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I offer a hypothesis that there is an ego function which aims at the extreme splintering of the dynamic complexes of drives, of object representations, and of the emotions and feelings permanently or loosely connected to them. This function precedes and accompanies all the known defence mechanisms (repression, identifications, etc.) and complex defence measures (e.g. splitting, sublimations), and is indeed, I believe, the necessary precondition which makes them possible. It prepares those changes in the nature of mental energy which have been variously called desexualization, de-aggressivization, neutralization. I should like to call this function the ego's fragmentizing function.
After presenting my theoretical considerations, briefly discussing those dynamics which, in my opinion, represent various facets of fragmentizing functioning, I shall give a clinical illustration in the transference neurosis of a case of masochism.
The ego's fragmentizing function is hinted at by Freud (3) in his paper 'Repression' (1915), in which he makes two important statements which may have a bearing on my hypothesis: 'It is possible for the original instinctual representative to be split in two, one part undergoing repression, while the remainder, precisely on account of this intimate connection, undergoes idealization.'
I want to point out that Freud uses two different expressions where the translators apply the term 'splitting' in both instances.
Freud uses the term 'splitting' (Spaltung) when he designates in later papers a complicated defence mechanism. Actually the original German text in 1915 uses the expression 'in zwei Stücke zerlegt', which means: severed into two parts. It connotes a non-specific splintering of the 'instinctual representative' before repression.
Then in a later paragraph of the same paper Freud discusses another form of severance: 'besides the idea, some other element representing the instinct has to be taken into account, and (that) this other eleme