ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the struggles of a young woman, L, a lawyer in her mid-20s, the patient of a colleague of mine, who seeks out psychoanalytic treatment for reasons that are fairly typical among patients today. L feels unclear about who she is and is confused and troubled by her reactions to her boyfriend, a painter, about 20 years her senior. She reported one repetitive scenario, emblematic of their current situation, in which she would be working diligently at her desk while he danced nearby, silently yet expressively, clad only in a towel. The problems in their relationship reached crisis proportions with a visit to some distant relatives of his whom she found odd. L's analyst is a highly skilled clinician who thinks along self-psychological lines. Freud's portrayal of the relationship between the ego and the superego is the original paradigm from which derives much current psychoanalytic theorizing.
