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Glover stresses the importance to the psychiatrist of a theoretical frame of reference. Recent increases in the scope of clinical psychiatry, which now concerns itself with far more than the treatment of the classical mental disorders, necessitate a frame of reference broad enough to encompass normal as well as abnormal mental phenomena. It is an advantage of Freud's theory that psychoanalytic structural concepts permit assessment of mental processes in terms of constitutional (id), developmental (ego and superego), and precipitating factors. The importance of any group of factors can be weighed in terms of the action of the other groups. The concept of the id is useful in understanding the relation between extramental phenomena, such as endocrine disorders and drug action, and the mental apparatus. Such phenomena can be thought of as operating through the id, and as being subject, like other id contents, to the central mental apparatus. The concept of the ego permits a structural approach to the understanding of personality development, and, through the concepts of fixation and regression, provides a series of measures along a developmental scale of disordered function. The concept of the superego gives due emphasis to the enormous importance of guilt in mental development, and brings mental theory into close relationship with the phenomena of conflict and suffering.
Glover suggests a plan for research: the problem, for example the nature of the sense of reality, is approached metapsychologically by applying a series of dynamic, structural, and economic criteria to its evaluation. Adoption of a theory of mind involves difficulties. Interpretation of data is a subjective technique subject to error, statistical units are poorly defined, and data must remain descriptive. The training analysis as a device for reducing subjective error is open to the criticism of indoctrination. Psychiatrists must fall back on the 'ultimate safeguards of an inexact science':