The authors present a model of psychic functioning which attempts to clarify psychoanalytic concepts. They stress adaptation as the basic function of the psychic apparatus. 'The apparatus responds … to only one basic regulatory principle … its own awareness of changes in the conscious or unconscious feeling state.' A distinction is made between the experiential and nonexperiential realms. Experiential content can be conscious or unconscious and refers to the experience of wishes, memories, fantasies, and feelings. Nonexperiential realm refers to forces and energies, mechanisms and structures, and is basically unknowable except as it influences or creates phenomena in the experiential realm. The 'feeling of safety' comes to play a major role in adaptation. The aim of the adaptive function of the psychic apparatus is to maintain a basic stability of feeling state, particularly the feeling of safety. 'The essence of conflict is the arousal of unpleasant feelings, and the apparatus will always find a solution which leads to the control of the feeling content of experience.'