Electroweak Physics - The Catastrophe of Success

The Standard Model of electroweak physics has proved to be one of the most successful models ever developed to describe the natural world. In this talk, some of these successes will be described briefly. It will then be discussed how the model itself is a patchwork of different ideas, held together with experimentally-fitted parameters, and should, by rights, be replaced by a more fundamental theory. Attempts at building such theories will be described and it will be shown how the runaway success of the Standard Model is now standing in the way of further progress - leaving us, for the present, in a predicament rather like the one described by Tennessee Williams in his poignant 1947 essay. Finally, some speculations about the possible future will be presented, in brief.