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In The Schema in Clinical Psychoanalysis, Slap and Slap-Shelton present their version of the schema model. This presentation makes an important contribution to our understanding of psychopathology and psychoanalytic treatment by recasting Freud's ideas in Piagetian terms. It also represents a critique of the structural
model and an attempt to propose a superior alternative to it while remaining within a Freudian tradition.
In devising their schema model, the authors apply Piaget's ideas about how the mind works and develops to explain the genesis of psychopathology, the nature of psychological structure, and the treatment process. Following Piaget, they posit that the mind is characterized by two main functions: organization and adaptation. Organization refers to the tendency to systematize one's actions, perception, and thought. This tendency leads people to evolve schemata or representational structures that integrate memories, affects, perceptions, and factual knowledge. People then use these schemata to construct their perceptions and direct their behavior. Adaptation involves the complementary processes of assimilation and accommodation, which enable individuals to maintain accurate perception and appropriate behavior. In assimilation, people modify data to fit previously existing schemata. In accommodation, they change their schemata to adjust to new information.
During ideal development, people employ assimilation and accommodation to evolve well-integrated schemata that are realityoriented and that facilitate adaptive behavior. The potentiality for psychopathology results when children confront traumatic events to which they cannot accommodate. An experience becomes traumatic when it evokes painful affect and when it cannot be integrated by the person into his existing schema. Like Freud, the authors postulate that traumas stem from the interplay between environmental events and phase-specific psychosexual fantasies. Applying Piaget's findings about cognitiv