Chapter 25. Learning from Experience

1 The model may be regarded as an abstraction from an emotional experience or as a concretization of an abstraction. The latter has affinities with the transformation of an hypothesis into terms of empirically verifiable data. In the group the myth has some claim to be regarded as filling the same role in the society as the model has in scientific work of the individual.

2 As an example of a model I take the imaginary story of the infant learning the word Daddy. This story does not purport to be a fact. It is derived from experience of patients in analysis, observation of children, desultory reading, some of it philosophical, and other sources; in short it is derived from experience – my experience. It is an artefact composed of elements that have been selected by me from my store of experience. But it has been formed for a specific purpose; the selection and combination of elements is not fortuitous but is made to “explain” or illuminate the problem of abstraction. It has, therefore, no value as evidence; its value lies in the ease with which it can be communicated and compared with facts. By contrast the account of the patient who feels that words are things is not a model but an example; what I describe purports to be a realization. The model was made to illuminate the experience I had with a particular patient and is used for comparison with the realization. Potentially, every realization approximates to an abstraction or scientific deductive system even if one to which it corresponds has not yet been discovered (Chapter 20:4). When I compare model and realization it may result in my receiving the illumination I desire; or it may prove so unrewarding that I assume the model is worthless and discard it. Models are ephemeral and differ from theories in this respect; I have no compunction in discarding a model as soon as it has served or

failed to serve my purpose. If a model proves useful on a number of different occasions the time has come to consider its trans