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The title of this paper includes such a large body of knowledge that an attempt to describe every detail in a single paper would be both a pretentious and fruitless exercise. Instead, I shall describe briefly how the psychology of skill acquisition is viewed in terms of a general conceptual framework and secondly, how such a model can be of use in considering some aspects of the learning process.

This note is a flashback to the time when the theory’s foundation was being laid. The foundation is a synthesis of psychological, mathematical, and philosophical ideas in a series of papers that appeared between 1967 and 1969 (Papers [1] – [18] in the List of Publications at the end of this book.) The note is the tip of this theoretical iceberg.

The purpose of this paper is to develop the thought that delusional formations fulfil a definite function; they are the expression of certain underlying trends in the individual, and they satisfy certain needs. At the present time there is a reaction against the tendency to regard classification as the ultimate aim of clinical psychiatry. While the separation of mental disorders into certain broad groups has its obvious uses, it is being recognised that classification in itself is not a very vital point, and it does not take us far in the understanding of our cases. Not only is each case a member of a particular group, but in a certain sense it is an entity in itself; the odd behaviour, the delusions and hallucinations, have an individual significance; they are the outgrowth of personal conflicts and aspirations, and the whole psychosis is no more than one form of reaction to experience.

The characteristics of life phenomena are analyzed and systematized into seven abstract systems: the exponentially multiplying system, the concomitant linearly multiplying system, the self-controlled system, the self-maintained system, the motor system, the sensory system and the sensory-motor co-ordination system. Each of the systems is analyzed phenomenologically on the physical basis so that life as an existing phenomenon may be understood on the foundation of physical science. The dynamical and statistical aspects of the analysis are left to another paper; the two together are an attempt to establish a general theory of life dealing with its nature, origin and evolution in terms of the first principles of physical science.