John -Thanks for your comments. I was in the process of replying to your last posting RE: Freud but I had not yet done so. Your new comments: "I would guess that most scientists..." you are distinguishing yourself ("I") from something "out there" ("scientists"), and that's where the game starts." At first read, I more or less agree with your comment. However, in my other posts I was speaking about writing and reading formal scientific models and papers of which my vernacular speech quite clearly is not. "Also, I imagine you are making a huge mindread about a lot of people you don't know and haven't spoken to about the framework they're working in, which you've already made with psychoanalysts without really knowing how they use their models." Not quite. I've read and critiqued quite a bit of research (mainly in Psychology and Motor development)as well as interact (nearly continously) with clinical and research psychologists and therapists - those are the sources from which I am building my generalizations from. Go to your local university library and sample journals from a variety of disciplines - you can find the information quite easily (just as you found it in my last post). To be on a board that concerns NLP and answer questions from someone who takes Psychoanalysis seriously is quite ludicrous. Where would you like to start? The nonsense that change requires "insight" - An interesting assertion that has no scientific support. Or perhaps the idea that the "past" (whatever that is) plays some type of causal-role in a person's present functioning? (i.e. 18th century newtonian physics applied part and parcel to the biological world)Of course, since I disagree with Freud, I am obviously "in denial" and have some deep seated urge to sleep with my mother's hamster.   My take on Freud is quite simple. From his clients he uncovered very real and quite disturbing evidence regarding the sexual abuse of children. He was roundly and savagely criticized for presenting his results. The society of his time could not, would not, tolerate or consider a world in which parents would assualt their children sexually. Frued's response? He came back with his theory of childhood sexuality and asserted that the clients were fantasing the abuse and in fact as children had unconscious urges to have sex with there parents. If this works for you John, go for it. Personally, I find it abhorrent. Literature on psychoanaylis abounds with examples. I remember a case of a woman who was raped in wartime. To the analyst, of course, the rape was part of her "sublimated" desire to be possessed by the men who raped her. In other words, "she was asking for it." If you want to find other examples you'll have to do your due dilligence and find them on your own. Alice Miller is a good popular writer to start with. From her work you can find further sources. Ryan