De Mendelssohn A, Fuchshuber J, Löffler-Stastka H. Motivation as developmental coordination: The generative arc as a heuristic framework for psychopathology. World J Psychiatry 2026; 16(9): 119718 [DOI: 10.5498/wjp.119718]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Henriette Löffler-Stastka, MD, PhD, Dean, Director, Professor, Department of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, Postgraduate Unit, Medical University Vienna, Währinger Gürtel 18-20, Vienna 1090, Wien, Austria. henriette.loeffler-stastka@meduniwien.ac.at
Research Domain of This Article
Psychiatry
Article-Type of This Article
review-article
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Baishideng Publishing Group Inc, 7041 Koll Center Parkway, Suite 160, Pleasanton, CA 94566, USA
Share the Article
De Mendelssohn A, Fuchshuber J, Löffler-Stastka H. Motivation as developmental coordination: The generative arc as a heuristic framework for psychopathology. World J Psychiatry 2026; 16(9): 119718 [DOI: 10.5498/wjp.119718]
World J Psychiatry. Sep 19, 2026; 16(9): 119718 Published online Sep 19, 2026. doi: 10.5498/wjp.119718
Motivation as developmental coordination: The generative arc as a heuristic framework for psychopathology
Arif De Mendelssohn, Jürgen Fuchshuber, Henriette Löffler-Stastka
Arif De Mendelssohn, Postgraduate Program of Psychotherapy Research, Medical University Vienna, Vienna 1090, Wien, Austria
Jürgen Fuchshuber, Department of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, Postgraduate Program of Psychotherapy Research, Medical University Vienna, Vienna 1090, Wien, Austria
Henriette Löffler-Stastka, Department of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, Postgraduate Unit, Medical University Vienna, Vienna 1090, Wien, Austria
Author contributions: De Mendelssohn A conceived the article and drafted the manuscript; Fuchshuber J contributed critical theoretical revisions; Löffler-Stastka H contributed critical revision and clinical integration; all authors read and approved the final manuscript.
AI contribution statement: ChatGPT (OpenAI, 2025-2026) was used to assist with drafting, restructuring, and language refinement under direct human supervision. All literature selection, interpretation, synthesis, and verification were performed by the authors, who retain full responsibility for the final manuscript. Additionally, the AI generated the initial SVG code for both figures based on the authors’ prompts, which the lead author subsequently refined manually using Inkscape 1.4.2 (f4327f4, 2025-05-13). All generated images were carefully reviewed, modified where necessary, and approved by the authors. The authors assume full responsibility for the authenticity, accuracy, copyright compliance, and scientific integrity of all final figures and graphical materials.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All authors declare no conflict of interest in publishing the manuscript.
Corresponding author: Henriette Löffler-Stastka, MD, PhD, Dean, Director, Professor, Department of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, Postgraduate Unit, Medical University Vienna, Währinger Gürtel 18-20, Vienna 1090, Wien, Austria. henriette.loeffler-stastka@meduniwien.ac.at
Received: February 4, 2026 Revised: March 9, 2026 Accepted: May 27, 2026 Published online: September 19, 2026 Processing time: 201 Days and 20.6 Hours
Abstract
Motivational dysfunction is a transdiagnostic feature of psychopathology and is often associated with chronicity and limited treatment response. This minireview introduces the generative arc as a heuristic framework for considering motivation in developmental terms, with emphasis on the coordination of novelty generation, epistemic regulation, and stabilization across timescales. Drawing on affective neuroscience, developmental psychopathology, and computational perspectives, the framework is used to organize patterns of motivational rigidity, instability, and mixed organization over time. From this perspective, psychopathology may involve excessive constraint, insufficient stabilization, or domain-specific combinations of both, with potential relevance to clinical heterogeneity and treatment resistance. Processes related to SEEKING, PLAY-consistent learning-permissive states, and neuromodulatory influences including dopamine and serotonin are discussed as illustrative contributors rather than definitive mechanisms. The generative arc is not proposed as a diagnostic model or comprehensive mechanistic account, but as a cautious conceptual vocabulary for clinical formulation and for future research on motivational organization in psychopathology.
Core Tip: Motivational difficulties in psychiatry often reflect how motivation is organized over time rather than the specific content of beliefs or emotions. The generative arc offers a developmentally informed, transdiagnostic heuristic that may help clinicians and researchers think more clearly about rigidity, volatility, and treatment resistance without proposing new diagnoses or mechanisms.
