Integration Process of The Ego-Complex in Dreams

Psychotherapists have shown a growing interest in ego processes during the last twenty or thirty years, whereas earlier their concern centred mainly on the manifestations of the unconscious: on the id in Freud's terminology or the archetypal system in Jung's. Neumann's (1959) and Fordham's (1957) work on the genetic aspects of the formation of an ego-complex, and its connexions and conflicts with the archetypes, and Anna Fordham's (1937) work on defence mechanisms, Hartmann's (1958) emphasis on problems of adjustment, and Federn's (1953) writings on this subject should be mentioned among others. In all these an interest in the relation of the ego to fantasy formation, and the effect of this on the structure and functioning of the ego-complex, has played an important role.

When studying the attitude of the ego to fantasy or the effects of fantasy on it, we must remember that as well as dreams a number of other types of fantasy must be taken into account. Lersch (1952-4) differentiates play fantasies, wish and fear fantasies, plan-making fantasies, and creative ones. It is characteristic of a grown-up's normal fantasy that, in contrast to dreams and to a child's play fantasies, he retains his sense of reality, unless he is psychotically disturbed. In terms of relationship to the ego an adult's fantasy could be said to retain ego feeling. Here is an example. As I sat down in the playroom of a five-year-old boy, he pulled me to my feet in horror. What had happened? I had taken the very chair that his imaginary companion, Panty, had just sat in, so that, to the child, I was about to squash Panty. We see here how, with an intensity later scarcely attainable, imaginary representation and sensory perception are interwoven, and the imaginary companion takes on a reality which goes beyond the ego boundary. Something of this kind happens to adults too, but only in dreams, in visions or hallucinations, and perhaps at some moments of creative imagination. I think an i