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Not long after Freud first published his systematization of psychic structure in terms of the Ego, the Super-ego and the Id, a tendency manifested itself amongst psycho-analytic writers, to convert what had been of necessity a fluid presentation into a more rigid and refractory medium. Moreover, in their exposition of this concept of tripartite psychic structure some writers had recourse to terms which, although suggestive enough in themselves, evaded the more disciplined usages of academic statement. One might quote for example phrases such as that coined by Alexander of a 'secret alliance' between Id and Super-ego, or again, the statement that a psychic formation can be 'Id-syntonic'. Useful as such phrases may be for purposes of description, they are unsatisfactory in many other respects: they tend to gloss over the difficulties of a precise statement of mechanism and may ultimately give rise to theoretical misconceptions, particularly in the minds of students. Thus we are left to form our own opinion whether this 'secret alliance' can be contained within the more familiar concept of 'regression', and if so, whether we can or must postulate some degree of Id organization in order to express the idea of regression to some common point in development or to some common functional reaction.
Another rather slipshod usage, due in all probability to some anthropomorphizing tendency, is that whereby we speak of severe