Ego Psychology Research Articles

A psychology of difference: the American lectures

Otto Rank, A Psychology of Difference: The American Lectures. Selected, Edited, and Introduced by Robert Kramer with a foreword by Rollo May. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996. ISBN 0-691-04470-8. Separation, Will, and Creativity: The Wisdom of Otto Rank by Esther Menaker. Edited by Claude Barbre. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1996. ISBN 1-56-821-802-8. The writings of Otto Rank (1884-1939) are in the midst of a rebirth. Rank-artist, poet, psychotherapist, philosopher, mythologist, and educator-was a leading disciple and confidant of Freud and the first lay psychoanalyst. Banished as a dissident from the inner circle of psychoanalysis in the 1920's, Rank was excommunicated like Adler and Jung before him. Though largely unacknowledged, Rank is a forerunner of ego psychology, object-relations theory, interpersonal psychotherapy, existential psychology, and Rogers' client-centered approach. The break with Freud was Rank's great turning point. In 1924 Rank transcended Freudian ideology in two bodks-The Development of Psychoanalysis (Ferenczi & Rank, 1924/1956) and The Trauma of Birth (1924/1952). He left psychoanalysis in order to help clients, having become disillusioned by endless analyses and therapeutic ideology. Writing now as a philosopher and metaphysician, Rank emphasized each individual's struggle to become separate, whole, creative. Rank emigrated from Vienna to Paris in 1926, where stayed until 1934 and treated artists such as Anais Nin and Henry Miller. He moved permanently to the U.S. in 1935. Rank's tragic death came in 1939 from an unexpected reaction to medication, only one month after Freud's physician-assisted death from morphine. Rank's original writings, be forewarned, are notoriously difficult. Rollo May (1950/1977) cautioned that Rank's terminology and dualistic mode of thought are uncongenial (p. 132), while Ernest Becker (1973) characterized Rank's work as a confusion of insights, so rich and diffuse that he is inaccessible to the general (p. xii). Anais Nin (1967) insisted that these writings don't do justice to his ideas, and admitted that Rank himself had tried to persuade her to rewrite his books (p. 16). It is not surprising, then, that Irvin Yalom (1980) has decried the wretched translations that are now almost mercifully out of print (p. 293). So, given the considerable learning curve, why bother with these works? Because Rank's thought has deep implications for development of the social sciences (Becker, 1973, p. xii-xiv). Like travel guides in unfamiliar territory, capable interpreters like Menaker and Kramer help us on our way. Fortunately, Esther Menaker's (1996) Separation, will, and creativity: The wisdom of Otto Rank makes this work approachable. Menaker, ninety, has nearly seventy years of experience as a psychotherapist and analyst. Having studied under professor Jesse Taft (the Rankian analysand, biographer, and translator), Menaker later traveled to Vienna in order to train with Anna Freud. For decades, Menaker has written and lectured about Rank, providing much-needed interpretation and explanation. Separation, comprised of thirteeen chapters, is broad in scope, ranging from an impassioned pilgrimage to view Rank's teenage diary to thoughtful discussions of the philosophy of science. Also included are seven case histories from Menaker's own private practice, intended to illustrate Rankian principles. All this material, even the personal and anecdotal, assists the reader in embracing the ever-difficult Rank. Rank was far ahead of his time, argues Menaker, and his thinking reflects the scientific ethos of our own time. She explains that Rank was a dialectic thinker, one who offered dualistic descriptions of psychological processes. Discussions are dedicated, therefore, to the life fear/death fear, the wish to differentiate/wish to merge, and the causality principle/will principle. Menaker (1996) is at her best in sorting out thorny technical concepts. …

Sexual identity: Conflict and confusion in a male adolescent

This paper presents a conceptual formulation, derived from developmental object relations theory and ego psychology, of the passage in male adolescence that culminates with the achievement of a masculine heterosexual identity. Themes of psychosexuality, male gender attributes, masculinity and object preference, and sexual orientation are discussed with reference to the adolescent stage. Finally, the critical tasks, core conflicts, and internalizations of prior developmental stages, as well as the integration that is required of adolescence proper relative to a sexual identity as heterosexual and masculine, are highlighted through an extensive case illustration of an adolescent male with sexual identity confusion.

