ABSTRACT
The author's ultimate goal in this chapter is to reevaluate these conceptions and to advocate a more generic way of dealing with the phenomena that each reflects and expresses. The chapter explores questions as how such motivational systems first come into being and take shape in the developing human being. Next, it discusses a consideration of need, wish, defense, centripetal versus centrifugal systems, and other topics related to motivational systems. The power of dynamic systems theory lies in its transcendence, by virtue of its insistent focus on process, of such age-old controversies as nature versus nurture, mind versus body, causes versus reasons, and so on. Gerald Edelman's Theory of Neuronal Group Selection (TNGS), or "Neural Darwinism", fits the "basic requirement for a plausible account of ontogeny that there be no homunculus in the brain or the genes directing the process".
