ABSTRACT
Motivational systems do not function in isolation or independently of each other. Rather, they self-organize and arrange themselves in hierarchies in which dominating motivations shift according to inner needs and environmental pressures. A motive that may be central at one moment may quite smoothly be subsumed by other motivations depending on external and subjective circumstances. In this chapter we illustrate the shifts, cooperation, and competition of motivations, as they unfold between patient and analyst. In this way we can also articulate the several levels of abstraction that link clinical phenomena with the level of motivational commonalities: perception, cognition, memory, affect, and awareness of one’s own activity, that is, the ability to self-reflect. In the chapter that follows we posit the basic, foundational level of human motivations as embodied in the theory of fractals.
