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THE "SELF" CARD AT THE LIBRARY of New York University's Medical School which I searched in preparing for this symposium on "The Theory of the Self in Contemporary Psychoanalysis" includes the following items for cross-reference: "Body, human; Consciousness; Ego; Identity; Individuality; Mind and Body; Personality: Role-Playing; Super-Ego; Thought and thinking; Will." A long list—one that encompasses most of psychology. Although I have not researched all of these topics, I have found that concepts and theories of the self are both complex and obscure.
Freud discussed the ego as the organizer and instigator of behavior rather than as the self as an operating entity (Munroe, 1955). This psychological structure maintains the organism as a whole against conflicts between instinctual strivings, reality and social factors. Hartmann (1939) redefined the ego, noting that some processes such as perception, memory, etc. functioned autonomously and were neither derived from nor were subjugated to instinctual forces. Khan (1974), critical of Winnicott's and Guntrip's "romantic notion" of a "true self, " acknowledged that "each individual does have a sense of wholeness of his self."