The structural theory and the representational world: developmental and biological considerations.

Although the intriguing question of whether the division into two viewpoints within the structural theory is a theoretical convenience or whether it mirrors fundamental psychobiological truths is not capable of full resolution at the moment, fortunately that resolution is not required for our usual clinical purposes. I believe that analytic work presents us with data readily conceptualized now from one, now from the other, viewpoint, so that analytic understanding benefits from the analyst's shifting his frame of reference from moment to moment in listening and associating to the patient's material. I believe that in every event within the analytic situation or in a person's life, our understanding is deepened and made more complete by approaching the phenomena from both vantage points, bearing in mind that the same ego we conceptualize as testing, assessing, and evaluating emergent drives is also assessing the congruence or discrepancy between the wished-for and perceived states of the representational world. These processes are occurring both in the analysand and in the analyst who is attempting to resonate with and understand the intrapsychic functioning of his patient. They constitute two observational vantage points within the structural theory, organizations of motives (Friedman, 1980) either of which may offer the most immediate access to understanding a particular segment of clinical material. I believe our understanding is most often deepened, however, by subsequent scrutiny in the light of the other model. I have tried here to supplement my previous exposition of a representational world point of view (J.G. Jacobson, 1983) by providing some of its developmental, ethological, and psychophysiological landmarks and underpinnings.