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We are grateful to have the opportunity to respond to three exceedingly thoughtful commentaries on our work. In general we feel that our central ideas have been understood and appreciated. The criticisms that we address below have provided a stimulus for further clarifying and refining our views.
In the context of his generally favorable and enthusiastic evaluation of our work, White (1986) poses three criticisms. The first concerns our failure in Faces in a Cloud to account for the “megalomania” inherent in the belief shared by all the theorists we studied that they could write a complete metapsychological theory of human personality. White proposes that one origin of this trend might be found in their rich imaginative life, which, when they were children, tended to isolate them from communication with others. When a gifted imagination proliferates in isolation, White suggests, it can become a seat of pride and basis for self-esteem, and lead to intellectual grandiosity and narcissistic vulnerability as well. We find this an interesting and valuable addition to our findings.
A second criticism is implicit in White's caveat that “the invariants in people's representational worlds get there by diverse routes and at diverse times of life” and that “not everything should be attributed to the interactions of children and caretakers in infancy,” to the exclusion of later influences. We find wisdom in these cautionary remarks, but would still argue that a person's experiences of significant events in all