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ABEND INTRODUCED THE PANEL by acknowledging the difficulties inherent in the panelists' task of first attempting to define psychic structure and then of determining what clinical signs they take as evidence of change in these structures. He noted that while the differences among the panelists were far-reaching and significant, there was agreement on at least two matters—first, that the transference is the vehicle through which these changes come about, and second, that behavioral or symptomatic change is not to be taken as one and the same with structural change, which implies a more thorough alteration in mental functioning. Reformulating the panel's task more precisely, he suggested that the panelists narrow their focus and discuss how they see the transference as a means for altering psychic structure, and what technical considerations, if any, they derive from their viewpoint.
The opening paper, "The Assessment of Structural Change as a Problem in Psychoanalytic Therapy (and Psychoanalytic Therapy Research)" was presented by Wallerstein. Beginning with a historical overview, Wallerstein cited D. Rapaport's conceptualization of structures as "controls and defenses whose rates of change are slow" as being seen by many as perhaps the most succinct and definitive in the psychoanalytic literature. In his 1960 monograph on The Structure of Psychoanalytic Theory, Rapaport contrasted these relatively abiding determiners of behavior and symptom with the drive processes, which he characterized as having a rapid rate of change and a paroxysmal course. J. Sandler and W. G. Joffe, writing in 1969 on the "Basic Psychoanalytic Model," further differentiated mental functioning into the experiential realm and the nonexperiential realm, with the latter