Observations on the Concept of Ego1

From some of Freud's earlier writings it may appear that the ego from the psychoanalytical standpoint is a rather passive executor of the instinctual drives of the id on the one hand and dictates of the superego on the other, busy all the time bringing about a reconciliation between these two conflicting forces. Nevertheless, such a view would be entirely at variance with the essentials of the Freudian concept of the ego. It is true that Freud has not discussed the functions or the nature of the ego as elaborately as he has done of the id. But all the same the significance of the activities of the ego as censor, reality tester, feeler, experiencer, etc., has repeatedly been indicated by him. In fact, in his emphasis on the crucial need for seeing through and dissolving resistances before the results of analysis can be stabilized, the vital role of the ego is clearly borne out.

What Freud could not get time to work out in detail was done by his daughter, Anna Freud. Subsequently, the attention of many analysts has been focused on the ego and its mechanisms, and fruitful investigations have been done along the line. Notwithstanding these valuable contributions, however, psychoanalytic ego psychology still remains in many respects wanting. Apart from sublimation, creative urges, and the like, some ego functions, consciousness and the workings of the preconscious continue to baffle our attempts to understand the human mind more clearly. Perhaps some further modifications in the concept of the ego would open up new avenues to tackling hitherto unresolved issues of psychoanalysis, and the present paper is an endeavour in that direction.

The ego and also the energy of the mind as a whole, including that of the ego, were earlier considered to have been derived from the id. But the recent theory assumes that the ego is not only coexistent with the id from the very beginning but also that it has some special energy of its own, apart from that of the id. Even if we acc