ABSTRACT
This chapter continues our categorial reconstruction at the societal-historical level of human psychical functioning. We shall first examine the nature of the qualitative transition from prehominid to Homo sapiens. This transition is not solely one of psychical functioning, but of the overall process of organic existence in which psychical functioning finds its place. In brief, it is a transition from a dominance of phylogenetic developmental processes to the societal-historical form of development that is both produced by and supersedes phylogenesis. We shall then examine some of the major methodological consequences of this transition. The implications for the fundamental restructuring of psychical categories can then be described.
