A story of adaptation told from ego-psychological perspectives.

In this paper, I offer a story of the adaptation of a young foreign student from Japan undergoing transformative processes of development and eventually becoming a practicing psychoanalyst in New York. The first phase of development took place in a sudden immersion into the radically unfamiliar external environment and culture of the USA. This process of adaptation mimicked and retraced the developmental tasks of infancy in many respects. The second part describes the adaptation of a dyadic psychoanalytic relationship that brought about renewed organization, differentiation, and the development of intrapsychic balance through remembering and rewriting past internal experiences. The concepts and understanding of ego psychology will be utilized in developing the story. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]