Prologue

Do psychoanalysts need models? The answer to this question was a self-evident “YES!” when Freud proposed his models of the mind in successive stages and revisions. Each model provided the growing psychoanalytic movement with a powerful tool with which to assimilate the data pouring in from new discoveries. But more than that, Freud's models ensured the expanding field with unifying concepts — hypothetical diagrams that all analysts could share and add to. Yet there has always been some undercurrent of dissent. Many analysts were loath to replace the topographic model with the structural one. Others have felt put off by Freud's philosophic speculations — seeing in models the witch metapsychology who would distract the clinician from his task of treating patients. Once the relative unity of the early period dissolved, models came under increasing question, should they be experience-near or more abstract and therefore more encompassing? In what language should they be expressed?

While it is possible to be troubled by such controversy, our view is that it represents a degree of success of the model-makers of the past. The more precise and refined a model becomes, the more its shortcomings can be appreciated. Although Freud was always somewhat fuzzy at the edges in his models, narrower focusing by later analysts from differing schools has exposed the limitations of both the old and newer models.

In this issue on psychoanalytic models we present two facets of the subject: new models that current analysts believe will best serve our theory and practice; and critiques or defenses of older models. As the reader will see, each paper represents both a proposed point of view and a direct or implicit critique of other proposals.

In “Models in the Mind: The Role of Theory in the Psychoanalytic Process,” William Meissner argues that all levels of theory exercise