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The concepts of "psychic structure" and of "structural change" are among the most central but also among the most problematic within the psychoanalytic theory of therapy and of change. The unclarities in the range of different definitions, meanings, and usages that exist in the literature are reviewed. Among them is that "structure" and "structural change" are understood differently depending on one's theoretical point of view in psychoanalysis. Clinical material is presented from a research-studied completed psychoanalysis that illustrates these various theoretical dilemmas and unclarities as they emerge in the effort to assess empirically the degree and kind of structural change that occurred in this treatment. A new empirical research approach to this effort to delineate "structure" and "structural change" is then presented. This is done by formulating assessable "psychological capacities" (character propensities) that adherents of all prevailing psychoanalytic theoretical perspectives can agree ar attributes that comprehensively describe personality functioning and that will necessarily shift if there is "underlying" change in intrapsychic structures, however those intrapsychic structures or that structural change are conceptualized. A table is presented which lists fifteen thus far designated "psychological capacities" and indicates the two (or more) directions of pathologic deviation on each. A research program based on these conceptions is outlined.