Two Types of Preoedipal Character Disorders

Two groups of preoedipal character distortions are to be considered here: (a) those with autistic tendencies; and (b) those with symbiotic tendencies. Using the ego as our point of departure, these two groups of preoedipal character disturbances are contrasted with Kanner's autistic infantile and Mahler's symbiotic infantile psychoses.

All the disorders referred to have their source in the ego nucleus. Nevertheless, its involvement in these infantile psychoses is quite different from that in the preoedipal character disorders.

It may be assumed that the ego nucleus has its origin in the innate aversion to stimuli, that is in the stimulus-barrier. Since stimuli cannot be reacted to in the absence of perception, and since we must therefore assume that the stimulus-barrier is dependent on perception, we must postulate, a priori, the existence of a primordial perceptive system. Further, we must postulate in the ego-nucleus the retention of primordial reactions to stimuli, in the form of residual memory traces.

Without such postulations, the development and growth of the ego nucleus become vague concepts that cannot be manipulated for constructive purposes. They are, however, definitive realities, as real as the ego nucleus itself, whose many functions were systematized at some early period of human development and then transmitted from generation to generation as the matrix of the ego, or, according to Hartmann, as the autonomous part of the ego.

The ego nucleus includes many autonomous factors which encompass the faculty of perception, the aversion to stimuli, the primordial memory, and the functions of primitive differentiation and synthesis, and of self-preservation, as well as the inhibitory functions. It also comprises the basic function of transforming, taming, and binding the drive energies. Freud's concept of delibidinization has reference to these processes. Hartmann, Kris, and Loewenstein speak of the neutralization of the drives.

Freud was the first to co