A complete characterization of the structure of nuclei can be obtained by combining information arising from inelastic scattering, Coulomb excitation, and γ -decay, together with one- and two-particle transfer reactions. In this way it is possible to probe both the single-particle and collective components of the nuclear many-body wave function resulting from the coupling of these modes and, as a result, diagonalizing the low-energy Hamiltonian. We address the question of how accurately such a description can account for experimental observations in the case of superfluid nuclei. Our treatment goes beyond the traditional approach, in which these properties are calculated separately, and most often for systems near closed shells, based on perturbative approximations (weak coupling). It is concluded that renormalizing empirically and on equal footing bare single-particle and collective motion of open-shell nuclei in terms of self-energy (mass) and vertex corrections (screening), as well as particle-hole and pairing interactions through particle-vibration coupling (PVC), leads to a detailed, quantitative account of the data, constraining the possible values of the k mass, of the 1 S0 bare NN interaction, and of the PVC strengths within a rather narrow window.