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The author thinks that the strength of the ego depends upon the extent of its field and upon its capacity to keep instinctual tension in suspension (which he compares to the capacity of a condenser to hold an electric charge). He equates the strengthening of the ego with the psycho-analytic task of working through, with educating for analysis (which latter task he considers indispensable for many children and psychotics) and with learning. In conformity, therefore, with his two-fold criterion of ego-strength he regards learning as a double process—as an enlargement of the ego's sum of knowledge and as an increase in its capacity for instinctual toleration.
He furthermore believes that there is a great scope for educative treatment in psycho-analysis, especially as regards hysterical cases. But he does not mean by that the usual sort of education, which is addressed to the super-ego and exerts a restrictive influence, such as inculcating cleanliness, pity and shame; he means education of the ego in its proper functions of ensuring sublimation, pleasurable instinctual discharge and auto- and allo-plastic modes of behaviour.