ABSTRACT
As we embark on this journey let us draw inspiration from current psychoanalytic thinking can be divided into two major perspectives; one has it that psychoanalysis is part of the natural sciences, the other that psychoanalysis is part of the hermeneutic discipline. Traditional theories are grouped under the modern or positivist philosophical orientation while alternative theories fall under the postmodern philosophical perspective. The theoretical orientation to development in this paper is regulation theory informed by brain research with the emphasis on system processes and organisational varieties of self-states, now called the neurological or neural self. The single case study method optimally describes the methodology used to discover new patterns and themes in the developmental experience of moving from adolescence to young adulthood. Unlike academic personality research where to get at objective truths the phenomenological-historical variables are isolated and presumably neutralised, the case study method inserts itself into the temporal real life personal context of the individual being studied.
