ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author prefers to see the primary and secondary processes rather as different strategies that the mind can use to contextualize experience, and so as different aspects of the core mental process. S. Freud introduced the distinction between the process thinking on the basis of the distinction between the pleasure principle and the reality principle. The type of thinking whose aim is to maximize pleasure and minimize pain through purely mental strategies constitutes the primary process. The type of thinking involved in the secondary process has the same aim, but acknowledges that purely mental strategies are not enough, and so seeks to accommodate mental strategies to the demands of the external world in order to come up with truly workable strategies to avoid pain and maximize pleasure. Taken at face value, Freud's theory implies that in the continually wishfully hallucinating infant there is no difference between the mental activity that occurs during the waking and sleeping states.
