Introduction

Psychoanalytic models have always emerged from the dialectic between clinical experience and the observer —experiencer's need to organize that experience in some abstract conceptual framework. These hypothetical constructs are influenced by the observer's personality as well as by his personal and professional value systems, and by prevailing theories in other disciplines. The first psychoanalytic model emerged from the collaborative efforts of Breuer and Freud. Breuer returned to his medical practice in defensive flight from erotic counter-transference. Freud persevered, and through clinical experience and self-analysis, particularly dream analysis, found Breuer's theories, especially the hypnoid model and the actual seduction theory, wanting. Freud discovered infantile sexuality, the Oedipus complex, and transference; he proposed the topographic model of the mind, and described the dreamwork characteristic of the wish-fulfilling function of dreams.

Subsequent clinical experience influenced Freud to emend his model and propose an alternative model, the structural hypothesis, and a corresponding revised theory of anxiety.

Before psychoanalysis was out of its teens, Jung and Adler had questioned some of Freud's hypotheses and emphases. This questioning process regularly resulted in some questioners disassociating themselves from Freud and those of his collaborators who agreed with Freud. These partings were anything but