Vygotsky and Psychoanalysis

The work described here is an attempt to establish a dialogue between Vygotsky and psychoanalysis. We believe contemporary psychoanalytic theories (ego psychology, object-relations theory, and self psychology) have expanded and altered Freud's theory to the extent that, behind insufficiently explicated ideas and metaphoric language, Vygotsky's essential ideas seem to be hidden by the psychoanalytic developmental theory and the principles of psychotherapy. The basic similarity between these two theoretical-methodological systems is in the factor considered to play the formative role in the development of the personality—social interaction—and the mechanism of development—internalization.

The three faces of two‐person psychology development, ontology, and epistemology

With the breakdown of the hegemonic hold of ego psychology on American psychoanalysis, we have been groping for ways to describe, explain, and label a new paradigm. A variety of terms have been offered, including participant observation, social constructivism, and intersubjectivity. In this paper, I use the phrase two‐person psychology to embrace all these dimensions of the new paradigm. I suggest that both the ongoing struggle to define this paradigm and the proliferation of names for it are due to the fact that any viable psychoanalytic paradigm must address issues at least at three levels of discourse: the developmental (the origin of self and object representations), the ontological (the essentials of human nature), and the epistemological (on what basis and in what ways can we claim to know anything about anyone's unconscious psychology, including our own?). Perhaps the most widely recognized part of the one‐person versus two‐person dichotomy is the developmental component. At the developmental level...

Approaches to the development of moral reasoning

The first part of the book offers a survey of current approaches to the development of moral reasoning: those of Freud, ego psychology, Piaget and Kohlberg. The approach of Kohlberg has been popular because he was able to give an impressive account of findings from the key method of interviews, the other crucial method being naturalistic observation of moral discourse. The accounts of interview evidence given by ego psychology and Piaget were less comprehensive and less impressive. Naturalistic studies have either been impressionistic or less detailed in their methods of analysis.The second part of the book argues that the impressive nature of Kohlberg's later evidence for his view that moral reasoning passes through a sequence of stages is in part illusory, because his theory predicts that specific types of reply will show specific developmental patterns. However, as data are always reported in terms of stages, which amalgamate very disparate types of reply, it is impossible to know whether the specific types of reply follow their predicted developmental courses or not. Reasons given for assigning given types of reply to a stage are also often doubtful. This leads to discussion of studies that have reported findings in terms of specific types of reply (weakly interpretive methods), as opposed to Kohlberg's stage-based and strongly interpretive methods. Findings from these disconfirm Kohlberg's theory at several crucial points.The second and third parts of the book also examine findings from non-Kohlbergian interviews and other methods, again advocating that weakly interpretive and largely descriptive presentation of findings is preferable to strongly interpretive techniques. It is argued that a wide variety of mechanisms suggested by the theories outlined in the first part of the book, as well as others drawn from general theories of personality development, are able to explain existing descriptive developmental findings. The task for the future is to assess the relative importance of these mechanisms.

An Ego-Psychological Approach to the Rorschach

This presentation is an extension and amplification of the ego-psychological assessment of Rorschach data initiated in 1946 by Rapaport, Gill, and Schafer whose focus was on the quality of the perception of reality and the assessment of defence. A more contemporary view of ego psychology not only includes an expanded view of defence but also of the nature of self- and object representations and the nature of object relations. An assessment of the synthesizing function of the ego was also discussed. The present purpose was to present a comprehensive assessment of Rorschach data from the point of view of contemporary ego psychology.

Etiology and management of anger in groups: a psychodynamic view.

The author postulates that theoretical explanations of the etiology of anger and aggression inform the group therapist's interventions. Four psychodynamic schools of thought--drive theory, ego psychology, object relations theory, and self psychology--are discussed. Choice of the best-suited theory to increase understanding may vary according to the particular patient and/or set of group circumstances. A pitfall to be avoided is forcing any given individual, event, or process into a specific school of thought. In the group, special issues related to anger exist: the therapist's vulnerability to narcissistic injury if made the focus of anger, the increased intensity and force of anger that can be mustered in a group, and the safety afforded patients as they, outnumbering the therapist(s), express anger.

