ABSTRACT
Attachment-individuation offers a conceptual validation for my belief that the appearance of the transformational self heralds the need for mutual re-connection throughout life, but especially during the transition from late adolescence into young adulthood. The two psychotherapies are not cited as examples of relational work, but contain elements of it in the overall assessment of the processes. The transformational self is ever-changing and gets organised into a state of mind, a coherent neural self when a self-referencing metaphor generates excitement and a level of meaning that pulls the self into purposive action. There may be a dimension of hot cognition in the formation of the transformational self in that the emergence of one or more self-referencing metaphors may lead to taking risks in the sense of testing new identities and self-capacities. In the two psychotherapy cases, note the use of metaphors to self-characterise the advent of the transformational self.
