phases in psychoanalytic work, Tenzer establishes four stages of the process of grasping consciousness and obtaining insight: 1) the presence and beginning awareness of unconscious behavior; 2) the working through by viewing experience within different contexts; 3) the attainment of self-observation and 4) the integration of partial insights leading to reflective abstractions.