ABSTRACT

Circumstances both internal and external activate needs in the developing person—­neonate, infant, child, adult—in successive tiers of complexity. This chapter refers to Edelman's theory of neural group selection or "Neural Darwinism". The author's point in articulating this preamble is twofold: (1) to stress the role of experience—particularly interactive human experience—not only in the dynamic evolution of styles of perception, memory, affect, and action but also in the very nature of need, and (2) to alert you to my usage of the term need. The crux of his concern lies at the intersection of two quite different levels of interaction: (1) the relation between analyst and patient as sentient, responsive human beings, and (2) the complex relationship between perception and response and their roles in modulating one another. The chapter also discusses a type of therapy characterized by a simplistic and highly manipulative reductionism, "Bolshevik therapy".