Structuring Aspects of the Penis

In his very first series of psychological investigations, Freud conceptualized behavioural phenomena as an interrelationship between process and structure. The theory of cathexis, which Freud already advanced in 1894 and which has been described as "the most fundamental of all his hypotheses" (Strachey), was in part an effort to reconcile excitatory, behavioural processes with the structures which pattern them.

A few years later, in his work on primary and secondary process, Freud made clear that secondary process implies delaying and inhibiting capacities, and it is precisely these structural aspects which distinguish it from primary process. A quarter century later with The Ego and the Id, Freud set up the beginnings of a systematic, structural framework to deal with the polarities of process and structure, with behaviour as both a discharging and durable phenomenon.

Hartmann enlarged Freud's structural framework. He conceptualized primary ego apparatuses and "independent biological functions which exist alongside, and in part independent of, instinctual drives", such as thinking and learning.

Erikson further added to Freud's structural model by detailing the cultural elements acting in conjunction with ego givens and instincts which eventuate in the psychic structure he termed ego identity. This structure Erikson described as the result of

a selfsameness and continuity to the ego's synthesizing methods and these methods are effective in safeguarding the sameness and continuity of one's meaning for others.

For Erikson, ego identity implies a continuing process. At the very moment of its being a structure, with its own unique genetic, cultural and instinctual patternings, it is also a synthesizing process and therefore tentative.

From the Kleinian viewpoint, structure is related to internal objects, and the ego depends upon these objects, part and whole. Projective and introjective processes involving these objects are a principal focus of analytic work. Erikson'