ABSTRACT
I have argued against traditional regression theories that the person—the irreducible subject of psychoanalytic inquiry—is inextricably embedded in the developmental present. We can reframe so-called regressions as shifts between motives, defenses and emotional states, each of which emerges out of a lifespan of growth. The adult analysand shifts between positions, sometimes to evade, sometimes to confront the tasks and anxieties at play in the here-and-now. He does not return, because no one can return, to the psychological condition of childhood in which his problems originated. The work of development is, in this regard, the work of mourning what is lost forever.
