Ego psychology
Encyclopedia
Ego psychology is a school of psychoanalysis
rooted in Sigmund Freud
's structural id-ego-superego
model of the mind.
An individual interacts with the external world as well as responds to internal forces. Many psychoanalysts use a theoretical construct called the ego to explain how that is done through various ego functions. Proponents of ego psychology focus on the ego’s normal and pathological
development, its management of libidinal
and aggressive impulses, and its adaptation to reality
.
initially considered the ego to be a sense
organ for perception
of both external and internal stimuli
. He thought of the ego as synonymous with consciousness
and contrasted it with the repressed
unconscious
. By 1911, he referenced ego instincts for the first time in Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning and contrasted them with sexual instincts: ego instincts responded to the reality principle
while sexual instincts obeyed the pleasure principle
. He also introduced attention
and memory
as ego functions.
Freud began to notice that not all unconscious phenomena could be attributed to the id
; it appeared as if the ego had unconscious aspects as well. This posed a significant problem for his topographic theory, which he resolved with the publication of his essay The Ego and the Id (1923). In what came to be called the structural theory, the ego was now a formal component of a three-way system that also included the id and superego. The ego was still organized around conscious perceptual capacities, yet it now had unconscious features responsible for repression and other defensive operations. Freud’s ego at this stage was relatively passive and weak; he described it as the helpless rider on the id’s horse, more or less obliged to go where the id wished to go (Meissner, 159).
Not long after The Ego and the Id, Freud (1926) published Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety. In this essay, Freud revised his theory of anxiety as well as delineating a more robust ego. Instead of being passive and reactive to the id, the ego was now a formidable counterweight to it, responsible for regulating id impulses
, as well as integrating an individual’s functioning into a coherent whole. The modifications made by Freud in Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety formed the basis of a psychoanalytic psychology
interest in the nature and functions of the ego.
Following Freud, the psychoanalyst most responsible for the development of ego psychology was Heinz Hartmann
(1958). Through his assiduous study of ego functions and how an individual adapts to his or her environment, Hartmann created both a general psychology and a clinical instrument with which an analyst could evaluate an individual’s functioning and formulate appropriate therapeutic interventions. Mitchell and Black (1995) write “Hartmann powerfully affected the course of psychoanalysis, opening up a crucial investigation of the key processes and vicissitudes of normal development. Hartmann’s contributions broadened the scope of psychoanalytic concerns, from psychopathology to general human development, from an isolated, self-contained treatment method to a sweeping intellectual discipline among other disciplines (p. 35).”
Hartmann (1958) believed the ego included innate capacities for such things as perception, attention, memory, concentration, motor coordination, and language
. Under normal conditions, what Hartmann called an average expectable environment, these capacities developed into ego functions and had autonomy from the libidinal and aggressive drives; that is, they were not products of frustration
and conflict, as Freud (1911) believed. Hartmann recognized, however, that conflicts were part of the human condition and in the process of ego development certain functions often became conflicted by aggressive and libidinal impulses. According to Hartmann, the task of the psychoanalyst was to neutralize conflicted impulses and expand the conflict-free spheres of ego functions. By doing so, Hartmann believed psychoanalysis facilitated an individual’s adaptation to his or her environment.
Subsequent psychoanalysts interested in ego psychology emphasized the role of defenses, early-childhood experiences, and the importance of socio-cultural influences. First, Anna Freud
(1966; (first edition 1936)) focused her attention on the ego’s unconscious, defensive operations and introduced many important theoretical and clinical considerations. She believed the ego was predisposed to supervise, regulate, and oppose the id through defenses and that this activity could be observed by the psychoanalyst in the manifest presentation of the patient’s associations
. The analyst needed to be attuned to the moment-by-moment process of what the patient talked about in order to identify, label, and explore defenses as they appeared. For Anna Freud, interpreting repressed content was less important than understanding the ego’s methods by which it kept things out of consciousness.
