Arlow (1985) presents the case of a businessman in his forties who is in
"conflict over the wish to acquire his father's prized possessions" (p. 29).  A
dream is analyzed in terms of the derivatives of this wish in which the
"contributions of each one of the psychic agencies--ego, id, or superego--is
apparent in the material, and the forms and methods of their combinations and
compromise lay down distinct guidelines for the future course of therapy" (p.
30).
It is not clear, however, that the structural theory is an explanatory
hypothesis in the true sense of the term.  The clinical material presented by
Arlow is accounted for by the interaction of specific wishes with specific
defenses.  The concepts of ego and id represent collections of causal factors.
The postulation of ego and id as theoretical entities add nothing to the
explanatory power of Freud's theory and are therefore unwarranted by the
principle of parsimony which is an essential guide to theory construction.

I present this as a different approach to eliciting discussion of basic
psychoanalytic theory by combining abstract questions with clinical material. I
hope it will evoke a more useful response than the irritation caused by my
repeated harping on the avoidance of discussion in psychoanalysis.
Eric Gillett, M.D.  [log in to unmask]