Concept
Adaptation
In ego psychology, the process by which an individual and their environment come to fit each other. Heinz Hartmann distinguished three routes: changing the environment (alloplastic adaptation), changing oneself (autoplastic adaptation), and choosing a new environment better suited to one's functioning. He treated the ego as the specific organ of adaptation and argued that adaptation, alongside conflict, is a central problem of psychoanalytic theory.
Read more- Broader concept
- Ego psychology
- Narrower concepts
- Average expectable environment
- Key works
- 1
developed by
- Heinz Hartmann 1939 Hartmann took Freud's ideas of alloplastic and autoplastic change as guides, added the choice of a new environment as a third route, and called the ego the individual's specific organ of adaptation.