Article
Comments on the Psychoanalytic Theory of the Ego
Heinz Hartmann's paper, published in The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child in 1950 and reprinted in his Essays on Ego Psychology (1964), is one of the founding statements of psychoanalytic ego psychology. Observing that the word "ego" was used ambiguously even among analysts, Hartmann argued that in the structural theory the ego is a psychic system, defined by its functions and set beside the id and the superego, and is not the same as the personality, the individual or the subject's own person. For one's own person, as distinct from the surrounding world, he proposed the term "self", and he spoke of the ego's representations of the self alongside its representations of objects. On this basis he restated Freud's narcissism as the libidinal cathexis not of the ego but of the self, so that the counterpart of object cathexis is the cathexis of one's own person. These distinctions between ego, self and self-representation became standard in American psychoanalysis and served as a starting point for later theories of the self, among them Edith Jacobson's and Heinz Kohut's.
Main ideas
- The term "ego" is used ambiguously; in the structural theory it should mean a psychic system defined by its functions, not the personality, the individual or one's own person.
- One's own person, as distinct from the surrounding world, is better called the self; the ego forms representations both of objects and of the self.
- Narcissism is the libidinal cathexis of the self rather than of the ego, and the counterpart of object cathexis is the cathexis of one's own person.
- The distinctions between ego, self and self-representation became standard in American psychoanalysis and a starting point for later psychoanalytic theories of the self.
What it shows
- 1939
Heinz Hartmann introduced Ego autonomy
Hartmann named an area of "autonomous ego development" in 1939 and set out the distinction between primary and secondary autonomy in his papers of the 1950s, collected in "Essays on Ego Psychology".
- 1950
Heinz Hartmann introduced Neutralization
Hartmann introduced neutralized drive energy in his 1950 paper on the psychoanalytic theory of the ego and worked it out in his 1955 paper on sublimation.
- 1950
Heinz Hartmann introduced Self-representation
In his 1950 paper Hartmann distinguished the ego from the self, defined narcissism as the libidinal investment of the self, and proposed "self-representation" as the counterpart of object representation.