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There are many creative and fruitful ways to survey the entire field of psychoanalysis and account for similarities and differences in its various paradigms. One such recent, informative, and challenging study by Greenberg and Mitchell (1983) encompassed the field in terms of its basic models: (1) the drive structure model; (2) the relational structure model; and (3) the mixed model. Greenberg and Mitchell's approach led them to examine the essential features of each psychoanalytic model and the model's clinical implications. They also made an in-depth comparison and contrast of all significant parameters of each basic model. By focusing on the main characteristics of each model, they were able to capture fundamental similarities and differences in the major competing theories.
It is possible, in a broad, historical-conceptual study such as theirs, to choose the parameters for examination so as to register the similarities and differences in the various models with sufficient objectivity. There may, however, be an unrecognized tendency or an explicit, goal-directed strategy to accentuate the similarities or the differences, depending on what one wishes to illustrate.
An important question remains: How does one decide whether the similarities or the differences are of greater significance or of overriding importance? In other words, there may be many similarities and only few differences–and yet, these few differences may sharply divide and render incompatible two models that also appear to have many similarities. The structural image of two similar chemical