Next, René Spitz
(1965), Margaret Mahler
(1968), and Edith Jacobson (1964) studied infant behavior and their observations were integrated into ego psychology. Their research described and explained early attachment issues, successful and faulty ego development, and psychological development through interpersonal interactions. In particular, Spitz identified the importance of mother-infant nonverbal emotional reciprocity; Mahler refined the traditional psychosexual developmental phases by adding the separation-individuation process; and Jacobson emphasized how libidinal and aggressive impulses unfolded within the context of early relationships and environmental factors.
Finally, Erik Erikson
provided a bold reformulation of Freud’s biologic, epigenetic psychosexual theory through his explorations of socio-cultural influences on ego development. For Erikson, an individual was pushed by his or her own biological urges and pulled by socio-cultural forces.
In the United States, ego psychology was the predominant psychoanalytic approach due mostly to the influx of European psychoanalysts, including all the prominent ego psychologists, during and after World War II. Ego psychology, however, gradually became conflated with the hegemonic influence of the American Psychoanalytic Association and the theory came to be viewed as conservative, oppressive, and focused too narrowly on oedipal
conflicts. It was challenged by W.R.D. Fairbairn’s object relations theory
, Melanie Klein
's theory, and then by Heinz Kohut
’s self psychology
. (Ego psychology should not be confused with self psychology, as the two are distinctly different models of the mind with differing clinical methods.)
Charles Brenner (1982) attempted to revive ego psychology with a concise and incisive articulation of the fundamental focus of psychoanalysis: intrapsychic conflict and the resulting compromise formations. Over time, Brenner (2002) tried to develop a more clinically-based theory, what came to be called “modern conflict theory.” He distanced himself from the formal components of the structural theory and its metapsychological assumptions, and focused entirely on compromise formations. It is, in essence, ego psychology by another name.
Other ego psychologists, such as Paul Gray (2005) and Fred Busch, have argued for an increasingly nuanced and sophisticated concept of the ego. In particular, Gray argued that there has been a "developmental lag" in psychoanalysis; that is, when Freud shifted from the topographic to the structural model, a corresponding shift in technique, made necessary by the new model, was slow to develop.
Impulse Control: The ability to manage aggressive and/or libidinal wishes without immediate discharge through behavior or symptoms. Problems with impulse control are common; for example: road rage; sexual promiscuity; excessive drug and alcohol use; and binge eating.
Affect Regulation: The ability to modulate feelings without being overwhelmed.
Judgment: The capacity to act responsibly. This process includes identifying possible courses of action, anticipating and evaluating likely consequences, and making decisions as to what is appropriate in certain circumstances.
Object Relations: The capacity for mutually satisfying relationship. The individual can perceive himself and others as whole objects with three dimensional qualities.
Thought Processes: The ability to have logical, coherent, and abstract thoughts. In stressful situations, thought processes can become disorganized. The presence of chronic or severe problems in conceptual thinking is frequently associated with schizophrenia and manic episodes.
Defensive Functioning: A defense is an unconscious attempt to protect the individual from some powerful identity-threatening feeling. Initial defenses develop in infancy and involve the boundary between the self and the outer world; they are considered primitive defenses and include projection, denial, and splitting. As the child grows up, more sophisticated defenses that deal with internal boundaries such as those between ego and super ego or the id develop; these defenses include repression, regression, displacement, and reaction formation. All adults have, and use, primitive defenses, but most people also have more mature ways of coping with reality and anxiety.
Synthesis: The synthetic function is the ego’s capacity to organize and unify other functions within the personality. It enables the individual to think, feel, and act in a coherent manner. It includes the capacity to integrate potentially contradictory experiences, ideas, and feelings; for example, a child loves his or her mother yet also has angry feelings toward her at times. The ability to synthesize these feelings is a pivotal developmental achievement.
The clinical technique most commonly associated with ego psychology is defense analysis. Through clarifying, confronting, and interpreting the typical defense mechanisms a patient uses, ego psychologists hope to help the patient gain control over these mechanisms.
