Meeting of the Psychoanalytic Association of New York

DISCUSSION: Dr. Mervin Hurwitz agreed that the self-representation is an important clinical phenomenon but maintained that the concept remained a very broad one which is technically difficult to employ. He described it as including certain conscious and unconscious aspects of an individual's view of himself. While the self-representation appears for the most part as an ego phenomenon, it also contains superego and id aspects. Dr. Hurwitz cautioned against subordinating all psychic problems to disturbances of the self-representation, and questioned a too broad conceptualization of the self-representation and overemphasis of its significance in mental life and in the functioning of the ego. He would prefer to restrict the concept to that set of shifting images of the self that reflect current personality organization.

Dr. Nathaniel Ross cited Hartmann's comments about the complexity of human psychic structure, and emphasized the contributions of ego psychology to analytic technique. He agreed with Dr. Eisnitz that the self-representation seems to organize psychic functioning. However, he cautioned investigators not to become so enamored of particular aspects of psychic functioning that their observations become distorted by unconscious biases.