ABSTRACT
The paradigm that characterized American psychoanalysis a generation ago, that of ego psychology, was inaugurated by Hartmann’s work on adaptation, and was elaborated with maximal distinction in his subsequent writings. Through the era of ego psychology, little attention was given to the multiplicity of clinical theories within the field and their seeming lack of congruence with each other. The majority of psychoanalytic clinicians probably have not experienced much discomfort about the loose fit between their theoretical tools and their patients’ associations. In recent years, psychoanalytic clinical experience has increasingly focused on man’s existential problems-his concern about who he is and what he is about, his goals, in other words.
