You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
This paper has attempted to enlarge and elaborate the concept of the representational world as a substructure of the ego. Toward that end a variety of Freud's definitions of ego are presented at various phases of their conceptual development. Because the functional definition of the ego is the one most stressed by Freud (1923) and by post-Freudian elaborators, the definitions of the latter group (A. Freud, 1936); (Waelder, 1936); (Hartmann, 1939), (1950); (Jacobson, 1964) are also presented. Most contemporary critiques (G. Klein, 1976); (Kohut, 1977); (Schafer, 1976) of the structural hypothesis centre on its mechanistic jargon and the energetic point of view. Although aspects of these critiques have validity I believe the radical paradigmatic alternatives they propose to be excessive. It is a premise of this paper that the elaboration of the concept of the representational world facilitates the understanding of clinical data reflective of intrasystemic conflict of the ego.