Motivational Systems and Model Scenes with Special References to Bodily Experience

The motivational systems underlying the behavior of recalcitrant and verbally uncommunicative patients are viewed and discussed in terms of emerging self with other. The painful sensations and misperceptions of bodily experience in infancy can reoccur during treatment or have become a habitual way of being in the world. They must be understood and worked through in order to facilitate symbolization and sufficient distance from bodily sensations to allow renewed psychological growth. Five motivational systems are said to aid and express needs such as help in sustaining physiologic requirements, need for attachment, assertion of preferences, development of healthy assertion, and the need for sensual enjoyment. Affective experiences associated with each system in infancy set the pattern for later behavior. It becomes clear that during treatment patients reclaim and begin to understand such “sensation” language. The therapist is then called upon to translate the arising metaphors.

Ten “principles of psychoanalytic technique” are then offered. Every effort is made to comprehend the patient's affective experience, either during recall of experiences or in the present. Of particular interest is the stance of the therapist during such therapeutic encounters. Rather than adopting the traditional position of interpreting the present in terms of the past, empathic attention is given to affect and emotion in the here and now.