Article
Ego Psychology and the Problem of Adaptation
Ich-Psychologie und Anpassungsproblem
Heinz Hartmann read this long paper to the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society on 17 November 1937 and published it in 1939 in the Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse und Imago (vol. 24, pp. 62–135). It is the founding statement of psychoanalytic ego psychology. Hartmann recalls that psychoanalysis aims to be a general psychology in the widest sense and notes that analytic ego psychology had so far been mainly a psychology of conflict. He starts from Anna Freud's account of the ego's defences and asks psychoanalysis to study as well the ego functions that develop outside conflict. For these he proposes the provisional name of a conflict-free ego sphere. By this he means not a region of the mind exempt from conflict in principle, but the processes that, in a given person, in practice remain outside it. He argues that the contrast between conflict and peaceful development does not coincide with the contrast between the pathological and the normal. The second half of the paper makes adaptation a central problem of psychoanalytic theory. The ego is the individual's organ of adaptation. Beside Freud's alloplastic and autoplastic change, Hartmann names the choice of a new environment as a third route. He measures adaptedness against average expectable situations and describes the newborn as adapted from its first day to its average expectable surroundings. He also discusses how functions fit together within the ego, ego strength, automatisms, and what all this means for the concept of mental health. David Rapaport's English translation appeared in 1958 as Ego Psychology and the Problem of Adaptation.
Main ideas
- Psychoanalysis aims to be a general psychology. Ego psychology, so far mainly a psychology of conflict, must also study the ego functions that develop outside conflict.
- The conflict-free ego sphere, a provisional name, covers the processes that in a given person in practice remain outside conflict. It is not a region of the mind exempt from conflict in principle.
- The contrast between development through conflict and conflict-free development does not coincide with that between the pathological and the normal: healthy people have conflicts too.
- Adaptation is a central problem of psychoanalytic theory, and the ego is the individual's organ of adaptation. Beside alloplastic and autoplastic change, the choice of a new environment is a third route.
- Adaptedness is measured against average expectable situations: the normal newborn is adapted from its first day to its average expectable environment.
- Adaptation also involves the fitting together of functions within the ego, ego strength and automatisms, and should help clarify the psychoanalytic concept of mental health.
What it shows
- 1939
Heinz Hartmann developed Ego psychology
In "Ich-Psychologie und Anpassungsproblem" Hartmann called for widening Freud's ego psychology to the ego functions that cannot be derived from the drives, and his later papers, collected in "Essays on Ego Psychology" (1964), built this into a general theory of the ego.
- 1939
Heinz Hartmann introduced Conflict-free ego sphere
Hartmann proposed the term, as a provisional name, in the paper he read to the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society in 1937 and published in 1939.
- 1939
Heinz Hartmann introduced Average expectable environment
The 1939 paper repeatedly measures adaptation against "durchschnittlich zu erwartende" (average expectable) situations and describes the newborn as adapted from the first day to its average expectable surroundings.
- 1939
Heinz Hartmann developed Adaptation
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.
- 1939
Sigmund Freud influenced Heinz Hartmann
Hartmann presented his ego psychology as taking seriously a widening of the theory of the ego already begun in several places by Freud, and he drew on Freud's ideas of alloplastic and autoplastic change for his account of adaptation.
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- 1939
Anna Freud influenced Heinz Hartmann
Hartmann's 1939 paper starts from Anna Freud's account of the ego's defensive activity, which he calls the first exhaustive treatment of an important side of ego functioning, and draws its examples largely from her work.
- 1958
Heinz Hartmann influenced David Rapaport
Rapaport translated Hartmann's 1939 monograph into English (1958) and, in his historical survey of psychoanalytic ego psychology (1959), treated Hartmann's work as the basis of the field he set out to systematise.
- 1939
Ego autonomy derives from Conflict-free ego sphere
Hartmann's idea of autonomous ego development grew out of his conflict-free ego sphere: both describe ego functions that cannot be derived from the drives or from conflict.