Some have also accused Hartmann of proposing a conformist psychology in which the ego is considered most healthy when it adjusts to the status quo. Hartmann claimed, however, that his aim was to understand the mutual regulation of the ego and environment rather than to promote adjustment of the ego to the environment. Furthermore, an individual with a less-conflicted ego would be better able to actively respond and shape, rather than passively react to, his or her environment.
Also, Jacques Lacan
, a prominent French psychoanalyst, had a certain disdain for ego-psychology. He took issue with the movement insofar as his form of psychoanalysis focuses on the unconscious, rather than the ego. It also splits the ego and theorizes how one never has a true relation to their ego because it is an illusionary relationship to an ideal image, and is a product of the unconscious itself.
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...
rooted in Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
's structural id-ego-superego
Id, ego, and super-ego
Id, ego and super-ego are the three parts of the psychic apparatus defined in Sigmund Freud's structural model of the psyche; they are the three theoretical constructs in terms of whose activity and interaction mental life is described...
model of the mind.
An individual interacts with the external world as well as responds to internal forces. Many psychoanalysts use a theoretical construct called the ego to explain how that is done through various ego functions. Proponents of ego psychology focus on the ego’s normal and pathological
Psychopathology
Psychopathology is the study of mental illness, mental distress, and abnormal/maladaptive behavior. The term is most commonly used within psychiatry where pathology refers to disease processes...
development, its management of libidinal
Libido
Libido refers to a person's sex drive or desire for sexual activity. The desire for sex is an aspect of a person's sexuality, but varies enormously from one person to another, and it also varies depending on circumstances at a particular time. A person who has extremely frequent or a suddenly...
and aggressive impulses, and its adaptation to reality
Reality
In philosophy, reality is the state of things as they actually exist, rather than as they may appear or might be imagined. In a wider definition, reality includes everything that is and has been, whether or not it is observable or comprehensible...
.
History
Sigmund FreudSigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
initially considered the ego to be a sense
Sense
Senses are physiological capacities of organisms that provide inputs for perception. The senses and their operation, classification, and theory are overlapping topics studied by a variety of fields, most notably neuroscience, cognitive psychology , and philosophy of perception...
organ for perception
Perception
Perception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of the environment by organizing and interpreting sensory information. All perception involves signals in the nervous system, which in turn result from physical stimulation of the sense organs...
of both external and internal stimuli
Stimulus (physiology)
In physiology, a stimulus is a detectable change in the internal or external environment. The ability of an organism or organ to respond to external stimuli is called sensitivity....
. He thought of the ego as synonymous with consciousness
Consciousness
Consciousness is a term that refers to the relationship between the mind and the world with which it interacts. It has been defined as: subjectivity, awareness, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind...
and contrasted it with the repressed
Psychological repression
Psychological repression, also psychic repression or simply repression, is the psychological attempt by an individual to repel one's own desires and impulses towards pleasurable instincts by excluding the desire from one's consciousness and holding or subduing it in the unconscious...
unconscious
Unconscious mind
The unconscious mind is a term coined by the 18th century German romantic philosopher Friedrich Schelling and later introduced into English by the poet and essayist Samuel Taylor Coleridge...
. By 1911, he referenced ego instincts for the first time in Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning and contrasted them with sexual instincts: ego instincts responded to the reality principle
Reality principle
In Freudian psychology, the reality principle is the psychoanalytic concept describing circumstantial reality compelling a man or a woman to defer instant gratification...
while sexual instincts obeyed the pleasure principle
Pleasure principle (psychology)
In Freudian psychology, the pleasure principle is the psychoanalytic concept describing people seeking pleasure and avoiding suffering in order to satisfy their biological and psychological needs...
. He also introduced attention
Attention
Attention is the cognitive process of paying attention to one aspect of the environment while ignoring others. Attention is one of the most intensely studied topics within psychology and cognitive neuroscience....
and memory
Memory
In psychology, memory is an organism's ability to store, retain, and recall information and experiences. Traditional studies of memory began in the fields of philosophy, including techniques of artificially enhancing memory....
as ego functions.
