Meetings of the New York Psychoanalytic Society

DISCUSSION. Dr. Heinz Hartmann stated the difficulty in understanding ego pathology both as to its nature and its function. In some cases ego distortions have the function of preventing serious disease, in others they are the remnants of a distortion once useful but no longer so. He thought it necessary to differentiate whether the defect is a primary defect of the ego or is a defect resulting from what happens in the other psychic systems. While there are many ego distortions of the kind Dr. Gitelson reports, an added factor we should know is whether the ego that gets into such a crisis was previously intact or impaired. Dr. Hartmann agreed with the description of specialization and rigidity of function, adding that these phenomena are also observed as fixation and no longer adaptive. He alluded to what Freud said about the relation between repetition compulsion and fixation. As to ego strength, he felt that, in general, he would call an ego strong only if its specific functions are not impaired through defensive functions and through the displacements of energy that occur in this process; this may be so where average demands of the ego are made, and not necessarily so where excessive demands on the ego are made. Dr. Annie Reich