Choice

Understanding how and why analysands make the choices they do is central to both the clinical and the theoretical projects of psychoanalysis. And yet we know very little about the process of choice or about the relationship between choices and motives. A striking parallel is to be found between the ways choice is narrated in ancient Greek texts and the experience of analysts as they observe patients making choices in everyday clinical work. Pursuing this convergence of classical and contemporary sensibilities will illuminate crucial elements of the various meanings of choice, and of the way that these meanings change over the course of psychoanalytic treatment.