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More and more the ego is becoming the principal object of psychoanalytic research. Psychoanalysis having first studied the basic instincts is able to study the ego differently from the other psychologies, namely, dynamically and genetically. Psychoanalysis explains the origin of the ego structures and functions as the result of the interplay of innate biological tendencies
in the organism and the influence of the environment upon them. That it is this interplay that first and foremost makes the ego comprehensible to us, Hartmann assumes by placing the concept of 'adaptation' in the centre of his discussion of the principles of ego psychology. He is, it is true, of the opinion that until now psychoanalysis—starting from clinical problems—has primarily seen only those sides of the ego which are explicable in terms of inner psychic 'conflicts', of defense attitudes of one part of the subject towards another. But he maintains there is also a 'sphere without conflict' (konfliktfreie Sphäre) originating nevertheless in antitheses between the organism and the environment. Because of the importance of this origin, the reviewer regards the term 'sphere without conflict' as perhaps somewhat misleading, as tending towards a static point of view.
Actually, Hartmann's arguments at times give the impression that he underestimates the interactions of ego and id, the building up of ego forces through peremptory deflection of instinct energies, and the fact that what psychoanalytic characterology has previously investigated is not merely pathology but fundamentally an explanation of the genesis of ego structures. What is meant here becomes extraordinarily clear in a simile used by Hartmann. He writes: 'It is an essential part of the description of a country, a nation and a state, that its borders be defined and a statement be made of its military involvements with neighboring people or states. But one may also take as subject the peaceful development of the population, it