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This volume represents an effort by its authors to expand the pioneering work of Lichtenberg1 into a more broadly clinical treatise, and, fundamentally, they have done so successfully. They begin by reviewing the concept of motivational systems as psychological entities signifying observable behavioral patterns, present even in the newborn, that are built around “need.” The five motivational needs so far delineated by the authors include: psychic regulation of physiological requirements; attachment and later affiliation; exploration and assertion; reacting aversively through antagonism or withdrawal; and sensual enjoyment and sexual excitement. These motivational systems are considered to be derivations of lived experience alone, and throughout the book the authors attempt to restrict their findings and inferences to subjective experience. Specific motivational systems are seen to shift in primacy at different moments in an individual's life—the authors use a foreground-background perspective to indicate the salience of a given system at a particular time—with each system assigned personal meaning through “organizing principles and themes.” Organizing principles evolve from infancy onward, through repeated (conscious and unconscious) personal experience with caregivers in regard to each motivational system.
These organizing principles become apparent in treatment not only through transference elaborations but also through what the authors refer to as “model scenes”—emblematic narratives, collaboratively elaborated by patient and analyst, that combine past and present to give shape to salient motivational issues. The classic analytic paradigm of libidinal and aggressive drives as principle forces in human life (the “sensual” and “aversive” motives) is broadened to include other, primary concerns. The analyst learns of the relative