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Daniel Jacobs proposes that theory construction and theoretical preference are not merely the result of intellectual process and choice, nor are they the logical conclusions of empirical research, but to a significant degree they result from unconscious configurations. These derive from the early object relations determined by the mother-child relationships experienced by each theorist/therapist in the course of early development. The adult use of, and attachment to, particular theories represent late symbolic outgrowths of the infant's “prototheories,” which represent the earliest attempts on the part of the child to generate internal schemata allowing the child to make sense of the stimuli with which he or she is confronted.
Jacobs draws on Piaget's concept of qualitative shifts in symbolic capacity during different phases of development and notes, citing Gerald Adler, that theories “which serve certain cognitive, synthesizing, and organizing functions, are also representations, displaced and sublimated, of early object relations … and the affective states associated with them.” This perspective renders more understandable the intensity of the debate between theorists of differing orientations and promotes some rationale for comprehending the tenacity with which particular theorists adhere so strongly to specific positions. That is, there is a significant (if not the significant) factor in theory making and holding, which is subjective rather than objective in