On Choosing a Guiding Theory for Treatment in a Pluralistic Psychoanalytic World: My Personal Journey

Abstract

This article is a reflection on the evolution of my becoming a self psychologist–psychoanalyst and the personal and professional factors that may have been responsible for this choice. I indicate that life experiences, supervision of control cases, and one’s Weltanschaung deeply affect this choice even when one is not fully conscious of them. Included among the factors affecting the choice is one’s personal analysis. I describe two clinical vignettes to illustrate this point. In my search, I was primarily motivated to find a psychoanalytic theory that could improve the therapeutic impact on all forms of psychoanalytic treatment modalities: brief-focal, long-term psychotherapy, and psychoanalysis—treatment modalities, which, in my view, constitute a continuum.