Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association: Karl A. Menninger. 'Psychological Aspects of the Organism Under Stress. Part 1: The Homeostatic Regulatory Function of the Ego.'

This work has been partly motivated by a dissatisfaction with current psychiatric nosologies and the conviction of the usefulness of Freudian concepts in clinical practice. The author believes that the concept of homeostasis helps to provide a better understanding of human behaviour. In general, applications of the homeostatic principle to psychology have followed biological and physical systems rather slavishly. Such a conception is too narrow. Freud utilized the concept of homeostasis as a basic principle in his metapsychology in The Interpretation of Dreams. Twenty-five years later in Beyond the Pleasure Principle he reconsidered this and advanced a more complex hypothesis. The work of von Bertalanffy is quoted and points of similarity with Freud's theories considered. Menninger conceives of homeostasis as operating at many levels of integration. In addition to its biological implications it must be seen as an index of the current balance of the life and death forces which are reconciled and bound within each new homeostatic balance of the personality system. Five topics are discussed in relation to the homeostatic function. (1) Instinct theory; the usefulness of the life and death instinct theory is commented upon. The difficulties which biologists have in understanding the integrative versus destructive processes as expressions of instinctual trends are due to the nature of the material with which psychoanalysts and psychiatrists work. The author discusses the theoretical question whether the destructive trends are the derivatives of an instinctual drive originally self-directed. He believes that the acceptance of a destructive drive but not the death instinct undermines the basic premises upon which the hypothesis is based. (2) Ego functions; while the ego may be defined as a controlling mechanism it may also be conceived of as an organized expression and product of the constructive, synthetic impulses which characterize the life instinct. The e