This paper elaborates on earlier work on classic and romantic visions in psychoanalysis. These visions are variations on a basic motif in psychoanalytic thinking, the meeting between inner nature and outer reality. Classic visions see this meeting as unavoidably painful, whereas romantic views see it as potentially harmonious. Correspondingly, classicism sees the sense of authorship, the sense of truly living one's life, as dependent on the ability to come to terms with fate, whereas romanticism sees it as dependent on the possibility of undoing the damage inflicted by fate. These two visions are exemplified by Melanie Klein and Donald Winnicott respectively.

Classicism and romanticism reflect different experiences of life and diverging ethical positions about how to live. The attempt to ground them on developmental psychologies does not stand up to methodological scrutiny. Instead they should be judged on the therapeutic implications they have and the extent to which individual patients recognize their life experience in them.