ABSTRACT
The introspective awareness of the observer may be lost in what consciousness seems to be as it emerges from the fragmentary development of the neural reticulum. Even though psychoanalytic theories of child development tend to be considered highly sophisticated, in reality they can easily become impoverished by the stereotyped exploitation that they themselves tend to perpetuate. So it may well be beneficial to review them from a different, neurophysiological, perspective. Balanced attention to both the psychoanalytic and the neurophysiological simply shows that introspective-identificatory receptiveness is naturally greater them descriptive-theoretical receptiveness but that without the latter identificatory receptiveness cannot be processed. The discrepancy spans the entire theoretical and clinical history of psychoanalysis and may be interpreted as a shortcoming of the psychoanalytical approach or just as an example of the immense richness of the mental dynamic. The need to place mental processes in a neurophysiological space suggests that their dynamic must have a correspondence in cerebral processes.
