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Current theoretical concepts regarding instinctual drives lag behind clinical developments in ego psychology. If the theory of instincts is to include the psychic
representation of all sources of inner need or stimuli, the energic sources of the organizing and synthesizing operations of the ego must be included. Novey surveys the development of instinct theory in Freud's works from 1914 to 1949. Reich's Character Analysis and Nunberg's Synthetic Functions of the Ego were early significant papers on ego psychology. Increasingly, ego disturbances were viewed as playing a role in the production of neurosis. Both integrative and repressive ego functions began to receive attention in the analysis of character disorders. Just as the id is subject to the impact of reality, with a potential for secondary process and subservience to the reality principle, so also the ego may be conceived as having a primary potential of energy, as is implied in the concept of the autonomous ego. 'To assume an Anlage of the ego in the undifferentiated ego-id, we must assume it to be endowed with drive energy.' These sources of ego energy presumably arise from Eros. The earlier formula, according to which only the id invests energy in the ego, is incorrect, even though some ego energy (libidinal and aggressive) does derive from the id. In this newer definition, Novey re-introduces the concepts of sexual libido and ego libido as variable aspects of Eros or the life instinct.