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Photography derives its popularity in large measure from the exercise of certain ego capacities and in their extension beyond their usual limits. The camera is an analogue of certain ego processes thereby allowing conflicts about the exercise of those functions to become externalized and subject to a greater sense of mastery and control. The relationship between photography and ego functioning is discussed in the following areas. (1) Time change and mourning. Photography bears a close relation to the process of change and mourning. It allows a partial identification with the lost person through a reinvestment of the fantasies and affects associated with the visual image. (2) Looking, reality definition and discovery. The photograph interrupts the passage of time by means of a fixed visual image, thereby aiding definition and clearer 'focus' on the nuances and parameters of reality. The processes involved in photography also set a process of discovery in motion characterized by a controlled
regression in which the act of visual exploration and certain modes of childhood experience are reinvested. (3) Conscious, preconscious and unconscious processes. Photography is closely related to an array of unconscious wishes, corresponding inhibitions and to the ego's efforts to overcome those inhibitions. In essence the photo comes to represent a symbolic restitution of 'lost' memories. Regardless of which of the three areas of ego functioning predominate for a given individual, photography unconsciously represents an effort to aid self-definition, to adapt to change and thereby to prepare for the future. In pathological states photography provides external aid to a weakened ego and in healthier people serves to mould conflict, particularly conflict about seeing 'clearly' into the relatively autonomous functioning referred to as sublimation.