In this paper, the proposition is developed that multi-model thinking with respect both to theories of mind and to theories of technique has always been implicitly present in psychoanalytic practice as a response to the demands of the clinical moment. But this has gone unnoticed and untheorised, in part because it is hidden in general considerations regarding tact, timing and (less discussed) variations in voice tone and also because our psychoanalytic practices, without our awareness but as adaptations to the clinical moment, do not always match our theories. The author offers reasons from the broad culture of psychoanalysis why this is so. He also offers a conceptualisation and a strategy for raising the implicit and untheorised to heightened levels of awareness; he does this by highlighting the place of patient characteristics as the underpinning of theory variation and the place of a vast array of clinical possibilities as the backdrop of analytic listening. Clinical examples are used throughout.