ABSTRACT
A side from the basic points of view of its metapsychology, the highest conceptual level in psychoanalytic theory is embodied in the various models of the mind. Each of these stands as a graphic analogue for one of the clinical theories of psychoanalysis. The hierarchical schema brought together all the disparate modes of psychic functioning encountered in the course of applying the psychoanalytic method with adults in the gamut of nosological conditions. In adults, the five modes are available simultaneously, that is, in a synchronic manner, except for those individuals whose development has been prematurely arrested. Progress in psychoanalysis has always, of necessity, followed a cyclical course: the acceptance of any innovation in the general theory of mental functioning necessitates a revision of the special theory of therapy. Psychoanalyses performed with the foregoing principles in mind yield clinical observations that did not receive much emphasis in the past.
