Roy Schafer's desire to preserve psychology's focus on personal responsibility persuades him to favour a concrete model of the mind and to shun abstraction.

Because abstractions are necessary in our thinking, Schafer's action language cannot subsitute for orthodox psychoanalytic descriptions. It does not adequately describe latent responses and it is not consistent. In order to serve Schafer's purpose, the term 'action' must be used equivocally as meaning on the one hand a concrete doing and, on the other, the form or nature of a doing.