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This thought-provoking, clearly written book, proposes a 'schema' theory as an alternative to both the structural and topographic models. At the risk of oversimplifying this model, I will briefly summarize it. This theory, drawing on Piaget's theory of child development, views the difficulties of adult neurotic patients as essentially a misunderstanding of the present due to the continuation of childhood models of perceiving and cognizing reality. The adult neurotic patient is seen as operating on sequestered schemas, those schemas being described as 'freeze frames' of past views of people and childhood modes of understanding (and misunderstanding) them.
The unitary schema, termed ego, consists of the reality oriented, adaptive complex of ideas and the sequestered schema is organized 'around traumatic events and situations in childhood that were not mastered and assimilated …' When this sequestered schema leads to distress or symptoms it is termed a pathogenic schema. The sequestered schema, then, is a view of people, self, and the environment, that was formed at the traumatic point in development and contains views, cognitive style, and fantasies of that age period.
The goals the authors have set for themselves are important and worthy ones: to create a model that is close to clinical data, a model that integrates data from developmental psychology (here Piaget in particular), and a model that helps analysts make better interpretations to their patients. In some respects the authors achieve their goals while in more, in my opinion, they do not. Even in the areas where the goals are achieved, one has the gnawing feeling that existing theory and certainly existing practice by most competent analysts already comprehend these 'new' findings.
The notion that experiences of trauma are sequestered off and the mode of experience at the time of the trauma (the cognitive level of the child at the time) is also walled off, and that both lead to distortions later, is usef