The Wisdom of the Ego

GEORGE E. VAILLANT: The Wisdom of the Ego. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1993, 94 pp., $27.95. The rumor of the death of Ego Psychology is greatly exaggerated. As long as George Vaillant writes his engaging books extolling the wisdom of ego psychology it is destined to remain part of our theoretical landscape. Vaillant's Adaptation to Life (Little, Brown & Co. 1977) had been based on the longitudinal study, started in 1938, of a cohort of Harvard students viewed from the perspective of changing, maturing coping styles through the life cycle. His latest book The Wisdom of the Ego is partly a useful recapitulation and update, as well as a considerable expansion of this earlier book's themes. This time we are given a fascinating glimpse of two other longitudinal studies in which the author had participated in various phases, adding to the Harvard group a contrasting socioeconomic group of Core City men who had been peer controls for a study of juvenile delinquents in the early 1940's and a subsample of 90 women from the 1920's Terman study of gifted California school children. Thus, Vaillant draws, at this point, not only on one, but on three diverse longitudinal studies to demonstrate the empirical existence of defenses which he views basically as biologically based phenomena, in that [M]aturity of defensive style did not seem affected by socioeconomic status, intellectual ability, or gender (p. 136). Vaillant's book could be viewed as a celebration of the human capacity to engage in self-deception in order bear inner and outer assaults. The author likens mechanisms to the immune system, which is both basic to our survival, while also known to turn against itself in its protective efforts. He makes some room for contextual considerations, yet continues to divide defenses into four categories ranging from psychotic to mature. Vaillant thus remains faithful to the basic psychoanalytic view that even admirable human behavior is mostly a defense against baser instincts [in Anna Freud's words, altruism resulting from the badness of one's heart] (p. 248). He even views human creativity as an activity that transmutes pain and restores the self (p. 27), thus as the highest level of defensive sublimation. Vaillant pursues his earlier interest in the association between maturity of defenses and other measures of successful adulthood, positing a causal link between the former and the latter. The author's definition of successful adulthood is embedded within traditional Western values, exemplified by his defining Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar as inspirational and generative leaders (p. 199). A person's defensive style is linked to such presumably inborn personality traits as fortunate temperament (p. …

Hypnosis, childhood trauma, and dissociative identity disorder: toward an integrative theory.

It is contended that prevailing exogenous trauma theory provides in most cases neither a sufficient nor a necessary explanation for the current large number of diagnosed cases of dissociative identity disorder (multiple personality disorder) and related dissociative syndromes purported to have arisen as a response to severe early childhood physical and sexual abuse. Relevant aspects of instinctual drive theory, ego psychology, object relations theory, self psychology, social psychological theory, sociocultural influences, and experimental hypnosis findings are drawn on to demonstrate the importance of adopting a more integrative theoretical perspective in the diagnosis and treatment of severe dissociative syndromes. Further cooperative experimental and clinical research on the etiology, prevalence, and clinical manifestations of the group of dissociative disorders is strongly encouraged.

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.

Ego Psychology and the Psychotic Disorders

Ego Psychology and the Psychotic Disorders

Nightmares and annihilation anxiety.

The relation between self-reported frequency of nightmares, as well as a number of saliency measures of the nightmare experience, and a self-report measure of annihilation anxiety was evaluated in two, independent college student populations. A significant positive relation was found between nightmare frequency and salience and annihilation anxiety. Furthermore, these findings were cross-validated across both samples. The results are discussed within the context of object relations and ego psychology theory utilizing an ego boundary model and are consistent with previous research demonstrating boundary impairment in self-reported frequent nightmare subjects

