Essays on Ego Psychology. Selected Problems in Psychoanalytic Theory: By Heinz Hartmann, M.D. New York: International Universities Press, Inc., 1964. 492 pp.

It is one of the impossible tasks: to review a book which, in fact, has been written over the course of a major career. The impact and influence of the papers assembled in this volume have kept them under continuous review as each has appeared. Beginning with his first great generalization,1 Hartmann's individual papers and those produced in collaboration with Kris and Loewenstein have compelled attention and study, have evoked criticism, and have stimulated inquiry and research. In the view of many this work has effected a major extension of the horizons of psychoanalysis toward which they have themselves been impelled to move. Others have been stimulated to re-examine hard-won positions based on the classical discoveries of Freud. Not all have been convinced, despite the fact that the concepts which Hartmann has developed are rooted in these discoveries and are extensions of Freud's structural theory.

Hartmann was well aware of the difficulties he was facing in attempting to establish grounds for a general psychology of human behavior. In the concluding paragraph of his introductory monograph, Ego Psychology and the Problem of Adaptation, he said:

Many of these lengthy—but still incomplete—considerations are not psychoanalytic in a narrow sense, and some of them seem to have taken us quite far from the core of psychoanalysis. Much of our discussion has been in the nature of a program which must be filled in and made concrete by detailed empirical investigations. I will agree with you if you should find that I have been one-sided, stressing certain relationships and neglecting others of equal or greater importance—particularly those which usually concern us the most: that was my intention. I will be pleased if you should agree with me that the problem of autonomous ego development, of the structure and rank order of ego functions, of organization, of central regulation, of self-suspension of function, etc., and their relations to the concepts of adaptation