The Process of Constructing the Self and Its Relation to Psychotherapy

Further, somatic arousal itself creates sensory stimulation that is processed through the limbic system and may lead to further arousal, i.e., it may create self-maintaining feedback loops. Arousal is experienced as unfocussed anxiety that disposes individuals to prepare to protect themselves. As with cognitive information, the representation may be accurately predictive or erroneous. When it is erroneous, it can lead to the anxiety disorders. In cognitive psychology, this form of representation is called perceptual memory (Schacter & Tulving, 1994); because the focus in attachment is on danger- or sexrelated stimulation, the term selected is imaged memory, where the images may be visual, auditory, tactile, gustatory, or olfactory. Implicit knowledge. Both of these forms of representation are preconscious and preverbal, function at least as early as birth, and organize behavior in predictable and familiar ways very rapidly, far more rapidly than conscious processing permits. In addition, both memory systems are composed of organized pathways of firing neurons, some of which reflect externally generated stimulation from the non-self and some internally generated stimulation from the self. Such neuronal pathways constitute the most basic form of representing the relation between self and non-self. Procedural and imaged memory can be considered core aspects of self that function rapidly, self-protectively, and below consciousness across the life-span. Self, non-self, and strategies for eliciting protection in infancy. Parent-infant interaction fosters transformation of basic reflexes into context-adapted patterns of behavior. Two aspects of this are important. The first is universal and consists of the cognitive and affective transformations. Each creates a dispositional representational model (DRM) that can be used to organize behavior. When both procedural (cognitive) and imaged (affective) representations dispose the infant to the same response, action proceeds without interruption. When they yield different DRMs, cortical processing can resolve the discrepancy by discriminating the stimuli more accurately (in the sensory cortices) or differentiating more fully the possible responses and their expected effects (in the prefrontal cortex). Cortical processing both permits erroneous information to be corrected and also takes more time than precortical processing. If the danger is eminent, this time can expose the infant to harm.