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The Grid is an instrument for the use of practising psychoanalysts. It is not intended that it should be used during the working session.
The left-hand vertical column is an indication of categories in which a statement, of whatever kind, should be placed; this category indicates developmental status.
The horizontal axis is intended to state, approximately, the use to which the statement is being put. The two axes should thus together indicate a category implying a comprehensive range of information about the statement. It has been considered useful to include two rows for β- and α-elements neither of which are real or observable. The β-element row is for the categorization of elements like an unpremeditated blow which is related to, but is not, thought. The next row, C, is intended for categories of thought which are often expressible in terms of sensuous, usually visual, images such as those appearing in dreams, myths, narratives, hallucinations. This category will certainly require extension as psychoanalytic experience accumulates; even now it deserves a ‘grid’ of its own to expand it suitably for psychoanalytic use.
The use of the remaining categories may become clearer as the paper progresses but it may be as well to anticipate comment on rows G and H. These rows can hardly be said to have any approximation in reality. G is supposed to await the development of psychoanalytic deductive systems, and H the equivalent of algebraic systems. It is to be hoped, as always, that they will not be prematurely developed, for premature development can become as tiresome an obstacle to progress as post-maturity-blindness to what might already be seen to be available for practising or theoretical psychoanalysts.