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The rôle played by the sexual interests in human beings having now
reached a considerable degree of precision, the genesis and fate of the ego-instincts are receiving greater prominence in psycho-analytical literature. It is perhaps a sign of these times that Mr. Slade's work deals almost entirely with the origin of some human emotions and temperamental factors from ego-instincts. Taking as his starting-point Ferenczi's primal phantasy, the infantile unconscious phantasy of omnipotence or, as the author prefers to call it, of supremacy, this essay endeavours to follow wheresoever it may lead him.
Just as much valuable work has been accomplished by isolating the components of the sexual instinct and pursuing these to their ends, it may be argued that equally meritorious conclusions can be reached by isolating an ego-function. There is, however, this difference in the work of Freud (and others) compared with that of Mr. Slade. The conclusions to which Freud was led were based upon actual contact with human material; they were based upon first-hand laboratory observations, for the psycho-analytical consulting-room is a psychological laboratory (inter alia, of course); the conclusions have been modified from time to time in accordance with further insight derived from such direct contact with living beings, whilst under these experimental conditions none of the elementary impulses could be ignored. Mr. Slade's interesting essay takes another part; he takes certain common human emotions and attempts, with a considerable degree of success, let it be said, to fit them into his key—the primal phantasy. This is not to decry the value of Mr. Slade's attempt, for on the whole he has not forced the lock. It means, however, that before his conclusions can be accepted they must be borne out by the analysis of human material. Moreover, as Ferenczi points out in an introductory note, the libido theory has been almost left out of account, producing necessarily too one-sided