Psychoanalysis is made up of two related but different sets of ideas:

1.	The psychoanalytic theory of the mind - a fairly wide variety of ways to structure relationships between functions of mind
2.	The theory of psychotherapeutic practice - as it is embodied within a framework of intensive insight-oriented psychotherapy.

These two strands of knowledge are loosely coupled, with theoretical information guiding clinical work to some degree, while clinical experience serves selectively to inform theory:

• Historically, psychoanalysis as therapy came to be identified with the entire body of psychoanalytic knowledge:

• There was no uniform set of theoretical ideas, no common set of beliefs to which all psychoanalysts after Freud could adhere.
• Psychoanalysts achieved their identity through their adherence to certain aspects of the insight oriented clinical therapy which Freud originated (for example, the number of sessions of psychotherapy per week, the use of the couch with adults).
• In this way the technique of therapy came to define what psychoanalysis was.
• It therefore could not be modified or adapted to changing demands without destroying professional identity.

• But psychoanalytic theory and practice are not very closely linked:

• There has been a proliferation of psychoanalytic theories since the death of Freud, each proposing a radically different model of the mind.
• But there are relatively few differences in the way the therapy is practised across theoretical groups.

Mentalization-based interventions such as AMBIT do not draw on any specific psychoanalytic theory but rather draw on the idea that there is Hidden, private or implicit theory - that psychoanalysts hold about people (and which people may hold about psychoanalysts), and which cannot be found in books.

Thus our approach is psychoanalytic in this most generic sense of using an Implicit psychoanalytic model.