Some Variations in Ego-Feeling

Until the advent of psycho-analysis all psychology was psychology of the ego. A raising or lowering of ego-feeling was included, although called by other names, among the common emotions. Since psychiatrists have turned their attention to the phenomena of depersonalization, there have been numerous investigations of disturbances of ego-feeling. In his work on self-consciousness, consciousness of the personality and the somatic organization, Schilder in particular has described this condition in some detail, but has been concerned mainly with its manifestations in grave pathological conditions. The present communication deals with certain states bordering on normality, and is based on self-observation and on observations concerning themselves communicated to me by patients.

All definitions of the ego come to grief owing to the fact that they represent the ego as a distinct entity, something opposed to external reality. 'Ego-feeling' can be described as the feeling of bodily and mental relations in respect to time and content, the relation being regarded as an uninterrupted or a restored unity.

Concerning the time-relation, we know from Freud that for the Ucs time does not exist. In so far as we can recall dream-experiences by self-observation, the 'dream-ego' very rarely has any feeling of its unity in time, although this is not invariably absent. Nevertheless events occurring in dreams are felt to follow some chronological order. This does not contradict Freud's view, since in dreams the system Cs is to some extent awake. When in waking life the feeling of unity in the ego in regard to time is absent, there arises the well-recognized condition of depersonalization (also of déjà vu). Whereas normally the presnt is regarded as existing somewhere between the future and the past, in such states the present is constantly experienced as beginning de novo. This depends on ego-feeling and not on the faculty for perceiving the passage of time, since time-orientation