This article describes a clinical moment in the analysis of a traumatized woman, in which specifically identified, subjectively felt pressures and analytic considerations, informed by the maturation process of analytic training, resulted in a change in my theoretical orientation. It may be surmised that this changing of theories is a process that applies not only to candidates but also to mature analysts, as new theories continue to emerge and develop in the psychoanalytic field.

A serious confrontation with a theory … awakens a … subjective resonance in the individual, and his eventual attitudes toward the material will be profoundly affected by its degree of compatibility with his own personal reality [Stolorow and Atwood, 1978, p. 19].