Abstract

In a previous paper it was suggested that specific concepts are needed in the psychological sciences and the basic mental triad was described as a useful tool to further our understanding of mentation. It was stated that the sensori-motor reflex principle cannot describe and explain mental phenomena, because the reflex is basically a mechanistic occurrence, while mental phenomena differ in essence from mechanisms. Since conditioned reflexes can be conceived as sensori-motor reflexes with another, non-mechanistic factor superimposed, similarities and contrasts between reflexes and conditioned reflexes were taken as the material from which one can develop new thoughts about mentation. Reflex shutting of the eyelid, caused by direct contact between cornea and a small, invisible foreign body was compared with and contrasted to shutting the eye before a large, visible object thrusting toward the eye. It was shown that reflexes occur in response to a stimulus after the stimulus has been applied, while conditioned reflexes seem to anticipate the stimulus. This was taken as evidence that conditioned reflexes have a protensive character, have a relationship to the future, which sensori-motor reflexes lack. This difference in time relationship was developed into the statement that the difference between mechanisms and mental phenomena lies in their different relationship to the future. The need for specific concepts to describe mental phenomena stems from the inability of the reflex principle to deal with the protensive tendency of mental phenomena and to fill this need the concept of the basic mental triad was offered. This principle consists of three interdependent, interwoven phases: the triad connects with the past through condensation of some of the subject's past experience into a vaguely formed conglomerate; it connects with the future by projecting the condensed past into the future; the central phase of the triad is the act within the present instant, where a synthesis of past, present and future is accomplished.