Righting Sendak: The Psyche of Mother Goose

Righting Sendak:The Psyche of Mother Goose Anne Lundin (bio) Lucy Rollin . Cradle and All: A Cultural and Psychoanalytic Study of Nursery Rhymes. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1992. I have always been a bit peeved at Maurice Sendak for his disdain of Kate Greenaway's 1881 classic, Mother Goose; or, The Old Nursery Rhymes. I have a particular fondness for her work and a certain weakness for romanticized childhoods in English gardens. Sendak charged that Greenaway had no sense of the real spirit of Mother Goose and even accused her of initiating a whole school of sentimental Mother Goose collections. My indignation was somewhat lightened by reading Iona Opie and Peter Opie's I Saw Esau (illustrated by Sendak), in which the earthiness of rhymes evoked other than Greenaway images. Sendak's most recent book, We Are All in the Dumps with Jack and Guy, reveals even further the psychic complexity of some of the familiar and less than familiar verse. Could he be right in his idiosyncratic vision of Mother Goose? My sensibilities have grown even further with this provocative critical study of nursery rhymes. I will never see Mother Goose in the same slant of light again. Lucy Rollin's Cradle and All: A Cultural and Psychoanalytic Study of Nursery Rhymes explores different voices—the cultural as well as psychological meanings that shape the text of this early folk poetry, a rowdy street lore. Aware of a decided skepticism toward Freudian interpretation or, more specifically, of the idiosyncratic Bettelheim approach toward fairy tales, Rollin draws together the many voices of psychoanalysis, literary criticism, folklore studies, cultural history, and cultural anthropology to express meanings that lie deep within nursery verse. These meanings may be purposeful—intentional messages from [End Page 236] adult to child—as well as unconscious recordings of the human experience, its darkness and light. Much to her credit, Rollin is tempered in her approach toward the psychoanalysis of folk culture. She acknowledges the delicate nature of her research, the controversies within. As a feminist scholar, Rollin also acknowledges her own resistance to the sexism of the rhymes, as well as to the persistent attempts to alter them, prescriptively, toward modern gender standards. The author refers to a commentary on the hazards of psychoanalytic literary theory in Children's Literature "The Reproduction of Mother in Charlotte's Web" (vol. 18, 1990) and addresses the concerns for a more cultural approach. In this particular volume, various critics—such as Michael Steig, Jerry Phillips, Ian Wojcik-Andrews, U. C. Knoepflmacher, Patrick Horgan, and Jack Zipes—critique the application of absolutist Bettelheimian-Freudian assumptions and argue, instead, for more elastic, multiple perspectives. Rollin positions her work within a broad framework of social history and conjoins various interpretive disciplines. Moreover, revealing her own relation to the particular theory she has chosen, she describes the psychoanalytic approach as "a congenial and informative way of looking at human behavior and at literature" (xv). Rollin distinguishes her own approach as a departure from classical Freudian concerns and toward object relations and ego psychology, which are only briefly defined in a sentence or two. Although I appreciate the author's nontechnical rhetoric, I would have appreciated a fuller explanation of these distinctions. She does articulate her own bent toward nursery rhymes to be their "containment of strong urges and the use of defensive and adaptive maneuvers in the service of maturation." Rollin shapes her cogent analysis around specific categories—animal rhymes, courtship and marriage rhymes, lullabies, and amusements—that examine nursery rhymes as a body of verse. Rollin observes a considerable amount of cruelty to animals, with an ambivalent strain of tenderness. Nature can be tamed, they seem to say. The romantic verse reveals a complex relationship between the sexes and a fear of womanly arts. The verse that accompanies holding and playing activities between adult and child is both gentle and rough and tumble. Thus follows cradle and all—rock-a-bye and then the fall. Rollin also examines the adaptation of verse, a kind of censoring and controlling process that is ongoing and all too contemporaneous. Whether the cause is ecological, fundamentalist, or gender free, many attempts have been made to purge the...

Ego psychology theory and practice

Ego psychology theory and practice

Scientific meetings of the Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis

What is curative in psychoanalysis? Is change grounded solely in the analytic relationship, as currently espoused in many circles? Or is it based in the more timehonored orientations of ego psychology, interpersonal psychoanalysis, relational conflict theory, or developmental arrest models? And what role does the verbal interpretation serve in facilitating change? Can a noninterpretive stance be mutative? Joseph Newirth, in his stimulating, provocative, and sensitively drawn paper, attempted to address these questions by drawing from a wealth of theoretical material and a rich case presentation. Newirth argued that the current trend toward relationalism in psychoanalysis reflects a wholesale accommodation of analytic theories that shortchanges the analytical relationship in its failure to provide a developmental framework, particularly with respect to developmental arrest. The thrust of Newirth's position is that developmental arrest has been conceptually misunderstood by proponents of relationalism as pathologizing the patient and ennobling the analyst. In his view, developmental arrest is represented not by a damaged or deprived child in need of compensatory love, but rather by a failure in the capacity for symbolic experience, which is reflected in the patient's sense of the self and the world as concrete, fragile, unstable, and vulnerable to random and unpredictable external forces. The analyst's role, he holds, must be as an "active strategist" in the process of creating the verbal and nonverbal experiences that facilitate the development of the capacity to use symbolic thought. Referring in large measure to Winnicott's work on the use of such noninterpretative approaches as play, enactment, and transitional experiences, Newirth illustrated his position by presenting a case in which he and a patient develop an uninterpreted ritual of sharing a donut (then later a cookie) in each session. He elaborated with careful detail how this simple yet complex treatment situation, replete with transference and countertransference enactments, created an arena for transitional experiences for both the patient and himself, which became the me233

