The concept of autoplastic adaptation was developed by Sigmund Freud, Sándor Ferenczi, and Franz Alexander.
[3] As a result, among his immediate followers, 'Insight into this regressive nature of the phenomenon of conversion may be taken as a starting-point for speculation about the archaic origin of the capacity for autoplastic conversion...according to which evolution took place through the autoplastic adaptation of the body to the demands of the environment'.
[4] 'Cross-cultural helpers have debated what has been called the autoplastic/alloplastic dilemma: how much should clients be encouraged to adapt to a given situation and how much...to change?
Most Western helping modalities have a strong autoplastic bias; clients are encouraged to abandon traditional beliefs...to fit into a dominant society's mainstream'.
[5] The analytic relationship is sometimes seen in similar terms: 'the two practitioners in treatment are engaged in an unending struggle between changing the other and effecting internal change..."autoplastic" and "alloplastic"'.