ABSTRACT
In response to my conception of “model scenes” in the Prologue to the Psychoanalytic Inquiry issue on Application of Infant Research to Adult Psychoanalytic Treatment, Gunsberg (1987) wrote:
“Psychoanalytic researchers have studied infants in their homes and in laboratory settings, usually within the context of the infant-mother relationship. The questions they ask have to do with what can be learned about the presymbolic era, when the infant has experiences which are not represented symbolically and which are not, therefore, likely to be available to the patient and analyst. If early experiences either are not coded or are coded in a form different from that of adult memory, perhaps research and longitudinal observation can help provide the pictures, images, or ‘model scenes’ that are either reorganized on a symbolic level, or are lost forever [p. 301].
