The Development of the Ego Concept in Freud's Work1

I cannot begin without acknowledging how deeply I feel the honour of addressing you on this occasion.

The choice of my topic for today may need some explanation. For the analyst in his daily work, Freud's thought continues to be very much alive; indeed, an essential element. In this sense, Freud has not yet become a 'historical figure' for us, and an intellectual effort is required to change the perspective to view him from the vantage point of a historian. But the effort is necessary, for the presentation without historical discrimination of his discoveries as well as his thought tends to create uncertainties and promote confusion. Furthermore, we can hardly do justice to Freud's thought without an intimate knowledge of the remarkable growing power inherent in it, and of the ways in which this development came about.

We find in Freud's work, even after the foundations of psycho-analysis had been laid, many rather radical new departures and many reformulations, continuing through his last papers. There are a number of chapters of psychology whose importance he freely admitted, but which, as he often said, he had not yet come round to. It is this quality of not being finished, of not having said the last word, that Freud had in mind, when, confronted with misunderstandings of his teachings, he found it necessary to draw a demarcation line between psycho-analysis as an empirical science and the philosophical systems. He was not, of course, implying that analysis is less bound to the principles of systematization than other sciences of nature. Freud's hypotheses are interrelated in a systematic way: there is a hierarchy of hypotheses in their relevance, their closeness to observation, their degree of verification. It is none the less true that there exists no comprehensive presentation of analysis from this angle. Here again recourse to the historical approach seems imperative—for the present, as a substitute for such a system, also as a help towards achieving