The matter of style: Manifestations of personality in cognition, learning, and teaching

The historical roots of cognitive styles are traced in differential psychology, psychoanalytic ego psychology, Gestalt, and cognitive-developmental psychology to illuminate the varied theoretical issues that energize (and fragment) style research. Optimal measurement of cognitive styles as information-processing regularities and as intraindividual contrasts of abilities or other attributes is discussed in terms of both typical performance and contrasted performance on measures of opposing ends of bipolar style dimensions, with special emphasis on the contrasted measurement of field independence versus field dependence. The role of styles as both performance variables and competence variables in learning and teaching is examined, as are various critiques of style research that appear to be excessively polarized in either supporting or undercutting styles as meaningful constructs. This polarization appears to reflect different stances not just with respect to scientific evidence but also with respect to ideology. Concluding remarks broach the issue of how styles are organized, not just within an information-processing framework but within the structure of personality.

The relevance of Mahler's observational studies to the theory and technique of psychoanalysis

Mahler occupies a place of major importance in the continuing development of psychoanalytic theory. None of the technical implications of Mahler's discoveries negates classical psychoanalytical theory, although some do alter technique. Her contributions expand and modify. As Rangell (1989) emphasizes, mainstream theory construction is cumulative. Mahler's work fits well within that philosophical framework, because it maintains the internal consistency of those ego psychologists who preceded her and those who worked contemporaneously with her.

THE MATTER OF STYLE: MANIFESTATIONS OF PERSONALITY IN COGNITION, LEARNING, AND TEACHING

ABSTRACTThe historical roots of cognitive styles are traced in differential psychology, psychoanalytic ego psychology, gestalt and cognitive‐developmental psychology to illuminate the varied theoretical issues that energize (and fragment) style research. Optimal measurement of cognitive styles as information‐processing regularities and as intraindividual contrasts of abilities or other attributes is discussed in terms of both typical performance and contrasted performance on measures of opposing ends of bipolar style dimensions, with special emphasis on the contrasted measurement of field independence versus field dependence. The role of styles as both performance variables and competence variables in learning and teaching is examined, as are various critiques of style research that appear to be excessively polarized in either supporting or undercutting styles as meaningful constructs. This polarization appears to reflect different stances not just with respect to scientific evidence but with respect to ideology. Concluding remarks broach the issue of how styles are organized, not just within an information‐processing framework but within the structure of personality.

Resistance in Art Therapy: A Multi-Model Approach to Treatment

AbstractFour treatment models are discussed with reference to working with resistance in art therapy—drive psychology, object relations theory, self psychology, and ego psychology. Each of these models imagines resistance in its own way. Working with these four models of treatment, art diagnosis, therapeutic interventions, and the transference/countertransference relationship are considered with particular attention to resistance issues. Four cases are presented.

The adaptive design of the human psyche: psychoanalysis, evolutionary biology, and the therapeutic process

This important new work connects evolutionary biological concepts to modern psychoanalytic theory and the clinical encounter. Synthesizing their years of experience in the practice of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, the authors provide a comparative psychoanalytic map of current theoretical controversies and a new way of deconstructing the hidden assumptions that underlie Freudian, Ego Psychological, Kleinian, Object Relational, Self Psychological, and Interpersonal theories. In so doing, they provide a new vantage point from which to integrate competing models into a larger picture that more fully embraces the many facets of human nature. Moreover, they offer clinicians a new framework with which to understand and respond to the inevitable paradoxes and conflicts that arise in the therapeutic relationship.