The author offers a detailed case presentation to introduce some questions about the psychoanalytic theory of the person, or self. Speaking from the point of view of the British school of psychoanalysis, he describes the central issues in the functioning of most patients as derivatives of a struggle to establish and maintain a coherent unity of the self, which provides a powerful motive for psychotherapy. Elements of this process include the need to accommodate valid expression of the needs of the subselves through fantasy or through merger with the dominant self,