Adaptation, Affect, and the Ego – Some Thoughts on Hartmann

Abstract

ABSTRACT This discussion re-visits Hartmann’s classic treatise, Ego Psychology and the Problem of Adaptation, to consider its implications for the role of ego functions and affect, signal anxiety, affect tolerance and the pleasure principle in effecting adaptation. These include relationships with objects, their affective internalization, representation and the role that these internalized objects play in the process of adaptation regulated by the ego in regard to relationships as part of external reality. Hartmann did not address these issues either at all or only by way of a nodding acknowledgment. His later work is similarly silent. This is, therefore, a road largely unexplored in the evolution of ego psychology, conflict theory and relational psychoanalysis, and their interconnections.