Committed to a Single Model and Open to Reality

Abstract

A view prevails that holding multiple models enhances analytic work, enriches our understanding of pathology, offers different methods of working to meet the needs of a range of patients, and reflects openness to other approaches and the complexity of reality. Against this view it is argued, based on an examination of the nature of analytic models, that because they present comprehensive, divergent conceptions of the person and of analysis, their integration in the context of clinical work, or any shifting between them, is impossible. Although under certain circumstances multiple models seem to be held, in fact this is not so. Adherence to one’s commitment to a single model facilitates, rather than constricts, openness to reality and awareness of its complexity.