Identity and the Life Cycle. Selected Papers: By Erik H. Erikson. With a Historical Introduction by David Rapaport. New York: International Universities Press, Inc., 1959. 171 pp.

This is the first of a proposed series of monographs designed to present source materials for a general psychoanalytic theory of behavior. The expectation is that diverse materials contributed by clinical investigations, controlled developmental studies, and experimental studies, as they may have bearing upon psychoanalytic theory, will be made available to the research worker in monographs of sufficient length to enable the author to have full opportunity to have his say. George S. Klein heads a distinguished editorial board.

This book is a republication of selected papers. The introductory paper, A Historical Survey of Psychoanalytic Ego Psychology, by David Rapaport, is a condensation of previously published lectures. The author discerns four phases of the development of ego psychology, the first coinciding with Freud's prepsychoanalytic theory, the second encompassing the development of psychoanalysis proper, the third beginning with the publication of The Ego and the Id, the fourth beginning with publication of Anna Freud's The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense in 1936, and extending to the present time. The changing preoccupations, the initial concept of defense as emphasized in the first phase, the fluctuations in emphasis upon reality experience, slowly augmenting over thirty years, the confusions and limitations in the conceptualization of the ego preceding Anna Freud's clarifying integration of themes of defense and reality relations are annotated. The contributions of Hartmann and Erikson are presented as complementing the previous phases of the development of psychoanalytic ego psychology, Hartmann and his collaborators centering on roots of ego development that are independent of instinctual drives and Erikson upon a psychosocial theory of development stressing 'epigenesis' of the ego, the theory of reality relationship and of the role of social reality. The tremendous condensation in the introductory chapter renders it useful primarily for the ps