According to Arnold M. Cooper, the contemporary conceptual disputes in psychoanalysis include: the central role of the Oedipus complex; the significance of the actual environment of maturation; the infant as inevitably conflicted or in potential harmony with its environment; the relative values of a one-person versus two-person psychology; the role of the analyst's actual behavior in the elaboration of the patient's transference and in the curative process; and the nature of the therapeutic element in psychoanalysis.

Modell's wide-ranging book, Other Times, Other Realities, addresses most of these issues and introduces another one, the integration of neuroscience research with a psychoanalytic view of the mind. Modell's ambitious undertaking is an explication of the psychoanalytic process from an explicitly object-relations view, emphasizing the contributions of Winnicott. This book, however, is not a comprehensive presentation of Winnicott's theories, a knowledge of which would benefit the reader in understanding Modell.