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In popular contemporary use, the French term bricolage refers to the activities of the home handyman. It is sometimes used in a disparaging way to refer to work that is improvised, uninformed by expertise or specialist knowledge, and probably inferior in its results when compared with the work of a tradesman or professional. In 1962, anthropologist and philosopher Claude Lévi-Strauss argued that bricolage is a modality of human thought. Since then, the importance of bricolage as a mental activity has been identified in relation to art and architecture, as well as other fields of cultural activity. In this paper I consider bricolage as an activity of the ego and explore its role in the consulting room. I argue that by necessity the psychoanalytic work undertaken between patient and analyst relies on this modality of thought and, furthermore, that the use of bricolage is entirely compatible with evidence-based practice.
We understand that the ego is unique and particular. Freud termed it ‘das ich’ or ‘the I’, which fully conveyed its intimate relation with the specificity of the person. Strachey preferred to use Latin terms for structures of the psyche. This had the effect of distancing the ego from subjectivity but highlighted another equally important dimension, the universality of its function as the intermediary between the psyche and its environment.
Freud viewed the ego as a psychical agent in the service of the reality principle. The ego had the capacity to apprehend both internal and external reality and to identify and test