Freud began to notice that not all unconscious phenomena could be attributed to the id
Id, ego, and super-ego
Id, ego and super-ego are the three parts of the psychic apparatus defined in Sigmund Freud's structural model of the psyche; they are the three theoretical constructs in terms of whose activity and interaction mental life is described...
; it appeared as if the ego had unconscious aspects as well. This posed a significant problem for his topographic theory, which he resolved with the publication of his essay The Ego and the Id (1923). In what came to be called the structural theory, the ego was now a formal component of a three-way system that also included the id and superego. The ego was still organized around conscious perceptual capacities, yet it now had unconscious features responsible for repression and other defensive operations. Freud’s ego at this stage was relatively passive and weak; he described it as the helpless rider on the id’s horse, more or less obliged to go where the id wished to go (Meissner, 159).
Not long after The Ego and the Id, Freud (1926) published Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety. In this essay, Freud revised his theory of anxiety as well as delineating a more robust ego. Instead of being passive and reactive to the id, the ego was now a formidable counterweight to it, responsible for regulating id impulses
Drive theory
The terms drive theory and drive reduction theory refer to a diverse set of motivational theories in psychology. Drive theory is based on the principle that organisms are born with certain physiological needs and that a negative state of tension is created when these needs are not satisfied...
, as well as integrating an individual’s functioning into a coherent whole. The modifications made by Freud in Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety formed the basis of a psychoanalytic psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
interest in the nature and functions of the ego.
Following Freud, the psychoanalyst most responsible for the development of ego psychology was Heinz Hartmann
Heinz Hartmann
Heinz Hartmann , was a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. He is considered one of the founders and principal representantives of ego psychology.-Life:...
(1958). Through his assiduous study of ego functions and how an individual adapts to his or her environment, Hartmann created both a general psychology and a clinical instrument with which an analyst could evaluate an individual’s functioning and formulate appropriate therapeutic interventions. Mitchell and Black (1995) write “Hartmann powerfully affected the course of psychoanalysis, opening up a crucial investigation of the key processes and vicissitudes of normal development. Hartmann’s contributions broadened the scope of psychoanalytic concerns, from psychopathology to general human development, from an isolated, self-contained treatment method to a sweeping intellectual discipline among other disciplines (p. 35).”
Hartmann (1958) believed the ego included innate capacities for such things as perception, attention, memory, concentration, motor coordination, and language
Language
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...
. Under normal conditions, what Hartmann called an average expectable environment, these capacities developed into ego functions and had autonomy from the libidinal and aggressive drives; that is, they were not products of frustration
Frustration
This article concerns the field of psychology. The term frustration does, however, also concern physics. In this context, the term is treated in a different article, geometric frustration....
and conflict, as Freud (1911) believed. Hartmann recognized, however, that conflicts were part of the human condition and in the process of ego development certain functions often became conflicted by aggressive and libidinal impulses. According to Hartmann, the task of the psychoanalyst was to neutralize conflicted impulses and expand the conflict-free spheres of ego functions. By doing so, Hartmann believed psychoanalysis facilitated an individual’s adaptation to his or her environment.
Subsequent psychoanalysts interested in ego psychology emphasized the role of defenses, early-childhood experiences, and the importance of socio-cultural influences. First, Anna Freud
Anna Freud
Anna Freud was the sixth and last child of Sigmund and Martha Freud. Born in Vienna, she followed the path of her father and contributed to the newly born field of psychoanalysis...
(1966; (first edition 1936)) focused her attention on the ego’s unconscious, defensive operations and introduced many important theoretical and clinical considerations. She believed the ego was predisposed to supervise, regulate, and oppose the id through defenses and that this activity could be observed by the psychoanalyst in the manifest presentation of the patient’s associations
Association (psychology)
In psychology and marketing, two concepts or stimuli are associated when the experience of one leads to the effects of another, due to repeated pairing. This is sometimes called Pavlovian association for Ivan Pavlov's pioneering of classical conditioning....
. The analyst needed to be attuned to the moment-by-moment process of what the patient talked about in order to identify, label, and explore defenses as they appeared. For Anna Freud, interpreting repressed content was less important than understanding the ego’s methods by which it kept things out of consciousness.
