Meetings of the New York Psychoanalytic Society

DISCUSSION: Dr. Louis Linn commented on the originality of this contribution in exploring the psychological and behavioral consequences of energy shifts. He gave a hydrostatic analogy of Dr. Ostow's thesis.

Dr. Max Schur raised several theoretical questions. If the ego is the sole reservoir of libido, how may one then consider the id which comprises the instinctual drives and which supplies energy to the ego and superego? Is there not also a conflict regarding the ego-libido level as decisive in the formation of illness, when the ego is more customarily seen as an organ which mediates between the demands of the id and the environment, and contains the drives or, if necessary, executes them according to a compromise between the pleasure-unpleasure principle and the reality principle? Dr. Schur also questioned whether we can really utilize an energy concept as applied to the ego which neglects the concept of aggressive energy and the way the ego deals with it.

Dr. Edith Jacobson questioned whether Dr. Ostow's theory was as congruent with classical theory as he believed it to be. For instance, in Mourning and Melancholia, Freud alludes to the reduced libidinal cathexis characteristic of melancholia, but he means reduced cathexis of the self-representations and not of the ego. In On Narcissism: An Introduction, Freud speaks of the damming up of narcissistic libido in schizophrenia, but he does not intend to say that as a result of this damming up the psychotic' ego libido increases. Dr. Jacobson felt that Dr. Ostow's theory does not distinguish sufficiently between ego and id. It suffers also in that it stresses libido quantities at the expense of an adequate consideration of the role of aggression and of the dynamic and structural aspects of illness. She also questioned whether we can categorize mania, schizophrenia, and paranoia in one class. She saw difficulties in the use of clinical indicators of libido level and asked, if projection is indicative of high