ABSTRACT
The presentation of the clinical cases in psychoanalytic treatment can become a guide to trace the intersections between psychoanalytic and neuro psychodynamic models. Psychoanalytic theory provided a major contribution to the development of the concept of the self. Today, it is still possible to capitalize on these models in psychodynamic therapy. In the years 1930–1950, the self was introduced into the psychoanalytic community as a set of split elements, projectively dislocated in the environment and re-introduced as inner objects. Neuro psychodynamic psychiatry, neuro psychoanalysis, and psychodynamic psychotherapy currently attach great importance to the patients’ internal world: fantasies, dreams, hopes, wishes, fears, impulses, self-images, perception of others, and psychological reactions to symptoms. The existential discontinuity and continuity of the self seems to rephrase the question of the multiple self–unitary self relation. This reflection may be reformulated to include the organization of defences.
