ABSTRACT
Psychoanalytic theory gained much from Freud’s attempt to reorganize the topographic model of states of consciousness into hypothetical “structures” or groupings of functions—the id, ego, and superego. I (Lichtenberg, 1983b) have pointed out the problems of using an id-ego model to explain the findings of infant research. Despite these difficulties, other interpreters of the research findings (Weil, 1970; Tyson, 1982; Dowling, 1985) choose to retain these concepts as “container” formulations into which to fit the data of infancy and thereby retain the clinical utility the tripartite model has provided.
