On the Development of the Ego and Super-Ego

In resuming contact with psycho-analytic writing in other countries, after many years of separation enforced by the war, I am struck by the varieties of directions in which research work has been extended. One line of investigation however seems to me the most prevalent: there is an increasing interest in the development of the ego and super-ego. Many authors lay stress on the influence of environmental elements connected with the formation of the ego. Psycho-analysis has shown from the very beginning how important external experiences are for the development of personality. But unfortunately many authors who stress the importance of environmental factors seem to overemphasize their influence and neglect or underestimate the importance of internal psychic processes. Sometimes they even go so far as to deny the eminent significance of id-drives, 1 especially of infantile sexuality on the ego and super-ego formation (Horney, Fromm). Our daily analytic work shows us regularly the interplay of internal and external events on the ego. These experiences force us to study the growth of the individual as a biologically based dynamic process, which is certainly influenced by social circumstances.

As far as I can see the psychology of the social development of groups, nations and even of mankind in general must be regarded from the same point of view. Highly influenced by climate, economics, social life and political circumstances the development of mankind and its culture can only be understood as a dynamic process on a biological basis (N. Elias). Freud often pointed out that sexuality as the best-known part of the id is a reservoir of the biologically rooted drives. We know that the genital organization of the adult is the result of a developmental process reaching back into early childhood. The phases of infantile sexuality, the oral, anal and phallic stage, in the formation of which libido and aggression participate, are the earliest and best-studied areas of