Foreword

THIS COMPENDIUM OWES MUCh to the Chairman of the Program Committee of the American Psychoanalytic Association, Dr. Paul DeWald, and his colleagues on that committee. They searched for a topic for the 75th Anniversary of the American Psychoanalytic Association that would characterize the intellectual and clinical efforts of psychoanalysts during the past 25 years, and decided wisely on Psychic Structure. The papers presented at the panels have been rewritten in expanded form for this volume, and we have added a complementary section to cover specialized areas of knowledge that have an interface with psychoanalysis. The implications of structure as used in psychoanalysis are well spelled out in the sections devoted to development, adult structure as seen from a variety of vantages, and the effects of treatment on structure. The essays bring the reader up to date on what structure means within each framework and how it is employed to make clinical phenomena comprehensible.

However, reading this volume will not convince anyone that the last word has been written about this compelling concept. Indeed, the process of understanding structure is very much alive in continuing debates about its definition, its application, and above all, the clinical and empirical data used to signify its presence. Ample discussion is afforded the central premise that Freud's structural theory is not all of what is meant by structure. Moreover, the structure-function relation of general biology is revised to account for psychological systems considered apart from the brain. The mind as a functional structure has its own rules of organization that may parallel brain function, but has not proved to be isomorphic. In addition, recent incursions on psychoanalytic thought from other disciplines have required definition of what is meant by structure as new