The primordial mind and the psychoses

Michael Robbins

Psychosis, 2012, vol. 4, issue 3, 258-268

Abstract: Primordial mental activity (PMA) is a normal way that mind works both in learning and expression that is qualitatively different from rational realistic self-reflective thought. It appears to have a distinctive neurological circuitry and to be present from the onset of life. It is driven by somatic sensation and affect, it is enactive and concrete, holistic and de-centered, and produces states of belief and actualization that disregard time and logical causality and do not distinguish internal from external reality. This modality is responsible for dreaming and it predominates in infancy and early childhood. In normal adult life many of its manifestations are ordinarily suppressed (unconscious) and others are more or less adaptively controlled and regulated by thought, including parent-infant bonding, spiritual states and creativity. In pathogenic developmental circumstances that thwart the development of thought and the integration of thought and PMA, the manifestations of PMA predominate in socially maladaptive ways we know as psychoses. Primordial mental activity (PMA) is a normal way that mind works both in learning and expression that is qualitatively different from rational realistic self-reflective thought. It appears to have a distinctive neurological circuitry and to be present from the onset of life. It is driven by somatic sensation and affect, it is enactive and concrete, holistic and de-centered, and produces states of belief and actualization that disregard time and logical causality and do not distinguish internal from external reality. This modality is responsible for dreaming and it predominates in infancy and early childhood. In normal adult life many of its manifestations are ordinarily suppressed (unconscious) and others are more or less adaptively controlled and regulated by thought, including parent-infant bonding, spiritual states and creativity. In pathogenic developmental circumstances that thwart the development of thought and the integration of thought and PMA, the manifestations of PMA predominate in socially maladaptive ways we know as psychoses.

Date: 2012
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DOI: 10.1080/17522439.2011.605905

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