Introduction

E. Berne’s development of transactional analysis provided a model in which different theories and perspectives could co-exist. Berne recognized that while the establishment of social control was the goal of the analysis of transactions and games, deconfusion of the Child required different levels and styles of intervention in order to work within the more emotional and transferential dynamics of the Child ego state. Christopher Bollas links his concept of the personal idiom to Sigmund Freud’s conceptualization of the id, which he describes as Freud’s “bold attempt to conceptualize this inner complex that fashions being” and to D. W. Winnicott’s accounts of the “True self.” Bollas’ work at that time had much in common with the perspectives of the emerging relational models. The chief executive of the Anna Freud Centre in London, Peter Fonagy, with others, helped to develop contemporary psychoanalytic theory by describing the rich and clinically sophisticated process of mentalization.