Where is the Natural Phonology Phoneme in 2009?

The phoneme in Natural Phonology (NP) has a different status from that which it has in most versions of "generative" phonology and also from several other current functionalist phonological models. Unlike the generative view, the NP phoneme is a mental image of a fully specified sound. On the other hand, unlike the usage-based view, there is a single mental image which is modified online in production, while perception "undoes" the modification according to the speaker/hearer's dialect. This paper presents some arguments for the continuing validity of the NP view.