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THE ESSENTIAL feat which contemporary ego theorists claim to have accomplished is to have provided the ego with additional motive power without effecting a corresponding diminution in the role of the instinctual drives (6). The popularity of this theoretical innovation rests on the belief that it takes account of increased clinical emphasis on ego functioning while leaving fundamental assumptions regarding instinctual drives intact. This paper presents the proposition that contemporary ego psychology has not accomplished this end.
In the context of Freud's early, provisional theoretical model, the ego was an inherently potent force in psychic functioning. It was conceived as an autonomous structure, operating with power provided by its own energy source (the self-preservation instinct) (2), (13). Freud's later emphasis on aggression eclipsed the role of the ego instincts (3), (8). The ego became a system established through experience, with no primary motive power of its own—the rider who must hold the superior strength of the horse (id) in check, often obliged to guide it where it wants to go (and unable to dismount) (3). The ego also had to contend with the superego, a system originally developed by the ego as an aid to repression which exacts its cost through lifelong domination of the ego.
The ego generated by the tripartite model in The Ego and the Id is dramatically weak, so much so that it becomes difficult to provide sufficient motive power for this structure to account for