Next, René Spitz
René Spitz
René Árpád Spitz was an American psychoanalyst of Hungarian origin.- Biography :Rene Spitz was born in Vienna and died in Denver, Colorado. From a wealthy Jewish family background, he spent most of his childhood in Hungary. After finishing his medical studies in 1910 Spitz discovered the work of...
(1965), Margaret Mahler
Margaret Mahler
Margaret Schönberger Mahler was a Hungarian physician, who later became interested in psychiatry. She was a central figure on the world stage of psychoanalysis...
(1968), and Edith Jacobson (1964) studied infant behavior and their observations were integrated into ego psychology. Their research described and explained early attachment issues, successful and faulty ego development, and psychological development through interpersonal interactions. In particular, Spitz identified the importance of mother-infant nonverbal emotional reciprocity; Mahler refined the traditional psychosexual developmental phases by adding the separation-individuation process; and Jacobson emphasized how libidinal and aggressive impulses unfolded within the context of early relationships and environmental factors.
Finally, Erik Erikson
Erik Erikson
Erik Erikson was a Danish-German-American developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst known for his theory on social development of human beings. He may be most famous for coining the phrase identity crisis. His son, Kai T...
provided a bold reformulation of Freud’s biologic, epigenetic psychosexual theory through his explorations of socio-cultural influences on ego development. For Erikson, an individual was pushed by his or her own biological urges and pulled by socio-cultural forces.
In the United States, ego psychology was the predominant psychoanalytic approach due mostly to the influx of European psychoanalysts, including all the prominent ego psychologists, during and after World War II. Ego psychology, however, gradually became conflated with the hegemonic influence of the American Psychoanalytic Association and the theory came to be viewed as conservative, oppressive, and focused too narrowly on oedipal
Oedipus complex
In psychoanalytic theory, the term Oedipus complex denotes the emotions and ideas that the mind keeps in the unconscious, via dynamic repression, that concentrate upon a boy’s desire to sexually possess his mother, and kill his father...
conflicts. It was challenged by W.R.D. Fairbairn’s object relations theory
Object relations theory
Object relations theory is a psychodynamic theory within psychoanalytic psychology. The theory describes the process of developing a mind as one grows in relation to others in the environment....
, Melanie Klein
Melanie Klein
Melanie Reizes Klein was an Austrian-born British psychoanalyst who devised novel therapeutic techniques for children that had an impact on child psychology and contemporary psychoanalysis...
's theory, and then by Heinz Kohut
Heinz Kohut
Heinz Kohut was an Austrian-born American psychoanalyst best known for his development of Self psychology, an influential school of thought within psychodynamic/psychoanalytic theory which helped transform the modern practice of analytic and dynamic treatment approaches.-Early life:Kohut was born...
’s self psychology
Self psychology
Self Psychology is a school of psychoanalytic theory and therapy created by Heinz Kohut and developed in the United States at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis. Self psychology explains psychopathology as being the result of disrupted or unmet developmental needs...
. (Ego psychology should not be confused with self psychology, as the two are distinctly different models of the mind with differing clinical methods.)
Charles Brenner (1982) attempted to revive ego psychology with a concise and incisive articulation of the fundamental focus of psychoanalysis: intrapsychic conflict and the resulting compromise formations. Over time, Brenner (2002) tried to develop a more clinically-based theory, what came to be called “modern conflict theory.” He distanced himself from the formal components of the structural theory and its metapsychological assumptions, and focused entirely on compromise formations. It is, in essence, ego psychology by another name.
Other ego psychologists, such as Paul Gray (2005) and Fred Busch, have argued for an increasingly nuanced and sophisticated concept of the ego. In particular, Gray argued that there has been a "developmental lag" in psychoanalysis; that is, when Freud shifted from the topographic to the structural model, a corresponding shift in technique, made necessary by the new model, was slow to develop.
