At the conclusion of my academic career, I was privileged when the University of New South Wales convened a Festschrift. This paper captures a number of themes addressed in my presentation at the Festschrift. I overview a long personal focus on models, involving service delivery, diagnostic criteria and management of psychiatric conditions. I also detail a personal ‘triple M’ model underlying many research studies taken over my career and composed of modelling, measuring and management phases, optimally logically linked. I also argue for the melding of implicit thinking (or ‘gut instinct’) and explicit thinking in psychiatric research and practice. While my research time has largely concluded, I suggest that psychiatric theorizing and management may well have a new paradigm in play involving the gut microbiome.
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