This article recounts the 30-year history of the strong adaptive (communicative) approach and the accomplishments to which it lays claim. On the basis of its unique listening-formulating-validating process, the approach argues for the primacy of unconscious perception over unconscious fantasy and other inner mental trends and for a revised topographic model of the mind in lieu of the structural model. Among its avowed achievements are a formal science of psychoanalysis and human communication; an intricate, working model of the emotion-processing mind; an illuminating scenario for the evolution of this mental module; and the in-depth delineation of 3 forms of death anxiety that are believed to be the fundamental basis for both human creativity and emotional maladaptations. The article concludes with a discussion of likely reasons for the present-day marginalization of the strong adaptive approach by many practicing psychotherapists.