I don't have an answer, but I think I can clarify the question:
In the built-in IOS Photo app, you can create Albums, which are essentially folders of aliases. So I created the album Selva Verde fauna, for photos of animals I'd taken in the Costa Rican lowlands. In iPhoto, this album seems to be inaccessible: all I see is my iPhone device name (say, David's iPhone) and the photos in my Camera Roll. So all the time I spent selecting photos is wasted, and I have to guess which are the edited versions I've tweaked in Filterstorm (a truly fantastic app: 70% of Photoshop's capabilities for 2% of the price!). To make things even more irritating, in the iPhone Photos app the images are in chronological order, so edited versions always come after originals. iPhoto, however, puts them right next to the original image.
What I'd like, and I think it's what Sam's asking for, is a way to import albums from the iPhone, instead of just individual images.