The coming changes in psychoanalytic education: Part I

The author presents a critical overview of the literature on psychoanalytic education, focusing on criticism regarding structural aspects of our educational institutions. He then presents arguments for the need of radical changes in the organizational structure of institutes, and focuses on the problems of the training analysis system. He proposes concrete solutions for these problems, in the form of changes both in the assignment of responsibilities for the personal analysis of candidates and in the selection and function of supervisors.     

The psychology of the neuron: Freud, Cajal and Golgi

The interdisciplinary relations between neuroanatomy, philosophy and psychology are discussed in a historical framework-the period 1880–1900. It is shown that philosophical associationism is an integrated part of the neuroanatomical exploration of the minimal unit in the nervous system, and how these points have significance in some of Freuds earliest works     

An early, on the borderline between dream and transference, unconscious fantasy of Freud on the psychoanalytic situation (1898). A contribution to psychoanalytic creativity

Taking 24 hours in the life of Freud, the author shows how significant the interplay of dream, day-dream, unconscious phantasy and transference can be in solving scientific problems. This is documented by using the correspondence between Freud and Fliess on March 9/10, 1898, by taking Freud's dream of a botanical monograph, his day-dream of a glaucoma operation, his remarks on the "real" course of the day, and segments of self-analysis.     

The ego and the id revisited Freud and Damasio on the body ego/self

Freud's statement in The Ego and the Id (1923) that the ego is first and foremost a bodily ego is well known. This paper tempts to clarify the premises underlying Freud's thesis. Particular attention is paid to Freud's investigation of internal perceptions. Freud argued that internal perceptions are more primordial than perceptions arising externally. In Freud's opinion the roots of the ego, the id, are to be found in body sensations and feelings, but he had to admit that very little was known about these sensations and feelings. Only much later was neuroscience in a position to offer evidence that feelings can be the direct perception of the internal state of the body. Damasio (2010) has recently suggested that the core of the self might be found in what he, like Freud, terms primordial feelings. Not only was Freud able to conceive of the ego as the perception and feeling of our own body but also to conceive of knowing the mental life of another by means of recreating the bodily state of another through imitation.     

The ego according to Klein: return to Freud and beyond

This paper explores fundamental dimensions of Melanie Klein's concept of the ego through a detailed study of the writings of Klein and her early colleagues (Paula Heimann, Susan Isaacs and Joan Riviere). The study examines three central issues: (a) the basic theoretical framework for Klein's conceptualization of the ego, and specifically how her conceptualization builds on Freud's structural and dual instinct models; (b) the processes involved in the development of the ego and its capacities (including the development from id to ego and from ego to superego); and (c) the view of the ego as an object of phantasy. Through this examination, the study demonstrates that Klein's conceptualization of the ego is firmly grounded both in Freud's formulations about the ego and in his theoretical and metapsychological approach to thinking about the ego. This counters the prevalent view that Klein was only focused on clinical understandings, unconcerned with theory and fuzzy in her abstract thinking. More specifically, it counters the view that Klein did not really have a concept of the ego in any well-structured sense of the term (Britton, 2003; Hinshelwood, 1994; Segal, 2001). The study considers the sources of these misconceived views. Finally, it argues that discarding such views allows us to appreciate better the richness of Klein's thinking, her theoretical affinities to Freud, and the role of theory in the development and justification of psychoanalysis.     

The narrow use of the term ego in analytical psychology: the 'not-I' is also who I am

This paper(1) explores some aspects of the narrowness of Jung's usage of the term ego and the consequences which are understood to follow there from. Jung is understood to see the ego as a surface phenomenon and, essentially, as the focal point of consciousness, not recognizing its potential to function more broadly, deeply, and unconsciously. Furthermore, although he does recognize the ego as 'the total conscious personality' his use of the term frequently does not reflect that definition. Whilst Jung's analysis of the narrowly functioning ego is enlightening and groundbreaking, he treats this narrow functioning as if it is characteristic of the ego itself, ascribing any 'broad functioning' primarily to the Self. This narrow use of the term ego, and the corresponding use of the term Self, are understood to have significant consequences for clinical practice, including leading the analyst into an over-identification with the patient and a loss of the analyst's sense of self. It is also understood to lead to difficulties dealing with more disturbed individuals, to stuck and broken down analyses, to wear and tear on the analyst and, potentially, splits between the different schools of analytical psychology. These concerns all represent difficulties with working in the transference, and Jung's own experience of this is briefly explored.     

From instinct to identity: Implications of changing psychoanalytic concepts of social life from Freud to Erikson

Applied to the interpretation of social phenomena, Freud's insights have been at once extraordinarily fruitful yet susceptible to oversimplification and pejorative stereotyping. A number of his fundamental concepts–the existence of an irrational mass mind, the Oedipal family constellation, the pathology of psychic regression–have, when used to understand collective experience, created powerful myths. Only gradually did he and his successors modify and amplify these myths, resulting in the elaboration of ego psychology and the concept of identity. These concepts connected psychoanalysis with contemporary social, political, and historical thought and allowed more nuanced forms of explanations.     

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.