Ego functions
Reality Testing: The ego’s capacity to distinguish what is occurring in one’s own mind from what is occurring in the external world. It is perhaps the single most important ego function because it is necessary for negotiating with the outside world. One must be able to perceive and understand stimuli accurately. Reality testing is often subject to temporary, mild distortion or deterioration under stressful conditions. Such impairment can result in temporary delusions and hallucination and is generally selective, clustering along specific, psychodynamic lines. Chronic deficiencies suggest either psychotic or organic interference.Impulse Control: The ability to manage aggressive and/or libidinal wishes without immediate discharge through behavior or symptoms. Problems with impulse control are common; for example: road rage; sexual promiscuity; excessive drug and alcohol use; and binge eating.
Affect Regulation: The ability to modulate feelings without being overwhelmed.
Judgment: The capacity to act responsibly. This process includes identifying possible courses of action, anticipating and evaluating likely consequences, and making decisions as to what is appropriate in certain circumstances.
Object Relations: The capacity for mutually satisfying relationship. The individual can perceive himself and others as whole objects with three dimensional qualities.
Thought Processes: The ability to have logical, coherent, and abstract thoughts. In stressful situations, thought processes can become disorganized. The presence of chronic or severe problems in conceptual thinking is frequently associated with schizophrenia and manic episodes.
Defensive Functioning: A defense is an unconscious attempt to protect the individual from some powerful identity-threatening feeling. Initial defenses develop in infancy and involve the boundary between the self and the outer world; they are considered primitive defenses and include projection, denial, and splitting. As the child grows up, more sophisticated defenses that deal with internal boundaries such as those between ego and super ego or the id develop; these defenses include repression, regression, displacement, and reaction formation. All adults have, and use, primitive defenses, but most people also have more mature ways of coping with reality and anxiety.
Synthesis: The synthetic function is the ego’s capacity to organize and unify other functions within the personality. It enables the individual to think, feel, and act in a coherent manner. It includes the capacity to integrate potentially contradictory experiences, ideas, and feelings; for example, a child loves his or her mother yet also has angry feelings toward her at times. The ability to synthesize these feelings is a pivotal developmental achievement.
Conflict, defense, and resistance analysis
According to Freud’s structural theory, an individual’s libidinal and aggressive impulses are continuously in conflict with his or her own conscience as well as with the limits imposed by reality. In certain circumstances, these conflicts may lead to neurotic symptoms. Thus, the goal of psychoanalytic treatment is to establish a balance between bodily needs, psychological wants, one’s own conscience, and social constraints. Ego psychologists argue that the conflict is best addressed by the psychological agency that has the closest relationship to consciousness, unconsciousness, and reality: the ego.The clinical technique most commonly associated with ego psychology is defense analysis. Through clarifying, confronting, and interpreting the typical defense mechanisms a patient uses, ego psychologists hope to help the patient gain control over these mechanisms.
Criticisms of ego psychology
Many authors have criticized Hartmann's conception of a conflict-free sphere of ego functioning as both incoherent and inconsistent with Freud's vision of psychoanalysis as a science of mental conflict. Freud believed that the ego itself takes shape as a result of the conflict between the id and the external world. The ego, therefore, is inherently a conflicting formation in the mind. To state, as Hartmann did, that the ego contains a conflict-free sphere may not be consistent with key propositions of Freud's structural theory.Some have also accused Hartmann of proposing a conformist psychology in which the ego is considered most healthy when it adjusts to the status quo. Hartmann claimed, however, that his aim was to understand the mutual regulation of the ego and environment rather than to promote adjustment of the ego to the environment. Furthermore, an individual with a less-conflicted ego would be better able to actively respond and shape, rather than passively react to, his or her environment.
Also, Jacques Lacan
Jacques Lacan
Jacques Marie Émile Lacan was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who made prominent contributions to psychoanalysis and philosophy, and has been called "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud". Giving yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, Lacan influenced France's...
, a prominent French psychoanalyst, had a certain disdain for ego-psychology. He took issue with the movement insofar as his form of psychoanalysis focuses on the unconscious, rather than the ego. It also splits the ego and theorizes how one never has a true relation to their ego because it is an illusionary relationship to an ideal image, and is a product of the unconscious itself.