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LANGS' MAJOR CLINICAL CONTRIBUTIONS have been in the area of appreciating the latent content of patients' productions by deciphering encoded material. He has shown that the instigation of derivative material invariably involves the therapist's interventions. The validity of his interpretations is demonstrated by the derivative confirmation or disconfirmation contained in the material following interpretation. The scientific method expects that theories predict results. And, indeed, skeptical, open-minded practitioners have been able to duplicate Langs' results. His interests have led him to investigate the nature of unconscious priorities: his seven-fold dimensions of unconscious mentation were determined by analyzing the various preoccupations of derivative communication. And now he has described a new model of the mind to help understand the dual nature of mental functioning (Langs, 1986a), (1986b).
Langs has formulated a topographic model that explains the voluminous clinical data he and colleagues have collected over the past seven years. Basically, he claims that an emotional message is passed along to a "message analyzing center" (MAC, a switching