Modern ego psychology

This paper reviews the history of ego psychology, describing problems in the theory that have perhaps contributed to subsequent theory development and theoretical splintering. The present status of ego psychology is then described, with a focus on broadly accepted general principles. A proposal/prediction is then made regarding efforts to integrate the main schools and splinter groups. It is argued that the ego's method of synthesizing aspects of experience will help integrate divergent metapsychological viewpoints.     

The growth and transformation of American ego psychology

The roots of ego psychology trace back to Sigmund Freud's The Ego and the Id (1923) and "Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety" (1926), works followed by two additional fundaments, Anna Freud's The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense (1936) and Heinz Hartmann's Ego Psychology and the Problem of Adaptation (1939). It was brought to full flowering in post-World War II America by Hartmann and his many collaborators, and for over two decades it maintained a monolithic hegemony over American psychoanalysis. Within this framework the conceptions of the psychoanalytic psychotherapies evolved as specific modifications of psychoanalytic technique directed to the clinical needs of the spectrum of patients not amenable to psychoanalysis proper. This American consensus on the ego psychology paradigm and its array of technical implementations fragmented several decades ago, with the rise in America of Kohut's self psychology, geared to the narcissistic disorders, and with the importation from Britain of neo-Kleinian and object-relational perspectives, all coinciding with the rapid growth of the varieties of relational psychoanalysis, with its shift in focus to the two-person, interactive, and co-constructed transference-countertransference matrix. Implications of this intermingled theoretical pluralism (as contrasted with the unity of the once dominant ego psychology paradigm) for the evolution of the American ego psychology are spelled out.     

Cognitive ego psychology and the psychotherapy of learning disorders

The single most common referral problem in middle childhood and adolescence is academic underachievement and learning failure. Yet, the term “learning disorder” lacks specificity as a diagnostic entity and offers no guidelines for psychotherapy. An appreciation of the developmental processes by which the undifferentiated, unstructured, self-less and objectless newborn becomes a more fully developed, self-sufficient individual, capable of adaptive functioning and formal academic learning is encompassed in contemporary psychoanalytic conceptions of the separation-individuation process. This theory provides an organizing, theoretical base for diagnosis and treatment of learning disorders. Based on these conceptions, we discuss therapeutic techniques which are appropriate to the level of developmental arrest at each of the phases of the separation-individuation process.     

Some implications of computer networks for psychology

Computer networking as a subject of psychological research has varied facets, including the social psychology of scientists, the role of group “labeling” practices, and the paradigm development process, as well as the definitions of software, hardware, and communication systems and interfaces that fit the research styles, aspirations, and work habits specific to psychologists.     

The contribution of ego psychology to understanding the process of termination in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy

Ego psychology is presented as an integrated psychoanalytic developmental theory, including a theory of object relations. The process of termination is employed as one of the many possible illustrations of the usefulness of this theory. Termination is regarded as a process that pervades the treatment from the outset, rather than as the final phase of treatment only, because the treatment process, whether psychoanalysis or psychotherapy, includes continuous promotion of ever-increasing autonomy. Ideally, by the time termination proper takes place, maximum autonomy has been attained. To the definition of autonomy as intersystemic, involving relative independence of the ego from the drives (and from the super-ego), an object-relations dimension is added which extends that definition to include an intrasystemic consideration--namely, relative independence of the self-representation from the object representations. Especially in the treatment of the borderline conditions is the intrasystemic factor cogent because borderline states are characterized by varying degrees of incompletely differentiated self- and object representations. The objective, in the psychoanalysis of neurosis, where self- and object constancy already exist to a large degree, is ego autonomy in the intersystemic sense. In the psychotherapy of the borderline conditions, the objective is greater differentiation of the self-representation from the object representations.     

Ego psychology of depression with implications for treatment

Summary Concepts suggested by autonomous ego theory and a phenomenological approach to emotions make it possible to think again about depression and its treatment in order better to explain clinical observations.Depression appears to be a secondary emotion, not primary, made up of the following ingredients: 1) one or more primary emotions—anxiety, anger, guilt, and grief particularly, as well as self-pity, loneliness, alienation, apathy, and despair—precipitated in 2) an ego inadequate in channeling emotions constructively, 3) the associated phenomenological tendencies inherent within the emotions, and 4) the sense of helplessness that ensues. Thus the treatment required would consist of a systematic, somewhat detached, cognitive approach to the problems the emotions are indicating, and what should be done to resolve them. These problems include those precipitated by the workings of the emotions as things-in-themselves. The treatment is oriented toward enhancing the patient's understanding of the disorder and his coping ability to the end that the patient is not weakened even as he is relieved.Director of Community Services of the Cleveland State Hospital, has been a frequent contributor to journals of psychiatry and pastoral care. He was recently president of the Cleveland branch of the Academy.