ABSTRACT
The scheme began as a way of measuring key concepts in the psychoanalytic theory of thinking: the primary process and adaptive versus maladaptive regression. Despite the fact that most psychoanalytic sources asserted that the odd formal features of primary process thinking arise because of defenses against the crude drives that motivate it, the scheme takes no position on the point. Empirically, it happens that the motivationalhere called content-aspects of primary process are only moderately correlated with its formal aspects; therefore, they are scored separately.
