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The ego psychology of Hartmann admittedly returns to earlier physiological and physical models of flow and barrier for the psychic apparatus as formulated by Freud in the Project and in Chapter VII of The Interpretation of Dreams. It is therefore quite different from Freud's ego psychology, which was built from the later discoveries of the unconscious ego defenses and superego. Hartmann and his co-workers in essence see abreaction or catharsis as the therapeutic goal and are limited to the basic choices as stated by Gill (1951): whether in a particular case to strengthen the defenses or to allow them to be broken through. This is a reversion to Freud's earlier limited therapeutic approach and abrogates his later one of abolishing resistances and of working through. It leaves no room for such concepts as, for instance, one made explicit by Bibring in which the drives are seen to create 'developmental tension' when prevented from further development by unconscious defenses but can then continue their growth when the defenses are removed. This clinical view is denied to the physicalistic theorist, because he sees the id as composed of instinctual energy and energy cannot 'develop'. Hartmann's interest in innate capacities and conflict-free functioning is closer to common sense and, on a clinical level, closer paradoxically to the earlier 'id analysis' than 'ego analysis'.