ABSTRACT
One way to demonstrate the presence in different therapies of distinct ideas about human well-being is to compare their contrasting aims. Paul Gray’s ego psychology, Bruce Fink’s Lacanian psychoanalysis, and Stephen Mitchell’s relational psychoanalysis promote three distinct pictures of human flourishing: enhancement of the capacity for self-analysis and increased autonomy of the ego, the liberation of the patient’s erotic particularity from the symbolic impositions of others, and freedom from interpersonal traps in order to enrich the relational possibilities of life. Disputes between alternative therapeutic pictures of human flourishing are not easily resolved and raise questions about what it means to have reasoned debate about conflicting ethics.
