[Patterns: release and restriction. Phenomenologic analysis of the tendency to maintain drives and affects in mental patients and healthy subjects]

The following article concerns the 'maintenance' of drive and affects in normal and psychopathological cases. It will be demonstrated how the 'maintenance' of single mental though contents modifies the flux of consciousness and thus has a bearing on several cognitive functions. Another aspect of our study is pointed towards the use of patterns of behavior, which, on the one hand, can facilitate personal decisions and thus cause a widening of the individual's personal scope of freedom or, on the other hand, especially if strongly emotion-bound, can reduce the mental manoeuverability up to the point where the individual has lost his autonomy to these patterns as described above.