ABSTRACT
Eating and eliminating, activity and passivity, quiescence and crying, wakefulness and sleep are central to the preservation of life. Consequently many psychoanalysts have attempted to use the psychic regulation of these activities and states in infancy as building blocks for their theories. Lewin’s (1950) oral triad, Glover’s (1943) ego nucleus, and Freud’s (1915) ego instincts of self-preservation are examples. Other psychoanalysts (e.g., Guntrip, 1971) have been critical of the biological basis of concepts built around physiological needs. All psychoanalysts, from Freud on, have clearly demarcated a psychological level of representation of these bodily happenings and their regulation. In referring to a motivational system based on the psychic regulation of physiological requirements, I too demarcate a psychological level of conception. Contemporary infant research supports the developmental significance of these basic physiological underpinnings but casts their psychic organization in a different guise. This view emphasizes the regularities of organization of infant “states” over the 24-hour cycle.
