Abstract

Reciprocity with primary care-givers affects subjects’ adaptive abilities towards the construction of the most
useful Personal Meaning Organization (PMO) with respect to their developmental environment. Over the last ten
years we analyzed the post-rationalist approach focusing on the construction of a specific framework for
distinguishing immediate experience from explanations of the experience, the slow-motion (“moviola”)
technique, and the analysis of awareness and resistance. Neuroimaging (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging,
fMRI), genetic polymorphism investigations and new psychodiagnostic post-rationalist tests (Mini Questionnaire
of Personal Organization, MQPO, and Post-Rationalist Projective Reactive, PRPR) were used to conduct a
scientific in vivo study of PMO. The presence of specific and stable clinical patterns both in inward and outward
subjects was supported by parallel differences in cerebral activation during emotional tasks at fMRI and in the
different expression of some polymorphisms concerning serotonin pathways; Furthermore, validation data
concerning both a questionnaire (as MQPO) and, crucially, a projective test (as PRPR) allowed to distinguish
four organizational profiles, confirming their adaptive significance in assimilation of experience. Focusing on the
PMO promotes the emergence of adaptive individual resources, thereby improving skills needed to control
perturbing emotions and to apply more flexible behaviour strategies.

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