ABSTRACT
In Freud’s psychological system, the goal of appetite satisfaction occupied a role of preeminence; clearly, it was the only human aim that Freud regarded as significant in pathogenesis. Mental life begins with a phase of uncoordinated, discrete goals that can be viewed as separate nuclei of function. The elaboration of the self-organization is thus a basic psychobiological phenomenon, a process incapable of detection through reflexive self-awareness and not to be confused with a development characterized by volition. The enduring dynamic effect of the organization of a cohesive hierarchy of personal goals was not entirely neglected in the earlier literature of psychoanalysis. The child’s hierarchy of goals and values becomes sufficiently stabilized to guide his actions, more or less independently of immediate environmental influences, only after the structuralization of the superego.
