Traveling into Inner Space: An American Psychoanalytic Odyssey: From Ego Psychology to Pluralism

Abstract

The author discusses his development from a student of basic classical psychoanalysis into a self-psychologically oriented contributing psychoanalyst. Inevitably such a development can be grasped and understood reasonably only in relation to the context of the contemporaneous maturation of his personality. The latter in turn requires a close look at the historical situation and events that were of pivotal influence. Thus the description of the dynamic transformation of a scientific outlook becomes inextricably merged with selected but powerfully mutative autobiographical fragments. Specifically, growing up in Nazi Germany as a member of an intimately experienced close Jewish family resulted in psychological structures that were liberated from many defensive constraints by America's seemingly unlimited space and responsible freedom to explore. Wolf describes how the possibilities presented by time and place were mediated into inner transformations by close association with leading psychoanalysts. Thus an experience-distant Freudian became an experience-near Kohutian.