Psyche The Selforganizing System: Three Essays by Peter Zagermann

Peter Zagermann derives psychic structure formation and pathogenesis from perception and understands the psyche as a self-organizing system, which has important consequences for the understanding of both normal as well as pathological development. In addition to the well-known phases of psychosexuality and the infantile paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions of object constitution, he introduces an initial pre-schizoid phase of psychogenesis in which the object cannot yet be split, the categories of space and time are not yet developed, and the object is, therefore, not yet experienced as a body. Immediate sensoriality is the governing principle of this pre-schizoid phase.

Peter Zagermann, PhD, is an IPA child, adolescent and adult psychoanalyst living and working in Munich, Germany.

Dr. Peter Zagermann presents a logically coherent and clinically plausible outline that draws on the findings of Sigmund Freud, Melanie Klein, and especially Francis Tustin. Tustin’s concept of “encapsulated autism” plays a pivotal role in understanding the primary object relationship. This framework could offer an entirely new perspective on psychoanalysis as a science.

 —Dr. phil. Hans-Volker Werthmann, Professor for Psychoanalysis, J.W. Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany