Splitting Of The Ego And Its Relation To Parent Loss

CONTEMPORARY VIEWS OF DEFENSE hAVE TAKEN into account the developmental history and hierarchy of defenses; the role of defense in normal as well as pathological development; the influence of defense on other ego functions, and vice versa; change in the means and functions of defense; the relation of defensive style to character and identification; and the complexity of the defense organization in inhibition, gratification, adaptation, etc. Anna Freud (1936) gave us the most specific, elaborate studies of defense with implications for a broad range of considerations that transcended the role of defense in psychological disturbance. Defense was related not only to ego constriction but to ego development, to coordination with, and to adaptation to the social environment and the object world. There is always a price paid for socialization and acculturation in terms of restriction and inhibition, proclivity to neurosis and guilt. But defense also has an essential protetive function related to adaptation and survival, stressed in the antecedent formulation of ego instincts. Defense has intrafamilial and socialcultural dimensions and implications, and Anna Freud (1965, p. 177) pointedly noted,

all defense mechanisms serve simultaneously internal drive restriction and external adaptation, which are merely two sides of the same picture.

This paper deals with "splitting of the ego in the process