5. The Mutual Influences in the Development of Ego and Id (1952)

In ‘Analysis Terminable and Interminable’ (S.E. 23) which contains Freud's latest conclusions about the ego, he assumed ‘… the existence and importance of original, innate distinguishing characteristics of the ego’. I have for many years held the view, and expressed it in my book, The Psycho-Analysis of Children (1932), that the ego functions from the beginning and that among its first activities are the defence against anxiety and the use of processes of introjection and projection. In that book I also suggested that the ego's initial capacity to tolerate anxiety depends on its innate strength, that is to say, on constitutional factors. I have also repeatedly expressed the view that the ego establishes object relations from the first contacts with the external world. More recently I defined the drive toward integration as another of the ego's primal functions.1

I shall now consider the part which the instincts—and particularly the struggle between life and death instincts—play in these functions of the ego. It is inherent in Freud's conception of the life and death instincts that the id as the reservoir of the instincts operates ab initio. With this conception I fully agree. I differ, however, from Freud in that I put forward the hypothesis that the primary cause of anxiety is the fear of annihilation, of death, arising from the working of the death instinct within. The struggle between life and death instincts emanates from the id and involves the ego. The primordial fear of being annihilated forces the ego into action and engenders the first defences. The ultimate source of these ego activities lies in the operation of the life instinct. The ego's urge toward integration and organization clearly reveals its derivation from the life instinct; as Freud put it ‘.… the main purpose of Eros—that of uniting and binding…’2 Opposed to the drive toward integration and yet alternating with it, there are splitting processes which, together with introjection and projection, r